The Cardinal's Snuff-Box Part 25

"I don't know," said the Cardinal. "Would n't it be safer to let the conversion precede the marriage? Afterwards, I 'm afraid, he would have a hundred chances of inducing her to apostatise, or, at least, of rendering her lukewarm."

"Not if she had a spark of the true zeal," said Mrs. O'Donovan Florence.

"Any wife can make her husband's life a burden to him, if she will conscientiously lay herself out to do so. The man would be glad to submit, for the sake of peace in his household. I often sigh for the good old days of the Inquisition; but it's still possible, in the blessed seclusion of the family circle, to apply the rack and the thumbscrew in a modified form. I know a dozen fine young Protestant men in London whom I'm labouring to convert, and I feel I 'm defeated only by the circ.u.mstance that I'm not in a position to lead them to the altar in the full meaning of the expression."

"A dozen?" the Cardinal laughed. "Aren't you complicating the question of mixed marriages with that of plural marriage?"

"'T was merely a little Hibernicism, for which I beg your Eminence's indulgence," laughed she. "But what puts the most spokes in a proselytiser's wheel is the Faith itself. If we only deserved the reputation for sharp practice and double dealing which the Protestants have foisted upon us, it would be roses, roses, all the way. Why are we forbidden to let the end justify the means? And where are those accommodements avec le ciel of which we've heard? We're not even permitted a few poor accommodements avec le monde."

"Look at my uncle's face," whispered the d.u.c.h.essa to Peter. The Cardinal's fine old face was all alight with amus.e.m.e.nt. "In his fondness for taking things by their humorous end, he has met an affinity."

"It will be a grand day for the Church and the nations, when we have an Irish Pope," Mrs. O'Donovan Florence continued. "A good, stalwart, militant Irishman is what's needed to set everything right. With a sweet Irish tongue, he'd win home the wandering sheep; and with a strong Irish arm, he'd drive the wolves from the fold. It's he that would soon sweep the Italians out of Rome."

"The Italians will soon be swept out of Rome by the natural current of events," said the Cardinal. "But an Irish bishop of my acquaintance insists that we have already had many Irish Popes, without knowing it.

Of all the greatest Popes he cries, 'Surely, they must have had Irish blood.' He's perfectly convinced that Pius the Ninth was Irish. His very name, his family-name, Ferretti, was merely the Irish name, Farrity, Italianised, the good bishop says. No one but an Irishman, he insists, could have been so witty."

Mrs. O'Donovan Florence looked intensely thoughtful for a moment....

Then, "I 'm trying to think of the original Irish form of Udeschini,"

she declared.

At which there was a general laugh.

"When you say 'soon,' Eminence, do you mean that we may hope to see the Italians driven from Rome in our time?" enquired Madame de Lafere.

"They are on the verge of bankruptcy--for their sins," the Cardinal answered. "When the crash comes--and it can't fail to come before many years--there will necessarily be a readjustment. I do not believe that the conscience of Christendom will again allow Peter to be deprived of his inheritance."

"G.o.d hasten the good day," said Monsignor Langshawe.

"If I can live to see Rome restored to the Pope, I shall die content, even though I cannot live to see France restored to the King," said the old Frenchwoman.

"And I--even though I cannot live to see Britain restored to the Faith,"

said the Monsignore.

The d.u.c.h.essa smiled at Peter.

"What a hotbed of Ultramontanes and reactionaries you have fallen into,"

she murmured.

"It is exhilarating," said he, "to meet people who have convictions."

"Even when you regard their convictions as erroneous?" she asked.

"Yes, even then," he answered. "But I'm not sure I regard as erroneous the convictions I have heard expressed to-night."

"Oh--?" she wondered. "Would you like to see Rome restored to the Pope?"

"Yes," said he, "decidedly--for aesthetic reasons, if for no others."

"I suppose there are aesthetic reasons," she a.s.sented. "But we, of course, think there are conclusive reasons in mere justice."

"I don't doubt there are conclusive reasons in mere justice, too," said he.

After dinner, at the Cardinal's invitation, the d.u.c.h.essa went to the piano, and played Bach and Scarlatti. Her face, in the soft candlelight, as she discoursed that "luminous, lucid" music, Peter thought... But what do lovers always think of their ladies' faces, when they look up from their pianos, in soft candlelight?

Mrs. O'Donovan Florence, taking her departure, said to the Cardinal, "I owe your Eminence the two proudest days of my life. The first was when I read in the paper that you had received the hat, and I was able to boast to all my acquaintances that I had been in the convent with your niece by marriage. And the second is now, when I can boast forevermore hereafter that I've enjoyed the honour of making my courtesy to you."

"So," said Peter, as he walked home through the dew and the starlight of the park, amid the phantom perfumes of the night, "so the Cardinal does n't approve of mixed marriages and, of course, his niece does n't, either. But what can it matter to me? For alas and alas--as he truly said--it's hardly a question of actuality."

And he lit a cigarette.

XX

"So he did meet her, after all?" the d.u.c.h.essa said.

"Yes, he met her in the end," Peter answered.

They were seated under the gay white awning, against the bright perspective of lawn, lake, and mountains, on the terrace at Ventirose, where Peter was paying his dinner-call. The August day was hot and still and beautiful--a day made of gold and velvet and sweet odours. The d.u.c.h.essa lay back languidly, among the crisp silk cushions, in her low, lounging chair; and Peter, as he looked at her, told himself that he must be cautious, cautious.

"Yes, he met her in the end," he said.

"Well--? And then--?" she questioned, with a show of eagerness, smiling into his eyes. "What happened? Did she come up to his expectations?

Or was she just the usual disappointment? I have been pining--oh, but pining--to hear the continuation of the story."

She smiled into his eyes, and his heart fluttered. "I must be cautious,"

he told himself. "In more ways than one, this is a crucial moment." At the same time, as a very part of his caution, he must appear entirely nonchalant and candid.

"Oh, no--tutt' altro," he said, with an a.s.sumption of nonchalant airiness and candid promptness. "She 'better bettered' his expectations--she surpa.s.sed his fondest. She was a thousand times more delightful than he had dreamed--though, as you know, he had dreamed a good deal. Pauline de Fleuvieres turned out to be the feeblest, faintest echo of her."

The d.u.c.h.essa meditated for an instant.

"It seems impossible. It's one of those situations in which a disenchantment seems the foregone conclusion," she said, at last.

"It seems so, indeed," a.s.sented Peter; "but disenchantment, there was none. She was all that he had imagined, and infinitely more. She was the substance--he had imagined the shadow. He had divined her, as it were, from a single angle, and there were many angles. Pauline was the pale reflection of one side of her--a pencil-sketch in profile."

The d.u.c.h.essa shook her head, marvelling, and smiled again.

"You pile wonder upon wonder," she said. "That the reality should excel the poet's ideal! That the cloud-capped towers which looked splendid from afar, with all the glamour of distance, should prove to be more splendid still, on close inspection! It's dead against the accepted theory of things. And that any woman should be nicer than that adorable Pauline! You tax belief. But I want to know what happened. Had she read his book?"

"Nothing happened," said Peter. "I warned you that it was a drama without action. A good deal happened, no doubt, in Wildmay's secret soul. But externally, nothing. They simply chatted together--exchanged the time o' day--like any pair of acquaintances. No, I don't think she had read his book. She did read it afterwards, though."

"And liked it?"

"Yes--she said she liked it."