CHAPTER XXII
Sarella found considerable enjoyment in the visits to Maxwell necessitated by her period of instruction. Each instruction was of reasonable length and left plenty of time for other affairs, and that time landed Don Joaquin in expenses he had been far from foreseeing. Sarella had a fund of mild obstinacy which her placidity of temper partly veiled. She intended that considerable additions to the furniture of the homestead should be made, and she did not intend to get married without some considerable additions to her wardrobe as well. Her dresses, she assured Don Joaquin, were all too youthful. "Girl's clothes" she called them. She insisted on the necessity of now dressing as a matron. "Perhaps," she admitted with sweet ingenuousness, "I have dressed too young. One gets into a sort of groove. There was nothing to remind me that I had passed beyond the stage of school-girl frocks. But a married woman, unless she is a silly, must pull herself up, and adopt a matron's style; I would rather now dress a bit too old than too young. You don't want people to be saying you have married a flapper!"
She got her own way, and Don Joaquin, had he known anything about it, might have discovered that matronly garments were more expensive than a girl's. "A girl," Sarella informed Mariquita, "need only be smart. A matron's dress must be handsome."
To do her justice, Sarella tried to convince her lover that Mariquita also should be provided with new clothes; but he would agree only to one new "suit," as he called it, for his daughter to wear at his wedding. He had no idea of spending his own money on an extensive outfit "for another man's wife." That expense would be Gore's. Even in Sarella's case he would never have agreed to buy all she wanted had it been announced at once, but she was far too astute for any such mistake as that. It appeared that there must be some delay before their marriage, and she utilized it by spreading her gradual demands over as long a time as she could.
Some of the expense, too, Don Joaquin managed to reduce by discovering a market he had hardly thought of till now, for the furs of animals he had himself shot; some of these animals were rather uncommon, some even rare, and he became aware of their commercial value only when bargaining for their making up into coats or cloaks for Sarella. His subsequent visits to this "store" in order to dispose of similar furs against a reduction in its charges for Sarella's clothing, he studiously concealed from her, but Sarella knew all about it.
"Why," she said to herself, really admiring his sharpness, "the old boy is making a profit on the bargain. He's getting more for his furs than he's spending."
She was careful not to let him guess that she knew this; but she promised herself to "take it out in furniture." And she kept her promise. It was Sarella's principle that a person who did not keep promises made to herself would never keep those made to other people.
"You really must," she told him, "have some of those furs made into a handsome winter jacket for Mariquita. They cost you nothing, and she must have a winter jacket. The one she has was got at the Convent – and a present, too, I believe. It was handsome once – and that shows how economical good clothes are; they last so – "
(Don Joaquin thought, "especially economical when they are presents.")
" – But Mariquita has grown out of it. She is so tall. A new one made of cloth from the store would cost more than one for me, because she is so tall. But those furs cost you nothing."
She knew he would not say, "No, but I can sell them."
"Besides," she added, "if you offered them some more furs at the store they might take something off the charge of making and lining. It is often done. I'll ask them about it if you like."
Don Joaquin did not at all desire her to do that.
"No necessity," he said hastily; "Mariquita shall have the jacket. I will take the furs and give the order myself."
"Only be sure to insist that the lining is silk. They have some silvery gray silk that would just go with those furs. And Mariquita would pay good dressing. Her style wants it. She's solid, you know."
Mariquita did get the jacket. But it was not of the fur Sarella had meant – her father knew by that time the value of that sort of fur. And Sarella knew that she had made it quite clear which sort she had asked him to supply. She was amused by his craftiness, and though a little ashamed of him, she was readier to forgive his stinginess than if it had been illustrated in a garment for herself. After all, it was perhaps as well that Mariquita's should not be so valuable as her own.
"And married women," she reminded herself, "do have to dress handsomer than girls. And Mariquita will never know the difference."
"I suggested," she told her cousin, "the same gray fur as mine. But I daresay a brown fur will suit your coloring better, and it's younger. Anything gray (in the fur line) can be worn with mourning, and nothing's so elderly as mourning."
It was the first present her father had ever given Mariquita, and she thanked him with a warmth of gratefulness that ought to have made him ashamed. But Don Joaquin was not subject to the unpleasant consciousness of shame. On the contrary, he thought with less complacence of Mariquita's thanks than of the fact that he had given her a necessary winter garment at a profit – for he had taken the other furs to the store and received for them a substantial cash payment over and above the clearing of the charges for making up and lining the commoner skins of which the winter jacket was made.
"I wonder," thought Sarella, "what that lining is? It looks silky, but I'm sure it isn't silk. I daresay it's warmer. And after all, Gore can get it changed for silk when it's worn out; the fur will outlast two linings at least. It's not so delicate as mine. I'm afraid mine'll flatten. I must look to that."
CHAPTER XXIII
Meanwhile the instructions did proceed, and Sarella did not mind them much. Perhaps she was not always attending very laboriously – she had a good deal to think of; but she listened with all due docility, and with quite reasonable, if not absorbed, interest; and by carefully abstaining from asking questions, did not often betray any misunderstanding of the nun's explanations, for it was by one of the nuns that all but the preliminary instructions were given. Sarella rather liked her, deciding that she was "a good sort," and, though neither young nor extremely attractive, she was "as kind as kind," and so intensely full of her subject that Sarella could not help gathering a higher appreciation of its importance. In Sarella the earnest expounder of Catholic doctrine and practice had no bigotry and not much prejudice to work against; only a thick crust of ignorance, and perhaps a thicker layer of natural indifference. The little she had heard about the Catholic Church was from Puritan neighbors in a very small town of a remote corner of New England, and if it had made any particular impression, must have been found unfavorable; but Sarella had been too little interested in religion to adopt its rancors, her whole disposition, easy, self-indulgent and material, being opposed to rancor as to all rough, sharp, and uncomfortable things.
Perhaps the nun was hardly likely to overcome the indifference, and perhaps she knew it. But she prayed for Sarella much oftener than she talked to her, and had much more confidence in what Our Lord Himself might do for her than in anything that she could.
"After all," she would urge, "it is more Your own business than mine. I did not make her, nor die for her. Master, do Your own work that I cannot."
Besides, she, who had no belief in chance, would cheer herself by remembering that He had so ordered His patient providence as to bring the girl to the gate of the Church, by such ways as she was so far capable of. He had begun the work; He would not half do it. He would make it, the nun trusted, a double work. For in, half-obstinately, insisting that Sarella must become a Catholic before he married her, the old Spaniard, half-heathen by lifelong habit, had begun to awake to some sort at least of Catholic feeling, some beginning of Catholic practice, for now he was occasionally hearing Mass, and that first lethargic movement of a better spirit in him might, with God's blessing, would, lead to something more genuinely spiritual.
The nun attributed those beginnings to the prayers of the old half-breed's daughter. As yet she knew her but little, but already, by the discretio spiritum, which is, after all, perhaps only another name for the clear instinct in things of grace earned by those who live by grace, the elderly nun, plain and simple, recognized in Mariquita one of a rare, unfettered spirituality.
Sarella had not, at all events consciously, to herself, told her instructress much about her young cousin.
"Oh, Mariquita!" she had said, not ill-naturedly, "she lives up in the moon."
("Higher up than that, I expect," thought Sister Aquinas, gathering the impression that Mariquita was not held of much account in the family.)
"But she is not an idler?" said the nun.
"Oh, not a bit," Sarella agreed with perfectly ungrudging honesty. "An idler! No; she works a lot harder than she ought; harder than she would if I had the arranging of things. Not quite so hard as she used, though, for I have made her father get some help, and he will have to get more if Mariquita leaves us."
Perceiving that the nun did not smile, but retreated into what Sarella called her "inside expression," that acute young woman guessed that she might have conveyed the idea that her future stepdaughter was to be sent away on her father's marriage.
"There's always," she explained carelessly, "the chance of her marrying. She is handsome in her own way, and I don't think she need remain long unmarried if she chose to marry. Not that she ever thinks of it."
("I expect not," thought Sister Aquinas.)
This was about as near to gossip as they ever got. Sarella, indeed, would have liked the nun better if she had been "more chatty." I don't know that Sister Aquinas really disliked chat so long as it wasn't gossip, but the truth was, she did not find the time allowed for each instruction at all superfluously long, and did not wish to let it slip away in mere talk.
CHAPTER XXIV
It was only occasionally that Mariquita accompanied Sarella when the latter went to the convent for instruction. On one of those occasions the Loretto Convent near Denver was mentioned, and Sister Aquinas said:
"I had a niece there a few years ago – Eleanor Hurst. I wonder if you know her?"
"Oh, yes! Quite well." Mariquita answered, with the sort of shining interest that always made her look suddenly younger. "A friend of ours brought me news, lately, that she has become a Carmelite."
"What is a Carmelite?" Sarella asked.
"A nun of one of the great Contemplative Orders," Sister Aquinas explained, turning politely to Sarella. "It is a much rarer vocation than that of active nuns, like ourselves. Carmelites do not teach school, or have orphanages, or homes for broken old men or women, nor nurse the sick, either in their homes or in hospital."
"Sounds pretty useless," Sarella remarked carelessly; "what do they do anyway?"
"They are not at all useless," the nun answered, smiling good-humoredly. "Married women are not useless, though they do not do any of those things either."
"Of course not. But they are married. They make their husbands comfortable – "
The nun could not help taking her own turn of interrupting, and said with a little laugh:
"Not quite always, perhaps."
"The good ones do."
"Perhaps not invariably. Some even pious women are not remarkable for making their husbands comfortable."
Sarella laughed, and the elderly nun went on.
"Of course, it is the vocation of married women to do as you say. And I hope most do it, that and setting the example of happy Christian homes. I do not really mean to judge of the vocation by those who fail to fulfill it. It is God's vocation for the vast majority of His daughters. But not for all."
"There aren't husbands enough for all of us," Sarella, who was "practical" and slightly statistical, remarked, with the complacence of one for whom a husband had been forthcoming.
"Exactly," agreed the elderly nun, laughing cheerfully, "so it's a good thing, you see, that there are other vocations; ours, for instance."
"Oh," Sarella protested with hasty politeness, "no one could think people like you useless. You do so much good."
"So do the Carmelites. Only their way of it is not quite the same. Would you say that Shakespeare was useless, or Dante?"
To tell truth, Sarella had never in her life said anything about either, or thought anything. Nevertheless, she was aware that they were considered important.
"They did not," the nun said eagerly, "teach schools, or nurse the sick, or do any of those things for the sake of which some people kindly forgive us for being nuns – not all people, unfortunately. Yet they are recognized as not having been useless. They are not useless now, long after they are dead. Mankind admits its debt to them. They served, and they serve still. Not with physical service, like nurses, or doctors, or cooks, or house-servants. But they contributed to the quality of the human race. So have many great men and women who never wrote a line – Joan of Arc, for instance. The contribution of those illustrious servants was eminent and famous, but many who have never been famous, who never have been known, have contributed in a different degree or fashion to the quality of mankind: innumerable priests, unknown perhaps outside their parishes; innumerable nuns, innumerable wives and mothers; and a Carmelite nun so contributes, eminently, immeasurably except by God, though invisibly, and inaudibly. Not only by her prayers, I mean her prayers of intercession, though again it is only God who can measure what she does by them. But just by being what she is, vast, unknown numbers of people are brought into the Catholic Church not only by her prayers but by her life. Some read themselves into the true faith, into any faith; they are very few in comparison of those who come to believe. Some are preached into the Church – a few only, again, compared with the number of those who do come to her. What brings most of those who are brought? I believe it is a certain quality that they have become aware of in the Catholic Church, that brings the immense majority. The young man in the factory, or in the army, in a ship, or on a ranch – anywhere – falls into companionship with a Catholic, or with a group of Catholics; and in him, or them, he gradually perceives this quality which he has never perceived elsewhere. It may be that the Catholics he has come to know are not perfect at all. The quality is not all of their own earning; it is partly an inheritance: some of it from their mothers, some from their sisters, some from their friends; ever so much of it from the saints, who contributed it to the air of the Church that Catholics breathe. The Contemplatives are contributing it every day, and all day long. Each, in her case, behind her grille, is forever giving something immeasurable, except by God, to the transcendent quality of the Catholic Church. This may be, and mostly is, unsuspected by almost all her fellow-creatures; but not unfelt by quite all. A Carmelite's convent is mostly in a great city; countless human beings pass its walls. They cannot help, seeing them, saying to their own hearts, 'In there, human creatures, like me, are living unlike me. They have given up everything– and for no possible reward here. Ambition cannot account for any part of it even. They cannot become anything great even in their Church, nor famous; they will die as little known or regarded as they live. They can win no popularity. They obtain no applause. They are called useless for their pains. They are scolded for doing what they do, though they would not be scolded if they were mere old-maids who pampered and indulged only themselves. The wicked women of this city are less decried than they. They are abused, and they have to be content to be abused, remembering that their Master said they must be content to fare no better than Himself. It is something above this world, that can only be accounted for by another world, and such a belief in it as is not proved by those who may try to grab two worlds, this one with their right hands, the next with their left. The life almost all of us declare impossible here on earth, they are living.' Such thoughts as these, broken thoughts, hit full in the face numbers of passers-by every day, and how many days are there not in a year – in a Carmelite's own lifetime. They are witnesses to Jesus Christ, who cannot be explained away. A chaplain told me that nothing pleased his soldiers so much as to get him in the midst of a group of them and say, 'Tell us about the nuns, Father. Tell us about the Carmelites and the Poor Clares – '"
"I knew a girl called Clare," Sarella commented brightly; "she was as poor as a church mouse, but she married a widower with no children and a huge fortune. I beg your pardon – but the name reminded me of her."
Sister Aquinas laughed gently.
"Well, she was a useful friend to you!"
"Not at all. She never did a hand's turn for anyone. I don't know what she would have done if she hadn't married a rich man, she was so helpless. But you were saying?"
"Only, that his soldiers loved to hear the chaplain tell them about the Contemplative nuns. Nothing interested them more. I am sure it was not thrown away on them. It was like showing them a high and lovely place. I should think no one can look at a splendid white mountain and not want to be climbing. That was all."
Would Sarella ever want to climb? Sister Aquinas did not know, nor do I know.
Her eagerness had been, perhaps, partly spurred by other criticism than Sarella's; Sarella was not the only one who had told Nelly Hurst's aunt that it was a pity the girl had "decided on one of the useless Orders."
That every phase of life approved by the Catholic Church, as the Contemplative Orders are, must be useful, Sister Aquinas knew well. And it wounded her to hear her niece's high choice belittled. She could not help knowing that this belittling was simply a naive confession of materialism, and an equally naive expression of human selfishness. We approve the vocation of nuns whose work is for our own bodies; we cannot easily see the splendor of direct service of God Himself who has no material needs of His own. That God's most usual course of Providence calls us to serve Him by serving our fellows, we see clearly enough, because it suits us to see it; but we are too purblind to perceive that even that Service need not in every case be material service, and it scandalizes us to remember that God chooses in some instance to be served directly, not by the service of any creature; because the instances are less common, we are shocked when asked to admit that they exist. If Christ were still visibly on earth, millions would be delighted to feed Him, but it would annoy almost all of us to see even a few serving Him by sitting idle at His feet listening. Hardly any of us but think Martha was doing more that afternoon at Bethany than her sister, and it troubles us that Jesus Christ thought differently. It was so easy to sit still and listen – that is why the huge majority of us find it impossible, and are angry that here and there a Contemplative nun wants to do it.
Of liberty we prattle in every language; and most loudly do they scream of it who are most angry that God takes leave to exist, and that many of His creatures still refuse to deny His existence; that many admit His right to command, and their own obligation to obey. These liberty-brawlers would be the first to concede to every woman the "inalienable right" to lead a corrupt life, destructive of society, and the last to allow to a handful of women out of the world's population the right to live a life of spotless whiteness at the immediate feet of the Master they love.
Was Sister Aquinas so carried away as to be forgetful that Sarella was not the only auditor? Mariquita had listened too.