Cecilia Part 14

"None in the least. Every one hopes that we may. Besides----" she stopped short.

"What is the other consideration?" Guido enquired.

"If I am perfectly frank--brutally frank--shall you be less my friend?"

"No. Much more."

"I do not wish to marry at all," said Cecilia, and again she reminded him of the Sphinx. "But if I ever should change my mind, since you and I have been picked out to make a match, I suppose I might as well marry you as any one else."

"Oh, quite as well!"

Then Guido laughed, as he rarely did, not loudly, but with all his heart, and Cecilia did not try to check her amus.e.m.e.nt either.

"I suppose it really is very funny," she said.

"The only thing necessary is that no one should ever guess that we have made a compact. That would be fatal."

"No one!" cried the young girl, eagerly. "No one! Not even your friend!"

"Lamberti? No, least of all, Lamberti!"

"Why do you say, least of all?"

"Because you do not like him," Guido answered, with perfect sincerity.

"Oh! I see. I am not sure, of course, but I am glad you do not mean to tell him. It would make me nervous to think that he might know. I--I am not quite certain why it makes me nervous, but it does."

"Have no fear. When shall I see you?"

He had noticed that Cecilia's mother was beginning that little comedy of movements, and glances, and uneasy turnings of the head, by which mothers of marriageable daughters signify their intention of going home.

The works of a clock probably act in the same way before striking.

"I will make my mother ask you to dinner. Are you free to-morrow night?"

"Any night."

"No--I mean really. Are you?"

"Yes, really. Lamberti does not count, for we generally dine together when we have no other engagement."

The shadow again flitted across Cecilia's brow, and she said nothing, only nodding quickly. Then she looked across the room at her mother.

Young girls are always instantly aware that their mothers are making signs. When Nelson's commander-in-chief signalled to him at the battle of Copenhagen the order to retire, Nelson put his spy-gla.s.s to his blind eye and a.s.sured his officers that he could see nothing, went on, and won the fight. Every young girl is totally blind of one eye during periods that vary between ten minutes and three hours.

Cecilia having recovered her sight, and seen her mother, rose with obedient alacrity.

"Good night," she said to Guido. "I am glad we are friends."

Their glances met for a moment, and Guido made an imperceptible gesture to put out his hand, but she did not answer it. He thought her refusal a little old-fas.h.i.+oned, since young girls now shake hands in Italy more often than not; but he liked her ways, chiefly because they were hers, and, moreover, he remembered just then that at her age she was supposed to be barely out of the schoolroom or the convent.

CHAPTER VI

"Spiritualism, your Highness, is the devil, without doubt," said the learned ecclesiastical archaeologist, Don Nicola Francesetti, in an apologetic tone, and looking at his knees. "If there is anything more heretical, it is a belief in a possible migration of souls from one body to another, in a series of lives."

The Princess Anatolie smiled at the excellent man and exchanged a glance of compa.s.sionate intelligence with Monsieur Leroy. She did not care a straw what the Church thought about anything except Protestants and Jews, and she did not believe that Don Nicola cared either. He chanced to be a priest, instead of a professor, and it was of course his duty to protest against heresy when it was thrust under his cogitative observation. Spiritualism was not exactly heresy, therefore he said it was the devil, and no mistake; but as she was sure that he did not believe in the devil, that only proved that he did not believe in spiritualism.

In this she was mistaken, however, as people often are in their judgment of priests. Nicola Francesetti had long ago placed his conscience in safety, so to speak, by telling himself that he was not a theologian, but an archaeologist, and that as he could not afford to divide his time and his intelligence between two subjects, where one was too vast, it was therefore his plain duty to think about all questions of religion as the Church taught him to think. He admitted that if his life could begin again he would perhaps not again enter the priesthood, but he would never have conceded that he could have been anything but a believing Catholic. He had no vocation whatever for saving souls, whereas he possessed the archaeological gift in a high degree; and yet, as a clergyman and a good Christian, he was convinced at heart that a man in holy orders had no right to give his whole life and strength to another profession. He had asked the advice of a wise and good man on this point, however, and the theologian had thought that he should continue to live as he was living. Had he a cure? No, he had none. Had he ever evaded a priest's work? That is, had work been offered to him where a priest was needed, and where he could have done active good, and had he refused because it was distasteful to him? No, never. Was he receiving any stipend for performing a priest's duties, with the tacit understanding that he was at liberty to pay an impecunious subst.i.tute a part of the money for taking his place, so that he himself profited by the transaction? No, certainly not. Don Nicola had a sufficient income of his own to live on. Had he ever made a solemn promise to devote his life to missionary labours among the heathen? No.

"In that case, my dear friend," concluded the theologian, "you are tormenting yourself with perfectly useless scruples. You are making a mountain of your molehill, and when you have made your mountain you will not be satisfied until you have made another beside it. In the course of time you will, in fact, oppress your innocent conscience with a whole range of mountains; you will be immobilised under the weight, and then you will become hateful to yourself, useless to others, and an object of pity to wise men. Stick to your archaeology."

"Is pure study a good in itself?" asked Don Nicola.

"What is good?" retorted the theologian viciously. "I wish you would define it!"

Don Nicola was silent, for though he could think of a number of synonyms for the conception, he remembered no definition corresponding to any of them. He waited.

"Good and goodness are not the same thing," observed the theologian; "you might as well say that study and knowledge are the same thing."

"But study should lead to knowledge."

"And goodness should lead to good; and, compared with ignorance, knowledge is a form of good. Therefore study is a form of goodness.

Consequently, as you have a turn for erudition, the best thing you can do is to go on with your studies."

"I see," said Don Nicola.

"I wish I did," sighed the theologian, when the priest was gone. "How very pleasant it must be, to be an archaeologist!"

After that, whenever Don Nicola was troubled with uneasiness about his profession, he soothed himself with his friend's little syllogism, which was as full of holes as a sieve, as flimsy as a tissue-paper balloon, and as unstable as a pyramid upside down, but nevertheless perfectly satisfactory.

"Of course," says humanity, "I know nothing about it. But I am perfectly sure."

And so forth. And moreover, if humanity were not frequently quite sure of things concerning which it knows nothing, the world would soon come to a standstill, and never move again; like the a.s.s in the fable, that died of hunger in its stall between two bundles of hay, unable to decide which to eat first. That also was an instance of stable equilibrium.

Don Nicola avoided all questions of religion in general conversation, and tried to make other people avoid them when he was the only clergyman present, because he did not like to be asked his opinion about them. But when the Princess Anatolie and Monsieur Leroy gravely declared their belief in the communications of departed persons by means of rappings, not to say by touch, and by strains of music, and perfumes, and even, on rare occasions, by actual apparition, then Don Nicola felt that it was his duty to protest, and he accordingly protested with considerable energy. He said that spiritualism was the devil.

"The chief object of the devil's existence," observed Monsieur Leroy, "is to bear responsibility."

The Princess laughed and nodded her approval, as she always did when Monsieur Leroy said anything which she thought clever. Don Nicola was too wise to discuss the matter, if, indeed, it admitted of discussion; for the devil was certainly responsible for a good deal.

"Your definition of spiritualism is so very liberal," Monsieur Leroy added, with a fine supercilious smile on his red lips.

"It is not mine," answered Don Nicola, modestly.

"No. I suppose it is the opinion of the Church. At all events, you do not doubt the possibility of communicating with the spirits of dead persons, do you?"