Part 39

She shook her head, laughing.

“I 've spent a good deal of time in Italy, but I have n't so much as a sneaking quarter-belief in it.”

“I envy you your strength of mind,” said he. “But surely, though superstition is a luxury forbidden to Catholics, there are plenty of good Catholics who indulge in it, all the same?”

“There are never plenty of good Catholics,” said sire. “You employ a much-abused expression. To profess the Catholic faith, to go to Mass on Sunday and abstain from meat on Friday, that is by no means sufficient to constitute a good Catholic. To be a good Catholic one would have to be a saint, nothing less--and not a mere formal saint, either, but a very real saint, a saint in thought and feeling, as well as in speech and action. Just in so far as one is superstitious, one is a bad Catholic. Oh, if the world were populated by good Catholics, it would be the Millennium come to pass.”

“It would be that, if it were populated by good Christians--wouldn't it?” asked Peter.

“The terms are interchangeable,” she answered sweetly, with a half-comical look of defiance.

“Mercy!” cried he. “Can't a Protestant be a good Christian too?”

“Yes,” she said, “because a Protestant can be a Catholic without knowing it.”

“Oh--?” he puzzled, frowning.

“It's quite simple,” she explained. “You can't be a Christian unless you're a Catholic. But if you believe as much of Christian truth as you've ever had a fair opportunity of learning, and if you try to live in accordance with Christian morals, you are a Catholic, you're a member of the Catholic Church, whether you know it or not. You can't be deprived of your birthright, you see.”

“That seems rather broad,” said Peter; “and one had always heard that Catholicism was nothing if not narrow.”

“How could it be Catholic if it were narrow?” asked she. “However, if a Protestant uses his intelligence, and is logical, he'll not remain an unconscious Catholic long. If he studies the matter, and is logical, he'll wish to unite himself to the Church in her visible body. Look at England. See how logic is multiplying converts year by year.”

“But it's the glory of Englishmen to be illogical,” said Peter, with a laugh. “Our capacity for not following premisses to their logical consequences is the principal source of our national greatness. So the bulk of the English are likely to resist conversion for centuries to come--are they not? And then, nowadays, one is so apt to be an indifferentist in matters of religion--and Catholicism is so exacting. One remains a Protestant from the love of ease.”

“And from the desire, on the part of a good many Englishmen at least, to sail in a boat of their own--not to get mixed up with a lot of foreign publicans and sinners--no?” she suggested.

“Oh, of course, we're insular and we're Pharisaical,” admitted Peter.

“And as for one's indifference,” she smiled, “that is most probably due to one's youth and inexperience. One can't come to close quarters with the realities of life--with sorrow, with great joy, with temptation, with sin or with heroic virtue, with death, with the birth of a new soul, with any of the awful, wonderful realities of life--and continue to be an indifferentist in matters of religion, do you think?”

“When one comes to close quarters with the awful, wonderful realities of life, one has religious moments,” he acknowledged. “But they're generally rather fugitive, are n't they?”

“One can cultivate them--one can encourage them,” she said. “If you would care to know a good Catholic,” she added, “my niece, my little ward, Emilia is one. She wants to become a Sister of Mercy, to spend her life nursing the poor.”

“Oh? Would n't that be rather a pity?” Peter said. “She's so extremely pretty. I don't know when I have seen prettier brown eyes than hers.”

“Well, in a few years, I expect we shall see those pretty brown eyes looking out from under a sister's coif. No, I don't think it will be a pity. Nuns and sisters, I think, are the happiest people in the world--and priests. Have you ever met any one who seemed happier than my uncle, for example?”

“I have certainly never met any one who seemed sweeter, kinder,” Peter confessed. “He has a wonderful old face.”

“He's a wonderful old man,” said she. “I 'm going to try to keep him a prisoner here for the rest of the summer--though he will have it that he's just run down for a week. He works a great deal too hard when he's in Rome. He's the only Cardinal I've ever heard of, who takes practical charge of his titular church. But here in the country he's out-of-doors all the blessed day, hand in hand with Emilia. He's as young as she is, I believe. They play together like children--and make--me feel as staid and solemn and grown-up as one of Mr. Kenneth Grahame's Olympians.”

Peter laughed. Then, in the moment of silence that followed, he happened to let his eyes stray up the valley.

“Hello!” he suddenly exclaimed. “Someone has been painting our mountain green.”

The Duchessa turned, to look; and she too uttered an exclamation.

By some accident of reflection or refraction, the snows of Monte Sfiorito had become bright green, as if the light that fell on them had passed through emeralds. They both paused, to gaze and marvel for a little. Indeed, the prospect was a pleasing one, as well as a surprising--the sunny lawns, the high trees, the blue lake, and then that bright green mountain.

“I have never known anything like those snow-peaks for sailing under false colours,” Peter said. “I have seen them every colour of the calendar, except their native white.”

“You must n't blame the poor things,” pleaded the Duchessa. “They can't help it. It's all along o' the distance and the atmosphere and the sun.”