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The Woman Thou Gavest Me: Being the Story of Mary O'Neill, a novel by Hall Caine |
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Part 1. My Girlhood - Chapter 21 |
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_ FIRST PART. MY GIRLHOOD TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER A week later I was living with my father in the Hotel Europa on the edge of the Piazza di Spagna. He was kinder to me than he had ever been before, but he did not tell me what the plans were which he had formed for my future, and I was left to discover them for myself. Our apartment was constantly visited by ecclesiastics--Monsignori, Archbishops, even one of the Cardinals of the Propaganda, brought there by Bishop Walsh (the Bishop of our own diocese), and I could not help but hear portions of their conversation. "It will be difficult, extremely difficult," the Cardinal would say. "Such marriages are not encouraged by the Church, which holds that they are usually attended by the worst consequences to both wife and husband. Still--under the exceptional circumstances--that the bridegroom's family was Catholic before it was Protestant--it is possible, just possible. . . ." "Cardinal," my father would answer, while his strong face was darkening, "excuse me, sir, but I'm kind of curious to get the hang of this business. Either it can be done or it can't. If it can, we'll just sail in and do it. But if it can't, I believe I'll go home quick and spend my money another way." Then there would be earnest assurances that in the end all would be right, only Rome moved slowly, and it would be necessary to have patience and wait. My father waited three weeks, and meantime he occupied himself in seeing the sights of the old city. But the mighty remains which are the luminous light-houses of the past--the Forum with the broken columns of its dead centuries; the Coliseum with its gigantic ruins, like the desolate crater of a moon; the Campagna with its hollow, crumbling tombs and shattered aqueducts,--only vexed and irritated him. "Guess if I had my way," he said, "I would just clean out this old stone-yard of monuments to dead men, and make it more fit for living ones." At length the Bishop came to say that the necessary business had been completed, and that to mark its satisfactory settlement the Pope had signified his willingness to receive in private audience both my father and myself. This threw me into a state of the greatest nervousness, for I had begun to realise that my father's business concerned myself, so that when, early the following morning (clad according to instructions, my father in evening dress and I in a long black mantilla), we set out for the Vatican, I was in a condition of intense excitement. What happened after we got out of the carriage at the bronze gate near St. Peter's I can only describe from a vague and feverish memory. I remember going up a great staircase, past soldiers in many-coloured coats, into a vast corridor, where there were other soldiers in other costumes. I remember going on and on, through salon after salon, each larger and more luxurious than the last, and occupied by guards still more gorgeously dressed than the guards we had left behind. I remember coming at length to a door at which a Chamberlain, wearing a sword, knelt and knocked softly, and upon its being opened announced our names. And then I remember that after all this grandeur as of a mediaeval court I found myself in a plain room like a library with a simple white figure before me, and . . . I was in the presence of the Holy Father himself. Can I ever forget that moment? I had always been taught in the Convent to think of the Pope with a reverence only second to that which was due to the Saints, so at first I thought I should faint, and how I reached the Holy Father's feet I do not know. I only know that he was very sweet and kind to me, holding out the delicate white hand on which he wore the fisherman's emerald ring, and smoothing my head after I had kissed it. When I recovered myself sufficiently to look up I saw that he was an old man, with a very pale and saintly face; and when he spoke it was in such a soft and fatherly voice that I loved and worshipped him. "So this is the little lady," he said, "who is to be the instrument in the hands of Providence in bringing back an erring family into the folds of Mother Church." Somebody answered him, and then he spoke to me about marriage, saying it was a holy state, instituted by the Almighty under a natural law and sanctioned by our divine Redeemer into the dignity of a Sacrament, so that those who entered it might live together in peace and love. "It is a spiritual and sacred union, my child," he said, "a type of the holy mystery of Christ's relation to His Church." Then he told me I was to make the best possible preparation for marriage in order to obtain the abundant graces of God, and to approach the altar only after penance and communion. "And when you leave the church, my daughter," he said, "do not profane the day of your marriage by any sinful thought or act, but remember to bear yourself as if Jesus Christ Himself were with you, as He was at the marriage-feast in Cana of Galilee." Then he warned me that when I entered into the solemn contract of holy matrimony I was to do so in the full consciousness that it could not be broken but by death. "Whom God has joined together let no man put asunder--remember that, too, my daughter." Finally he said something about children--that a Catholic marrying a person of another religion must not enter into any agreement whereby any of her children should be brought up in any other than the Catholic faith. After that, and something said to my father which I cannot recall, he gave me his blessing, in words so beautiful and a voice so sweet that it fell on me like the soft breeze that comes out of the rising sun on a summer morning. "May the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob be with you, my daughter. May your marriage be a yoke of love and peace, and may you see your children's children to the third and fourth generation." Then he raised me to my feet, and at a touch from the Chamberlain, I backed out of the room. When the door had closed on me I drew a deep breath, feeling as if I had come out of the Holy of Holies, and when I reached the Piazza of St. Peter's and came again upon the sight and sound of common things--the cabs and electric cars--it was the same as if I had suddenly descended from heaven to earth. After my audience with the Pope, following on the Reverend Mother's story, all my objections to marriage had gone, and I wished to tell my father so, but an opportunity did not arise until late the same night and then it was he who was the first to speak. Being in good spirits, after a dinner to the ecclesiastics, he said, as soon as his guests had gone--speaking in the tone of one who believed he was doing a great thing for me-- "Mary, matters are not quite settled yet, but you might as well know right here what we're trying to fix up for you." Then he told me. I was to marry the young Lord Raa! I was stunned. It was just as if the power of thought had been smitten out of me. _ |
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