Mariquita: A Novel. Ayscough John

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СКАЧАТЬ Sarella was wrong. No human creature had ever told her that she was beautiful, and she had never made any guess on the subject with herself. She never wondered if she were happy, or ever unjustly disinherited of the means of happiness. Whether, in less strait thrall of circumstance, she might be of more consequence, even of more use, she never debated. She had not dreamed of being heroic; had no chafing at absence of either sphere or capacity for being brilliant. Her life was passing in a silence singularly profound among the lives of God's other human creatures, and its silence, unhumanness, oblivion (that deepest of oblivion lying beneath what has been known though forgotten) did not vex her, and was never thought of. Her duties were coarse and common; but they were those God had set in her way and sight, and she had no impatience of them, no scorn for them, but just did them. They were not more coarse or common than those He had himself found to His hand, and done, in the house at Nazareth where Joseph was master, and, after Joseph, Mary was mistress, and He, their Creator, third, to obey and serve them.

      It would be greatly unjust to Mariquita to say that the monotone of her life was made golden by the bright haze in which it moved. She lived not in a dream, but in an atmosphere. She was not a dreamy person, moving through realities without consciousness of them. She saw all around her, with living interest, only she saw beyond them with interest deeper still, or rather their own significance for her was made deeper by her sense of what was beyond them, and to which they, like herself, belonged. She was very conscious of her neighbors, not only of the human neighbors, but also of the live creatures not human; and each of these had, in her reverence, a definite sacredness as coming like herself from the hand of God.

      There was nothing pantheistic in this; seeing everything as God's she did not see it itself Divine, but every natural object was to her clear vision but a thread in the clear, transparent veil through which God showed Himself everywhere. When St. Francis "preached to the birds" he was in fact listening to their sermon to him; and Mariquita, in her close neighborly friendship with the small wild creatures of the prairie, was only worshipping the ineffable, kind friendliness of God, who had made, and who fed, them also. The love she gave them was only one of the myriad silent expressions of her love for Him, who loved them. They were easier and simpler to understand than her human neighbors. It was not that, for an instant, she thought them on the same plane of interest – but we must here interrupt ourselves as she was interrupted.

      CHAPTER XI

      Mariquita had been alone a long time when Gore, riding home, came suddenly upon her.

      She was sitting where a clump of trees cast now a shadow, and it was only in coming round them that he saw her when already very near her. The ground was soft there, and his horse's hoofs had made scarcely any sound.

      She turned her head, and he saluted her, at the same moment slipping from the saddle.

      "I thought you were far away," she said.

      "I have been far away – at Maxwell. It has been a long ride."

      "Yes, that is a long way," she said. "But I never go there."

      "No? I went to hear Mass."

      She was surprised, never having thought that he was a Catholic.

      "I did not know you were a Catholic," she told him.

      "No wonder! I have been here a month and never been to Mass before."

      "It is so far. I never go."

      "You are a Catholic, then?"

      "Oh, yes; I think all Spaniards are Catholics."

      "But not all Americans," Gore suggested smiling.

      "No. And of course, we are Americans, my father and I."

      "Exactly. No doubt I knew your names, both surname and Christian name, were Spanish, and I supposed you were of Catholic descent – "

      "Only," she interrupted with a quiet matter-of-factness, "you saw we never went to Mass."

      "Perhaps a priest comes here sometimes and gives you Mass."

      "No, never. If it were not so very far, I suppose my father would let me ride down to Maxwell occasionally, at all events. But he would not let me go alone, and none of the men are Catholics; besides, he would not wish me to go with one of them; and then it would be necessary to go down on Saturday and sleep there. Of course, he would not permit that. But," and she did not smile as she said this, "it must seem strange to you, who are a Catholic, to think that I, who am one also, should never hear Mass. Since I left the Convent and came home I do not hear it. That may scandalize you."

      "I shall never be scandalized by you," he answered, also without smiling.

      "That is best," she said. "It is generally foolish to be scandalized, because we can know so little about each other's case."

      She paused a moment, and he thought how little need she could ever have of any charitable suspension of judgment. He knew well enough by instinct, that this inability to hear Mass must be the great disinheritance of her life here on the prairie, her submission to it, her great obedience.

      "But," she went on earnestly, "I hope you will not take any scandal at my father either – from my saying that he would not permit my going down to Maxwell and staying there all night on Saturday so as to hear Mass on Sunday morning. (There is, you know, only one Mass there, and that very early, because the priest has to go far into the county on the other side of Maxwell to give another Mass.) We know no family down there with whom I could stay. He would think it impossible I should stay with strange people – or in an hotel. Our Spanish ideas would forbid that."

      "Oh, yes; I can fully understand. You need not fear my being so stupid as to take scandal. I have all my life had enough to do being scandalized at myself."

      "Ah, yes! That is so. One finds that always. Only one knows that God is more indulgent to one's faults than one has learned to be oneself; that patience comes so very slowly, and slower still the humility that would teach one to be never surprised at any fault in oneself."

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