Chapter LIV: Part III (4)

Nothing could exceed the courtesy of our hosts. They led up guest after guest to introduce to us; all the magnates were presented to my mother, all the young ladies to me. They were very gracious, every one of them, but we did not get on well after the first exchange of commonplaces. How could we? What interest could a white-muslin creature like poor me have in the eyes of these sumptuously-attired young ladies? I said simply nothing to them, I suggested nothing; I was a blank. Sybil never sat down for a moment. She was untiring in her efforts to make everybody happy and pleasant and at home. She kept flitting about from room to room, bringing young gentlemen up to young ladies, seeing that no one was overlooked, that congenial elements were drawn together, that antagonistic ones were kept asunder. There probably were some antagonistic ones, though they were invisible beneath the gay, harmonious surface—that pale, stately-looking girl, for instance, whom I had noticed sitting apart beside a large console that separated her from the gaudy group standing close by. I knew she was a great friend of Sybil’s, because I had seen her photograph in a dainty gilt frame in the place of honor on her writing-table. I saw Sybil making a dart to her side every now and then, and interchanging a few hurried words in a tone of close confidence; and yet she took no pains to bring her forward or to introduce people to her. There was something peculiar about the girl’s air and countenance that drew my attention and made me wish to speak to her. I seized the first opportunity to whisper this wish to Sybil.

“The pale girl in the corner? Whoever do you mean? Oh! Millicent Gray. Yes, by and by. I don’t think you would care much to talk to her; I mean I don’t think you and she would hit it off very well,” said Sybil in a hesitating way; and somehow it was borne upon me that she thought exactly the contrary; that we should hit it off too well, and that she preferred, for reasons of her own, not to bring us together. I there and then resolved that I would make Millicent Gray’s acquaintance before I left the room—or die.

Did Sybil see this in my face, I wonder? She had a way of flashing a look at you with her round black eyes that suggested a power of reading you through and through which was sometimes uncomfortable. I felt it so now, and, trying to assume an air of supreme indifference, I observed, looking in another direction:

“Then never mind. I only fancied talking to her because no one else has been doing so; she looked lonely.”

Sybil’s rose-colored skirts floated away in the direction of Millicent Gray, and for a moment I half-expected she was going to bring her up to me. I was mistaken; she bent over her friend, and began talking in animated tones, gesticulating with her fan in an excited manner. Millicent listened apparently with more surprise than approval; there was a faint expression of sarcastic resentment on her pale, thoughtful face, and an imperceptible movement of her shoulders seemed to shrug away some remark of Sybil’s with smiling dissent; as she did so, her eyes turned towards me and our glances met. There was a mute recognition in them which we both felt. I blushed, feeling rather guilty for watching her so closely; she smiled, and, in spite of myself, I obeyed a law of nature and smiled too. The rooms were now so full that it was difficult to move about; there was small chance of the crowd swaying me across towards Millicent, and she sat on, surveying the scene from her nook with a face that was more expressive of quiet observation than enjoyment. She was dressed in white silk, with waves of tulle flowing over it, but without further ornament—neither ribbons nor flowers; she wore one large crimson rose in her hair, a long _trainée_ of leaves dropping down from it and entangling a rich curl of her dark hair. The relative simplicity of the dress singled her out as a very remote cousin to my white muslin, and I felt more than ever convinced we should prove sympathetic to each other. How was I to make good my vow to speak to her or die? The chances were that I should die, for just at this moment Sybil bore down on me from the rear, and took me in tow through the billows of silks and lace into her own boudoir, which was two rooms off from the central _salon_ where my pensive heroine abided.

“Are you having a good time of it, Lilly?” she inquired, darting her bright black eyes through me, when we came to a little breathing space. “What do you think of our American society? Are our women as handsome as yours? Are our young men as agreeable?”

“Four questions in one breath!” I cried, pretending to gasp. “Let me answer the first—the only one I can meet on such short notice: I am having a capital time of it. You are the best hosts I ever saw, all three of you. But, Sybil, do introduce me to that girl in white silk.”

“No, I won’t,” said Sybil. “You must want some refreshment. I don’t believe you’ve taken so much as an ice; I’ve seen you let the trays pass a dozen times untouched. Come into the supper-room and have something. Stay,” and she bent close to me and went on in a whisper: “I will make Mr. Halsted take you in. You see that young man with the fuchsia in his buttonhole? He is perfectly charming. I have had such a delightful talk with him just now!”

“About what?”

“Good gracious! About everything.”

“You have been discussing life with him?”

“Precisely.”

“And what has come of it? Has he proposed, or is he only hovering on the brink, poor wretch?”

“How absurd you are, Lilly, with your English ideas!” cried Sybil, still in a _sotto voce_, although the music drowned everybody’s voice. “You won’t understand that one may discuss life with a young man without meaning any harm!”

“Harm? To his heart, do you mean?”

“Or to one’s own.”

“Have you got one, Sybil?” I asked quite seriously.

“Yes, I have, and a _very_ sensitive one too, let me tell you,” she said in her vehemently emphatic way. “Mr. Halsted, will you take my friend to have some refreshment? Mr. Halsted—Miss Wallace.”

And off I went with this perfectly charming young man.

The first person I met in the supper-room was my mother, whom the doctor had just taken in and was plying with some delicious nectar of an American drink.

“My dear, I was beginning to wonder what had become of you,” she said. “It is growing rather late, is it not?”

The doctor protested, but we made good the opportunity as soon as his hospitable back was turned, and disappeared from the brilliant scene.

And Millicent Gray? I was of course in honor bound to die, as I had not spoken to her; but I thought it better to live, and try and make good my resolution in some other way. Chance favored me unexpectedly. A few days after the magnificent reception on the first floor I went down to discuss life quietly with Sybil for half an hour, when the servant said she had been obliged to run out for a few minutes to her aunt’s, next door, but that she would be back presently, and had begged I would go in and wait for her.

I had not been many minutes in the _salon_ when the doctor came in. He had been “down town” to Galignani’s, and had gleaned all the news that was abroad, what steamers were signalled, which had come in, which had sailed, and who had come in by the last arrival. The doctor was a terrible flirt. He sat down on the sofa beside me, and began to repeat verses from Tommy Moore about my “bright eyes that were his heart’s undoing,” and I know not what besides. Mrs. Segrave heard us laughing, and came in to see what it was all about.

“Ah! my dear,” she said, “he whispered those very same verses to me five-and-twenty years ago. Don’t believe him; he’s a gay deceiver. Charles dear, did you ask Mrs. Wallace what we were going to do about this claim the _concierge_ is making of twenty francs a month extra for bringing up our letters?”

“No, I did not,” said the doctor. “In fact, I had not time yet; but I dare say Miss Lilly can tell us just as well!”

“Oh! if it’s anything about the _concierge_ you had much better appeal to mamma,” I said to Mrs. Segrave. “She is at home now, and if you go up you will find her alone.”

“I see how it is: you want to get me out of the way!” said Mrs. Segrave. “You want to hear what more Charles has to say about your bright eyes. Well, well, I’ll go; I’ll not be a spoil-sport.”

She was going to open the door when Pierre opened it, and in walked—Millicent Gray. After the usual greetings Mrs. Segrave said, turning to me:

“You know Sybil’s friend, Miss Gray, of course? No! I was sure you had met. Then let me introduce you—”

As soon as we had got “well into conversation,” the doctor proposed that he and Mrs. Segrave should leave us young ladies together, and go up to consult my mother about this new imposition of the _concierge_.

When Millicent and I found ourselves alone there was an awkward pause for a moment; we felt as conscious as a pair of lovers thrown together for the first time. At last we looked at each other and began to laugh.

“I am so pleased to meet you,” I said.

“Not so much pleased as I am,” she replied. “I have been entreating Sybil to make me acquainted with you, and she would not. We came near quarrelling over you the other evening.”

“So did she and I! What could have been her motive?” I said.

“Did she not tell you?”

“No.”

“And you don’t guess?”

“No! Pray tell me, if it is not a secret,” I said.

“Oh! no, it’s no secret,” replied Millicent, laughing. “You are a Catholic. She was afraid to let me know you.”

“Lest I should contaminate you!”

“Lest you should convert me.”

I was silent from sheer surprise.

“You see what a dangerous person she thinks you!” said Millicent, laughing.

“I don’t see why she should,” I replied, rather nettled. “I never tried to convert her.”

“Perhaps because you felt it was a hopeless case,” said Millicent, who could not apparently see the thing in a serious light; for she was laughing still, and looked altogether highly amused.

“I don’t know whether I felt about it one way or the other,” I said. “I am utterly bewildered that Sybil should have laid hold of the idea of my being so dangerous in that line; from the moment I discovered what her notions on religion were I avoided even touching on the subject directly or indirectly, and yet she looks upon me as a lion or a fox going about and seeking whom I may devour!”

“No, no; you must not think that,” protested Millicent. “She looks upon you as dangerous, but in quite another sense from proselytizing. She suspects me—very unjustly, I assure you—of having what she calls Roman Catholic proclivities; and when I expressed a wish to know you—she raves about you in the most enthusiastic way—she said nothing would induce her to make us acquainted; that you were just the kind of person to whisk me into the Catholic Church before I knew where I was.”

There was something at once so absurd and so thoroughly characteristic of Sybil in this remark that, in spite of myself, I burst out laughing.

“I promise solemnly,” I said, “that I will not whisk you in without giving you due warning, and, moreover, having your full and free consent to the operation beforehand.”

“Thank you. That is generous,” said Millicent; “and to prove my sense of it I solemnly promise not to whisk you into my church without having your full and free consent beforehand.”

“Yes, by the bye,” I said, “it never seems to have occurred to Sybil that the danger might be mutual; that I ran a risk as well as you by our becoming acquainted?”

Millicent was hesitating in her answer when we heard a loud ring at the door, and in an instant Sybil burst into the room. She stood for an instant looking at us, and then cried out in her ringing tones:

“Well, is it all over with you? Has she done it?”

“Done what?” I said. “Miss Gray has not attempted to do anything except to make herself exceedingly agreeable.”

Sybil laughed merrily.

“I call that exceedingly smart—quite worthy of a Yankee!” she cried. “By the way, it puts the thing in a new light. Milly, turn on the guns and try and convert _her_.” And she pointed to me with her chinchilla muff. “That _would_ be a feather in one’s cap! Good gracious!”

“Then why should you not try for it yourself?” I inquired. “Sybil, I am inclined to be very angry with you for making me such a reputation. You know perfectly well I have never had a word of controversy with you since we have known each other; never done the least thing to try and make a Catholic of you. You know I have not!”

“I know nothing of the sort,” protested Sybil. “I know this: that you and your mother are the very most dangerous pair of Catholics I have ever met—just the kind of Catholics to knock one’s prejudices on the head with one blow.” And she banged the table with her pretty little muff. “You never preach, either of you, or talk controversy, or do any mortal thing to put one on one’s guard; but you do every conceivable thing to make one fall in love with your religion: you are the very milk of human kindness, you never speak ill of any one, you are always ready to help people, you spend your time going after the poor, nursing the sick, and heaven knows what besides; for you are up at cock-crow, and out by candlelight saying your prayers, when we are fast asleep in our beds. Milly Gray, now mark my words”—and she faced round and confronted Millicent with uplifted muff, in a Sibylline attitude of warning—“mark my words: this is none of my doing, and whatever comes of it is not to be laid at my door.”

“Sybil, I promise that, whatever catastrophe the future of this day may have in store, it shall not be visited on you,” said Millicent. “You have warned me of my peril, and, you know, he who is forewarned is forearmed. Tell me, now, what have you done with Mr. Halsted?”

“Done with him? What did you want me to do with him?”

“Either kill him or cure him.”

“I should kill him, if I could,” said Sybil. “I never knew so perverse a man in the _whole course of my life_.”

She dragged out the last words with an emphasis that might have led one to suppose the course of her life embraced a period of at least ninety-nine years.

“What is he perverse about?” inquired her friend.

“He won’t change his politics, he won’t go back to the States, and he won’t marry the girl he ought to marry.”

She enumerated these grievances with a gusto of indignation that made us scream with laughter.

“I thought his politics were on the right side—that is, on your side,” said Millicent when she had recovered her gravity.

“That’s the wrong side,” said Sybil; “_her_ politics are strongly Democratic, and there is not the ghost of a chance for him, unless he turns Democrat too.”

“But if he does not want a chance?” I ventured to put in.

“But he ought; I want him to want it. She’s the very sweetest girl in the whole of the United States; and her father is the dearest old man, and would give her a splendid fortune if Mr. Halsted would marry her. And everybody believed he would; only old Nick put it into his head to come out to Europe, and he has gone and fallen in love with another girl!”

“Who won’t marry him?” suggested Milly.

“_Cer_tainly not!” declared Sybil.

At this juncture Dr. and Mrs. Segrave came in, bringing my mother with them. She was dressed for me to go out with her, so I had to run off to equip myself, having first cordially invited Millicent Gray to come and see me as soon as possible.

She came the next day, and on a strange errand, considering the warnings of Sybil.

“I am anxious to be of some use to the poor,” she said, after we had talked some little time, “and I don’t know how to go about it here. I suppose there are no Protestants to visit, or at least they must be very few; would there be any objection to my visiting Catholics?”

“Not the slightest,” I replied, “unless you intend to whisk them into the Protestant Church before they know where they are; in that case I don’t think M. le Curé would care to enlist your services.”

“I have no sinister designs of that sort, I assure you,” said Millicent; “and to prove it, I want you to let me go with you on your rounds. I will make myself useful in any way you appoint, and I will do exactly as you tell me—as far as I know how, that is.”

I said, of course, that I should be delighted to have her as a companion, and that we should begin our partnership to-morrow; but my mother came in as we were settling about the hour we were to meet, and unexpectedly put a spoke in the wheel.

“Does Mrs. Gray approve of this arrangement, my dear?” she inquired.

“I have not mentioned it to her,” replied Millicent, her American ideas of independence evidently a little shocked by the question; “but she is sure to approve of it when I do. Is there any reason why she should not?”

“There may be. You are a Protestant, and this scheme of visiting the poor with my daughter must bring you in contact with Catholics of various classes—the poor, the Sisters of Charity, perhaps incidentally with M. le Curé and other priests. Before you embark on these perils I should prefer that your mother’s consent was secured. We English mothers have Old-World prejudices about parental authority, you perceive,” added mamma, smiling; “you will not mind humoring mine in this case.”

Millicent declared her perfect readiness to do so. She looked like one who would gladly humor everybody’s wishes. I was already in love with her. The charm which attracted me that night amidst the gay crowd had not fled “like the talisman’s glittering glory” on a nearer approach. I was at a loss to see where the point of mutual attraction lay between her and Sybil; but Sybil was one of those creatures who spirited away your sympathies before you had time to challenge the thief or lay a protecting hand upon your treasure. She was a siren, who drew you to her cave and did not devour you. Millicent was a complete contrast to her in appearance as well as in character; her eyes were deep blue, and her hair, which was very dark, whitened her fair complexion to the transparency of alabaster, and gave a stronger individuality to her delicate features than blond hair, which seemed their natural birthright, could have lent them. She was very tall, and her small, beautifully-formed hands and feet put the seal on the character of singular refinement which pervaded her whole exterior.

My mother was greatly taken with her. “You have committed yourself more seriously in this case, it strikes me,” she remarked when Millicent had taken leave.

“They are settled in Paris permanently,” I replied; “I asked her that at once. I should not have embarked on an intimacy with her, if they had been only birds of passage.”

Mrs. Gray made no difficulty about Millicent’s joining me in my visits to the poor; she observed, indeed—very naturally, I thought—that “Mrs. Wallace ran just the same risk in allowing her daughter to associate with Millicent.” Millicent returned next morning quite jubilant with this message, and we set out on our first walk together. We agreed that we were not to improve this or any future opportunity to convert each other. Was I quite sincere when I entered on this agreement? Looking back on it, I think I can honestly say I was. I meant that I would not discuss religion or say anything to prejudice Millicent against her own; that I would rigidly avoid controversy; and in all this I kept my word. But I did not disguise from myself that I had a great longing to see her a Catholic, and that I should do my best in another way to bring about this result. For this purpose I had her name put down at Notre Dame des Victoires for prayers. I asked several of my friends to pray for the same intention, and I made a point of praying every day for it myself. I took her to see Sœur Lucie, a Sister of Charity I was very fond of, and I interested her in the same object. I counted a good deal, too, on the impression which the faith of the poor was likely to make on her.

I was just then much occupied with a poor woman named Mme. Martin, who was dying, who had been dying these five years of a very painful malady. I think she was the first person I took Millicent to see. She lived in a room on the sixth floor—that is, in the attic—of a house where her mother was _concierge_. She had been better educated than the generality of her class, having been brought up as a teacher of singing. This pursuit had subsequently thrown her into the society of persons much above her in position, and the contact had contributed still more to educate and refine her. She had consequently acquired something of the varnish of a lady, and, without being really educated, she had gained that increased capacity for suffering which even imperfect education gives. Her illness had thrown her back into her original position and surroundings, and these were perfect misery to her. She could not bear the society of the servants—her constant one now, owing to that horrible French system of stowing away the servants of every flat in the same house into pigeon-holes under the roof, old and young, men and women, innocent, honest girls and vicious old veterans in dishonesty, all crammed higgledy-piggledy in a proximity full of dangers to both soul and body. This population of the pigeon-holes was insupportable to Mme. Martin; she had nothing in common with them nor they with her. They pitied her—for the French are always kind-hearted—but they resented her evident superiority, and often showed their pity in a way that hurt more than it soothed. She writhed under the compassion of these coarse, vulgar-minded men and women, whose conversation turned chiefly on the domestic concerns of their masters, how they cheated them, the tricks they practised on them.

They came to see, after a while, that she did not care for their society, and they ceased to inflict it on her, and Mme. Martin came gradually to be as isolated as if she had been living in a desert. She was glad of it in one way. We most of us prefer solitude to unsympathetic company; we had rather be left alone than intruded on by those loud voices and heavy steps that jar so painfully on the nervous atmosphere of a sick-room; but there were times when her loneliness weighed terribly on her, when she longed for any hand that would but raise her paralyzed limbs from a posture that had grown agonizing from prolonged immobility, that would give her the drink that was just beyond the reach of her arm. Her mother could come to her but very seldom; she dared not absent herself during the busy portion of the day from her lodge downstairs. Sœur Lucie was very kind, and came as often as she could; it was she who had taken me to her and begged me to look after her. I was the better able to do so that Mme. Martin lived only five minutes’ walk from our house. I don’t think I ever came in contact with a sufferer who edified me more than this poor woman. It was not that she was so wonderfully pious, or heroic, or resigned; she was all three by turns, but none constantly. Perhaps it was this very fluctuation that made one realize so vividly the supernaturalness of the struggle she was carrying on. You saw the power of the sacraments, the action of grace working on her soul, almost as visibly as that of medicine on the body. She was a woman of very strong passions, acute sensibilities, and ardent imagination; you can fancy what it was to such a nature to be immured in a room about twelve feet long by eight, with a roof slanting to the floor at one side, and a window in the slant, incapable of moving in her bed without help, dependent on charity for even that bed and for the bread she ate. For the first years of her illness this misery was so unendurable, she told me, that she thought it would have driven her mad, and the terror of this prospect was the most unbearable thing of all. She had not the consolations of religion then. Her artist life, with its alluring perils, its wild companions, its passionate aspirations, had led her away from the realities of the faith and gathered a mist before her eyes. But she fell ill, and then the mist began to clear away. The Sisters of Charity found her out, and the old sacred memories of childhood were awakened; her First Communion, with its sweet, pure joys, its lovely, solemn pageant, the bright companionship of kindred hearts starting with the fervent promise to the divine Guest whose first coming was the grand event, the supreme crisis of their little lives, the goal to which, thus far, their lives had tended—all this came back like a well-remembered dream at the sight of the gray habit and the white cornette. It was the old, old story: the prodigal had wandered into a strange country, and had grown homesick and turned back, and the Father had met him half way on the road. She had not fed upon the husks of swine, poor Mme. Martin; only “forgotten to eat her bread,” and hunger had driven her home. She spoke to me of her conversion in terms of such deep humility and compunction that I might have fancied her the most appalling sinner who had ever lived, if Sœur Lucie had not told me the exact history of it.

But it was not all sunshine and smooth waters even after this blessed welcome home. There were dreadful battles to be fought yet. She fought bravely, but not always with a smiling face and a glad heart. Oh! no. There were days, of such terrific anguish, such utter, black despair, that it used to seem to me sometimes that her faith _must_ fail this time, that nothing short of a miracle could save her now. And nothing else did. What greater miracle is there than the triumph of God’s grace over our corrupt and fallen nature, the victory of sacraments over the devil that holds our soul? It was a greater wonder to me every time I witnessed it in Mme. Martin. This presence of an evil spirit in her—a real though invisible presence of tremendous, almost omnipotent power—was so palpable that I used to feel something like the kind of terror one would feel near a person possessed. I always felt perfectly helpless while the crisis lasted, and would sit there and listen dumbly while she uttered her bitter, fierce words, not raving in loud, wild accents, but with a sort of hard, suppressed anger, a deep-down rebellion against the cruel, all-powerful will that was torturing her. There was no use arguing or preaching, or trying to make her see the sinfulness and the stupidity of it all; one could do nothing but bear with it, praying silently to God to come to her, and lay his finger on the wounded soul, and speak with his voice, and bid the winds be still.

One thing struck me with peculiar significance: no matter how fiercely rebellious she was towards God, she could always turn with a softened glance towards his Blessed Mother. There was an old print of the _Mater Dolorosa_ on the wall over her bed, and it was the strangest thing to see the poor sufferer lift her dark, vindictive eyes to it with a tender, compassionate, entreating glance, while words of almost savage petulance against the Son were still hot on her lips. Once I remember her bursting into tears as she turned towards it in one of these sudden appeals. The fiend was exorcised for that day. I sat beside her till she had cried herself to sleep like a tired, naughty child.

These terrible days were invariably followed by periods of compunction, humble self-reproach, and love so fervent and consoling that it used to seem to me they could never pass away, that the darkness could never return, that this time the rescue was complete and irrevocable. The humility with which she would beg my pardon for the scandal she had given me, the way she would upbraid herself for her base ingratitude to our Blessed Lord, were more touching than I can describe. She would look up fondly towards the _Mater Dolorosa_ with such an expression of tenderness on her haggard, sunken face, and say, as if apostrophizing it: “Ah! I knew she would gain the victory. I knew she would not desert me! _Pauvre mère! Elle a tant souffert!_”

The first day that I took Millicent Gray to see her she was in one of these blessed, penitential moods. It had lasted through several days—days of fearful suffering, and nights of sleepless weariness. She uttered an exclamation of joyous welcome when I appeared.

“_Que le bon Dieu est bon!_ I knew he would not keep me waiting much longer. My little stock of patience was just coming to an end!” And she smiled good-humoredly.

“What is it you want?” I inquired.

“I was dying with thirst,” she said, “and I managed to draw this cup to me by hooking my finger in the handle, but I was in such a hurry to drink it that it slipped from me, and I am all wet and half-perished!” And, indeed, she was trembling with cold; her hands were like ice and her teeth chattered. I hastened to lift her up on her pillows and repair the accident, Millicent helping very dexterously. I had prepared Mme. Martin for her visit, so merely introduced her as a friend of mine, who would be glad to come and see her sometimes, if she allowed it.

When we had settled her in some degree of comfort, Millicent and I sat down and began to converse. Mme. Martin was in too great pain to join in the conversation, except by throwing in a word now and then to show she was following it, but one could see she was interested in what we were saying. There was an unusual brightness and peace about her, in the expression of her face and the tone of her voice; I rejoiced that Millicent should see it, for I knew it could not fail to impress her.

“Was last night as bad as the preceding ones?” I said when we were going away.

“Yes; it was very bad. I did not get a moment’s rest till it was daylight,” she said; and she smiled quite serenely.

“My poor friend! How cruelly tried you are!” I could not help exclaiming. “May God give you courage!”

“He does! he does!” she cried fervently. “It is a miracle how good he is to me—a miracle.”

“We must ask him for another one, that your courage may be rewarded by a cure,” said Millicent kindly.

“Oh! no. Don’t ask for that! I don’t want it!” said Mme. Martin quickly, as if she were frightened the miracle was going to be wrought on the spot. “I don’t want to be cured, only to be sustained, and to go on suffering a long time—as long, that is, as He likes—that I may prove I am not ungrateful; that I love him a little bit after all he has done for me! All he has done for me!” There was a look almost of ecstasy on her features as she said this, her face slightly upturned, but her eyes closed as if she were looking within her, into that sanctuary of her soul where God was present. I felt, rather than saw, Millicent turn a sudden, startled glance towards me.

“That is the most precious and most beautiful of all miracles,” I said presently, “that our hard hearts should be softened by the cross, and that we should come to love it for His sake; is it not?”

“Yes,” she replied; “it is the one I have most prayed for. It is to her I owe it.” And she turned to the _Mater Dolorosa_. “In my worst moments I always felt for her; that my cross was nothing compared to hers—nothing! _Pauvre mère!_”

When we were out of earshot, on the landing about half way down the narrow stair, Millicent stopped, and, looking round at me, said: “Her brain has begun to be affected; she is a little mad, poor creature, is she not?”

“Yes,” I replied, “she is; she has got what we call the madness of the cross. Many of our saints have died of it: _la folie de la croix_.”

Millicent stared at me for a moment with an expression that suggested some vague alarm as to my own sanity, but she made no further remark until we had got out into the street.

“What did she mean by saying it was the Virgin Mary that worked the miracle for her?” she then asked.

“She meant that the Mother of Sorrows had prayed for her and obtained a great grace for her.”

“But God would have given it to her, if she had asked him, without going to any creature for it, would he not?” answered Millicent.

“Perhaps; but he would be more willing to grant it to a creature who was sinless and his Mother, and who had stood by the side of his cross, than to a poor weak, rebellious creature who had sinned a thousand times and more. Does it not seem likely?”

“Oh! putting it in that way,” said Millicent dubiously. “But he is God, our Saviour; he must love us more than she does. He died for us; the Virgin Mary did not die for us?”

“Well, really, Millicent—almost,” I said, and, stopping, I looked her straight in the face. “Fancy a mother that loved her son, her only son, as Mary must have loved him, standing by while he was being executed—I don’t say scourged, and beaten, and hammered with nails to a gibbet, murdered piecemeal with the rage of devils let loose from hell, but simply hanged, or even beheaded; would it not be worse to her than any death that ever a mother died? And then fancy her blessing the men that murdered him, praying for them, adopting them! And you can say the Mother of God did not die for us?”

Millicent made no answer, but walked on in silence. We said no more until we got to my door, and then I asked if she would not come up and rest a while.

“No, I prefer to go home, thank you,” she said, putting out her hand. She held mine for a moment, as if she were going to say something; but she did not, and we parted silently.

She seemed strangely moved.

II.

I did not see Millicent until the following Sunday, when she came to ask me if I would go for a walk in the afternoon.

Sybil happened to be there when she came in.

“What hour do you go to church, Milly—the morning or the afternoon?” asked Sybil. I saw the drift of the question: she suspected Millicent had been to church with us.

“I generally go in the morning; mamma likes it best,” replied Millicent. “She was not well this morning, so we are going to late service. And you?”

“Me? I don’t go to late or early. I stay at home and think it over,” said Sybil.

“Think what over?” I asked. “The service?”

“Services in general, religion in its cause and effect—life altogether, in fact,” summed up Sybil. “Will you two let me join you in your walk this afternoon, or shall I be in the way?” We both protested we should be delighted to have her; and at four o’clock we were assembled down-stairs in her boudoir, ready to start, when a loud ring sounded at the door.

“Good gracious!” screamed Sybil; and she dropped into a chair, the picture of astonishment and vexation. “I’ll bet any mortal thing you like that that is Mr. Halsted! Was there ever anything so provoking! I so wanted to have a walk with you!”

“Why need his coming prevent you?” I said. “The doctor and Mrs. Segrave are at home, are they not?”

“Why, Lilly, how can you talk so!” she exclaimed. “What does that matter to Mr. Halsted? He comes to see me!”

“Then you throw us overboard?” I said. “That’s complimentary. What do you say, Millicent?”

Millicent laughed. She was not sorry at heart, I could see, that we were to be left to a _tête-à-tête_. Perhaps Sybil saw it, too, for she said, starting up suddenly:

“I won’t throw you overboard. Let him call again. Let him come with us, if he likes. Have you two any objection?”

Millicent said she had none. I, however, demurred.

“You will think it absurdly priggish,” I said, “but you know I am half-French—at least, I live amongst the French, so I can’t afford to knock against their _hautes convenances_; and if I were seen walking with a gentleman without my mother or some married chaperon, it would make quite a _scandale_.”

“How inconceivably ridiculous!” cried Sybil, staring at me with round, shining eyes. “What a grand privilege it is to be a free-born American woman! I wouldn’t be a slave like you—no, not for the empire of France, Lilly!”

Pierre came to the door to announce Mr. Halsted’s arrival, and we all sallied into the drawing-room. Sybil burst out into regrets at having to go out, and then, pointing a finger of scorn at me, “Only fancy!” she cried—“you’ll hardly believe it, but it’s a fact—Miss Wallace says she dare not come out for a walk with you without her mother, lest it should make a scandal in the town! Did you ever hear anything so pre_pos_terously absurd, Mr. Halsted?” I crimsoned to the roots of my hair, and longed to choke Sybil on the spot. Happily, gentlemen being the same in all countries, Mr. Halsted saw my embarrassment and turned it off with easy good breeding.

“Miss Wallace has been brought up in France,” he said. “It is quite natural she should have adopted the notions and manners of the country; but it’s rather hard on us poor fellows. We are cut off from our most cherished prerogatives here in this centre of civilization. May I call this evening? You promised to teach me the Polish mazurka?”

Sybil hesitated. There was to be a dinner-party that evening, so the dancing lesson could hardly take place, and I knew he wanted to figure in the mazurka at a Polish house the next night.

“I can’t this evening,” she said musingly; then, as if moved by a sudden inspiration, she flung down her muff. “I see I must victimize myself for my country’s sake, and give up my walk to save you from making an exhibition of yourself to-morrow before the assembled nations. You two go and take your walk alone.”

Mr. Halsted entered a feeble protest, which Sybil did not even so much as notice, but proceeded to take off her bonnet and prepare for the dancing lesson.

We were not long on the road together when Millicent opened the subject of religion; Sybil’s idea of “thinking it over” being the ostensible pretext.

“I wonder you don’t talk to her about it,” she said; “you might do a good work in that direction, if you tried.”

“By making a Catholic of Sybil?”

“By making a Christian of her.”

“Poor Sybil! Is she as bad as that?” I said, laughing. “She is more in your line than mine, at any rate. She hates popery like fire; I would as soon try to convert the Great Mogul.”

“You are a great puzzle to me, do you know,” said Millicent, looking at me with a glance of searching curiosity. “Catholics as a rule are such ardent proselytizers, and you seem to have no taste in that direction at all.”

“Have you known a great many Catholics before me?” I asked.

“You are the first I may say I have ever known.”

“Then how can you answer for what we are as a rule?”

“I have always understood it,” she replied.

“You have understood, or rather misunderstood, many things about us,” I remarked. “Is Mr. Halsted in love with Sybil, do you think?”

“Mr. Halsted is _nothing_ of the kind. Nice conversation for the Sunday afternoon!” said a sharp, bright voice, and Millicent and I leaped half a mile asunder as Sybil popped her scarlet feather in between us.

“I made sure you would be discussing theology,” she cried, “instead of which I find you discussing me!”

“And why are not you discussing the mazurka with Mr. Halsted?” demanded Millicent and I together.

“Because I thought better of it,” was Sybil’s terse explanation, nor could we extract any other from her.

“What were you talking about before you began about Mr. Halsted and me?” she inquired, flashing her lightning glances from one to another.

“We were talking about you and the Great Mogul,” I replied, “and I was considering which of you I should first set about converting.”

“You had better begin with him,” said Sybil. “Have you done for Milly already?”

“Not—quite—” I said.

“I should like to have it out with you once for all, Lilly,” she said, “and just hear from beginning to end what your religious views are, and how far exactly they differ from mine.”

“You have views on religion, then?” I said in a tone of surprise.

“Certainly I have, Lilly Wallace,” retorted Sybil with indignant emphasis, “and I should like very much to compare them with yours.”

“That would be difficult,” I replied, “for I have no views.”

“What!”

“Not the ghost of one,” I repeated. “We Catholics never have; we listen to the church and accept all she teaches. There is not such a thing amongst us as a view; we would not know what to do with one.”

“Good gracious! That reasonable beings should let themselves be so gul—so—that you should—in fact, it’s beyond belief!”

“No, that’s just what it is not beyond; it is our belief that binds our reason and puts views out of the question,” I said. “We have our faith propounded to us by the church, and the church is the infallible witness of the truth; we have not to make out a creed for ourselves, as you Protestants have.”

“Then why did God give us brains, if we are not to make use of them?” demanded Sybil. “I would not hand over my conscience to any man or any body of men living; I would rather take my Bible and make out the right and the wrong of it myself.”

“Suppose you make it out all wrong—for you admit there is a right and a wrong to it—what then?” I said.

“It does not much matter, so long as our intention is good. God Almighty does not expect us to be infallible.”

“Certainly not!” I replied; “that is precisely why he made his church infallible, to save us from our own fallibility and teach us what to believe and what not to believe. If I believe black and you believe white, we can’t both of us be right; one or other must be in error, and God, who is Truth itself, can’t approve equally truth and error?”

“I tell you what it is, Milly,” said Sybil, turning round sharply on Millicent, who was walking on the other side of her, “it is _very_ bad for you to be discussing theology with Lilly Wallace in this way. Mind what I tell you, no good will come of it!”

“Why, I’ve not opened my lips!” protested silent Milly. “It is you who are discussing it; it was you began it!”

“If I had not, you would,” retorted Sybil; “you are perfectly _crazed_ on religious discussion. I see how it is going to end!”

I burst out laughing. Millicent, however, looked amazed.

“I will tell you what _I_ see,” I said: “that you had much better have stayed at home and discussed life with Mr. Halsted than come out here to bully us. It would be serving you right if I made a papist of you on the spot.”

Sybil saw that Millicent was vexed, and, adroitly dropping the subject, burst out into vehement denunciation of French conventionalities. If it had been any other country in the universe, Mr. Halsted might have come out for a walk with us, and we should have had an excellent time of it; for he was the very best company she knew. We continued, nevertheless, despite his absence, to enjoy a very pleasant walk, and to steer clear of burning subjects the rest of the way. The incident, however, left its mark on us all three, and from that day forth there was an imperceptible but a very decided change in Millicent’s “views.” As to Sybil’s, I never got a glimpse of them, so it may not be rash judgment to express a doubt whether she had any.

I kept to my promise of avoiding controversy with Millicent, and she, seeing my reluctance to gratify her curiosity on this point, gave up trying to overcome it. We talked very freely on religious customs and institutions, but whenever she demanded my reasons for believing this or that I evaded controversy by that inexorable Catholic answer so aggravating to a Protestant—“The church teaches it.”

The winter passed, and the spring, and my mother and I were preparing to leave Paris to spend the month of June in London. One of my greatest difficulties in going away was how poor Mme. Martin was to get on in my absence. Millicent had come with me once a week to visit her. She would continue to do this when I was gone, I had no doubt; but the poor soul was in a state that required a visit every day, and I hardly dare ask or expect that Millicent would break from her mother and her own occupations regularly every day for this purpose, or that Mrs. Gray would allow it. I told her of my trouble, and the next morning she ran in looking quite radiant.

“Mamma says she will allow me to go every morning from eleven to twelve and sit with Mme. Martin and do all she wants; is it not good of her!” she exclaimed, embracing me.

“It is!” I cried, “and very good of you, dear Milly. You can’t think what a relief it is to my mind! I was miserable at the thought of leaving her without some one to take my place of a morning; and she is so fond of you, poor soul! She is so touched by your charity—above all in a heretic!” I added, laughing.

“Charity covereth a multitude of sins,” said Millicent. “I suppose the sin of heresy is included?”

It was quite true: Mme. Martin was wonderfully taken with her. She admired her grace, the quiet distinction of her manner, the subdued elegance of her dress—a Frenchwoman has an eye for _la toilette_ so long as the breath of life is in her—and most of all the gentle kindness with which Millicent performed the little services of the sick-room. It was quite beyond her comprehension that so much sweetness and goodness should exist in anybody who was not a Catholic; it was most amusing to see her _naïf_ wonder at this phenomenon, and her surprise that I did not abolish it.

“But, mademoiselle, why do you not _explain_ to her how dreadful it is not to be in the true church?” she would urge again and again; and to my answer, “I have tried, but she cannot see it,” she would return the same wondering exclamation, “_Est-il-possible_!”

She evinced as much pleasure as surprise when I told her that Millicent was to come every day during my absence, and read to her and put things tidy in the little room.

“Now,” I said, “you must pay back all this kindness by getting the grace of the faith for her.”

“Oh! if I could but do it,” she exclaimed heartily.

“You may do a great deal,” I said; “your prayers ought to be very powerful with our Blessed Lord, because you are on the cross.”

She shook her head.

“If I lay on it lovingly, as he did,” she said; “but I don’t—not always, at least. I wriggle, and kick, and try to slip off it every now and then.” And she heaved a deep sigh.

“You are not a saint,” I said; “of course you have your ups and downs, but you would rather stay on the cross for any length of time than get off it, if you could, against the will of God, would you not?”

“Oh! yes, that I would,” she answered impulsively.

“Then you are all right,” I said. “Never mind the wriggling and the kicking; your heart is loyal to God, and that’s what he looks to. Set about asking for Mademoiselle Gray’s conversion, and he will not refuse it to you. Offer up all your sufferings for it from this time forth, and I feel perfectly certain our Lord will grant it to you.”

“Well, I will try,” she said, in an accent of simplicity and earnestness that sounded already like a guarantee of success; and then, looking at her _Mater Dolorosa_, she added suddenly: “I will ask _her_ to get it!”

I had brought some fresh flowers, and was arranging them in a pretty vase that Millicent had given her, when my eye fell upon a new book that lay beside it. It was _Notre Dame de Lourdes_, which Sœur Lucie had brought her the day before.

“I will get Mademoiselle Gray to read me some of it every morning,” said Mme. Martin; “they say it is beautiful. Do you think she will mind reading it?”

I thought not, and was delighted with the suggestion.

“I have a beautiful life of St. Francis de Sales which I will bring you,” I said, “and you will ask her to read it to you when this is finished. He was a charming saint, and had a great deal to do with converting Protestants; ask him to help you.”

We consulted what other books it would be advisable to get, and what snares were to be set in other ways for Millicent. Sœur Lucie was, of course, to be actively established in the service, the orphans were to be set to pray—nothing was to be left undone, in fact, for the capture of the unsuspecting soul. Of course this was all very treacherous and base, and we were no better than a pair of designing Jesuits—so our Protestant friends will say, if they should happen to light on my little story. I cannot help it if they think so.