The next morning the earl went to the church, as usual. He had not slept
well. The advent of Phelim had set him to thinking. Here was a rival;
and a dangerous one. He admitted this grudgingly, for an Englishman is
slow to see a rival in a foreigner, and who so foreign as an Irishman?
At dinner, on the yacht, the night before, Phelim had been much in
evidence. His six feet three had impressed the earl's six feet. Phelim
had been well dressed. "Confound him," thought the earl, "he goes to
Poole, or Johns & Pegg. Why doesn't he get his clothes at home?" Then
Phelim had talked much, and he had talked well. He had told stories at
which the earl had been compelled to laugh. He had related experiences
of his home-life, of the peasants, the priests, the clubs, hunting and
shooting, his brief stay in Parliament, what he had seen in Venice
during the last few days; and, when dinner was over, Lady Nora, who had
been all attention, said: "Sing for us, Phelim," and they had gone
below, Phelim stooping to save his head; and he had struck those
mysterious chords upon the piano, by way of prelude, that silence talk,
that put the world far away, that set the men to glancing at the women,
and the women to glancing at the floor and making sure of their
handkerchiefs, and then--he had sung.
How can one describe a song? As well attempt to paint a perfume.
When Phelim finished singing Miss O'Kelly went over and kissed him, and
Lady Nora went away, her eyes glistening.
The earl remembered all these things as he went up the aisle. He had
passed that way five times each day for nine days. He came to the door
of the treasury, thinking, not of Nora, but of Phelim--and the door was
open.
He went in. The gorgeous color of the place stopped him, on the
threshold. He saw the broidered vestments upon which gold was the mere
background; jacinths were the stamens of the flowers, and pierced
diamonds were the dewdrops on their leaves; he saw the chalices and
patens of amethyst and jade, the crucifixes of beaten gold, in which
rubies were set solid, as if they had been floated on the molten metal;
he saw the seven-light candelabrum, the bobèches of which were sliced
emeralds, and then his eyes, groping in this wilderness of beauty,
lighted on the turquoise cup.
"My God!" he exclaimed, "she is right. She is selling herself for the
most beautiful thing in the world. To steal it is a crime like
Cromwell's--too great to be punished," and he put out his hand.
Then, with the cup and Nora within his reach, he heard a still, small
voice, and his hand fell.
He began to argue with his conscience. "Who owns this cup?" he asked.
"No one. The cardinal said it had been stolen. He said no one could sell
it because no one could give title. Why, then, is it not mine as well as
any one's? If I take it, whom do I wrong? Great men have never let
trifles of right and wrong disturb their conduct. Who would ever have
won a battle if he had taken thought of the widows? Who would ever have
attained any great thing if he had not despised small things?" and he
put out his hand again; and then came surging into his mind the
provisions of that code which birth, associations, his school life, and,
most of all, his mother, had taught him. What would they say and do at
his clubs? Where, in all the world, could he hide himself, if he did
this thing? He turned and fled, and, running down the church steps, he
came face to face with Lady Nora and Phelim. They were laughing gayly;
but, when they saw the earl's face, their laughter ceased.
"Have you seen a ghost, my lord?" asked Phelim.
The earl did not answer; he did not even hear. He stood gazing at Lady
Nora. For one brief moment, when he stood before the cup, he had
questioned whether a woman who would impose such a condition could be
worth winning; and now, before her, her beauty overwhelmed him. He
forgot Phelim; he forgot the passers-by; he forgot everything, except
the woman he loved--the woman he had lost.
"Nora," he said, "I give you back your promise. I cannot give you the
cup."
The color left her cheeks and her hands flew up to her heart--she gazed
at him with love and pity in her eyes, and then, suddenly, her cheeks
flamed, her white teeth pressed her lower lip, her little foot stamped
upon the pavement.
"Very well," she said, "I regret having given you so much trouble;" and
she went toward the landing. She took three steps and then turned. The
two men stood as she had left them.
"Phelim," she said, smiling, "_you_ would do something for me, if I were
to ask you, would you not?"
"Try me," said Phelim. "Would you like the Campanile for a
paper-weight?"
"No," she said, "not that, but something else. Come here."
He went to her, and she whispered in his ear.
"I'll bring it you in half an hour, aboard the yacht," said Phelim, and
he started across the Piazza.
Lady Nora went on toward the landing. The earl stood watching her. She
did not look back. The earl looked up at the clock-tower. "In half an
hour," he said to himself, "he will bring it to her, aboard the yacht;"
and he turned and re-entered the church. He went up the aisle, nodded to
the sacristan, entered the treasury, took the turquoise cup, came out
with it in his hand, nodded again to the sacristan, went down the steps,
crossed the Piazza, ran down the landing-stairs, and jumped into a
gondola.
"To the English yacht!" he cried.
He looked at his watch. "It seems," he said to himself "that one can
join the criminal classes in about six minutes. I've twenty-four the
start of Phelim."
They came alongside the Tara, and the earl sprang up the ladder.
"Lady Nora?" he asked of the quartermaster.
"She is below, my lord. She has just come aboard, and she left orders to
show you down, my lord."
"Me?" exclaimed the earl.
"She didn't name you, my lord;" said the quartermaster, "what she said
was--'A gentleman will come on board soon; show him below.'"
The earl speculated a moment as to whether he were still a gentleman,
and then went down the companion-way. He came to the saloon. The door
was open. He looked in. Lady Nora was seated at the piano, but her hands
were clasped in her lap. Her head was bent and the earl noticed, for the
thousandth time, how the hair clustered in her neck and framed the
little, close-set ear. He saw the pure outlines of her shoulders;
beneath the bench, he saw her foot in its white shoe; he saw, or felt,
he could not have told you which, that here was the one woman in all
this great world. To love her was a distinction. To sin for her was a
dispensation. To achieve her was a coronation.
He tapped on the door. The girl did not turn, but she put her hands on
the keys quickly, as if ashamed to have them found idle.
"Ah, Phelim," she said, "you are more than prompt; you never keep one
waiting," and she began to play very softly.
The earl was embarrassed. Despite his crime, he still had breeding left
him, and he felt compelled to make his presence known. He knocked again.
"Don't interrupt me, Phelim," she said; "this is my swan-song; listen;"
and she began to sing. She sang bravely, at first, with her head held
high, and then, suddenly, her voice began to falter.
"Ah, Phelim, dear," she cried, "I've lost my love! I've lost my love!"
and she put her hands to her face and fell to sobbing.
"Nora!" said the earl. It was the first word he had spoken, and she
raised her head, startled.
"Here is the cup, Nora," he said.
She sprang to her feet and turned to him, tears on her cheeks, but a
light in her eyes such as he had never seen.
"Oh, my love," she cried, "I should have known you'd bring it."
"Yes," he said, "you should have known."
She stood, blushing, radiant, eager, waiting.
He stood in the doorway, pale, quiet, his arms at his side, the cup in
his hand.
"Nora," he said, "I've brought you the cup, but I do not dare to give it
to you. I stole it."
"What?" she cried, running toward him. She stopped suddenly and began to
laugh--a pitiful little laugh, pitched in an unnatural key. "You
shouldn't frighten me like that, Bobby," she said; "it isn't fair."
"It is true," said the earl; "I am a thief."
She looked at him and saw that he was speaking the truth.
"No," she cried, "'tis I am the thief, not you. The cardinal warned me
that I was compelling you to this, and I laughed at him. I thought that
you would achieve the cup, if you cared for me; that you would render
some service to the State and claim it as your reward--that you would
make a fortune, and buy it--that you would make friends at the
Vatican--that you would build churches, found hospitals, that even the
Holy Father might ask you to name something within his gift--I thought
of a thousand schemes, such as one reads of--but I never thought you
would take it. No, no; I never thought that."
"Nora," said the earl, "I didn't know how to do any of those things, and
I didn't have time to learn."
"I would have waited for you, always," she said.
"I didn't know that," said the earl.
"I hoped you didn't," said Lady Nora. "Come!" and she sprang through the
door. The earl followed her. They ran up the companion-way, across the
deck, down the boarding-stairs. The earl's gondola was waiting.
"To the molo in five minutes," cried Lady Nora to the poppe, "and you
shall be rich."
They went into the little cabin. The earl still held the cup in his
hand. They sat far apart--each longing to comfort the other--each afraid
to speak. Between them was a great gulf fixed--the gulf of sin and
shame.
Half-way to the landing, they passed Phelim's gondola, making for the
yacht. The cabin hid them and he passed in silence.
"I sent him for some bon-bons," said Lady Nora. "I did it to make you
jealous."
They reached the molo in less than five minutes and Lady Nora tossed her
purse to the oarsmen, and sprang out.
"Put the cup under your coat," she said. The earl obeyed. He had stolen
it openly. He brought it back hidden. They crossed the Piazza as rapidly
as they dared, and entered the church. The sacristan greeted them with a
smile and led the way to the treasury.
"They haven't missed it yet," whispered Lady Nora.
The sacristan unlocked the outer and the inner door, bowed, and left
them.
Lady Nora seized the cup and ran to its accustomed shelf. She had her
hand outstretched to replace it, when she uttered a cry.
"What is it?" exclaimed the earl.
She did not answer, but she pointed, and the earl, looking where she
pointed, saw, on the shelf--the turquoise cup.
They stared at the cup on the shelf--at the cup in Lady Nora's
hand--and at each other--dumfounded.
They heard a limping step on the pavement and the cardinal came in. His
face was very grave, but his voice was very gentle.
"My children," he said, "I prayed God that you would bring back the cup,
but, _mea culpa_, I lacked faith, and dared not risk the original. Would
God let Nora Blake's granddaughter make shipwreck? The cup you have, my
child, is but silver-gilt and glass, but it may serve, some other day,
to remind you of this day. Look at it when your pride struggles with
your heart. Perhaps the sight of it may strengthen you. Take it, not as
the present of a cardinal, or an archbishop, but as the wedding-gift of
an old man who once was young, and once knew Nora Blake."
"A wedding-gift?" exclaimed Lady Nora. "What man would ever marry such a
wretch as I?"
"Nora!" cried the earl; and he held out his arms.
"My pigeons are waiting for me," said the cardinal; and he went away,
limping.