IN THE CLOISTER
Marcos and Sarrion went back to Pampeluna in the dusk of the winter
evening, each meditating over that which they had seen and heard. Leon
had become a Jesuit. And Juanita was worse--infinitely worse than alone
in the world.
Marcos needed no telling of all that lay behind Leon's scared silence;
for his father had brought him up in an atmosphere of plain language and
wide views of mankind. Sarnon himself had seen Navarre ruined, its men
sacrificed, its women made miserable by a war which had lasted
intermittently for thirty years. He had seen the simple Basques, who had
no means of verifying that which their priests told them, fighting
desperately and continuously for a lie. The Carlist war has always been
the war of ignorance and deceit against enlightenment and the advance of
thought. It is needless to say upon which side the cassock has ranged
itself.
The Basques were promised their liberty; they should be allowed to live
as they had always lived, practically a republic, if they only succeeded
in forcing an absolute monarchy on the rest of Spain. The Jesuits made
this promise. The society found itself in the position that no promise
must be allowed to stick in the throat.
Sarrion, like all who knew their strange story, was ready enough to
recognise the fact that the Jesuit body must be divided into two parts of
head and heart. The heart has done the best work that missionaries have
yet accomplished. The head has ruined half Europe.
It was the political Jesuit who had earned Sarrion's deadly hatred.
The political Jesuit has, moreover, a record in history which has only in
part been made manifest.
William the Silent was assassinated by an emissary of the Jesuits.
Maurice of Orange, his son, almost met the same fate, and the would-be
murderer confessed. Three Jesuits were hanged for attempting the life of
Elizabeth, Queen of England; and later, another, Parry, was drawn and
quartered. Two years later another was executed for participating in an
attempt on the Queen's life; and at later periods four more met a similar
just fate. Ravaillac, the assassin of Henry IV of France was a Jesuit.
The Jesuits were concerned in the Gunpowder Plot of England and two of
the fathers were among the executed.
In Paraguay the Jesuits instigated the natives to rebel against Spain and
Portugal; and the holy fathers, taking the field in person, proved
themselves excellent leaders.
Pope Clement XIV was poisoned by the Jesuits. He had signed a Bull to
suppress the order, which Bull was to "be forever and to all eternity
valid." The result of it was "acqua tofana of Perugia," a slow and
torturing poison.
Down to our own times we have had the hand of the Society of Jesus gently
urging the Fenians. O'Farrell, who in 1868 attempted the life of the Duke
of Edinburgh in Australia, was a Jesuit sent out to the care of the
society in Australia.
The great days of Jesuitism are gone but the society still lives. In
England and in other Protestant countries they continue to exist under
different names. The "Adorers of Jesus," the Redemptionists, the Brothers
of the Christian Doctrine, the Brothers of the Congregation of the Holy
Virgin, the Fathers of the Faith, the Order of St. Vincent de Paul--are
Jesuits. How far they belong to the heart and not to the head, is a
detail only known to themselves. Those who have followed the contemporary
history of France may draw their own conclusions from the trials of the
case of the Assumptionist Fathers.
"Los mismos perros, con nuevos cuellos"--said Sarrion to any who sought
to convince him that Spain owed her downfall to other causes, and that
the Jesuits were no longer what they had been. "The same dogs with new
collars." And he held that they were not a progressive but a
retrogressive society; that their statutes still held good.
"It is allowable to take an oath without intending to keep it when one
has good grounds for so acting."
"In the case of one unjustifiably making an attack on your honour, when
you cannot otherwise defend yourself than by impeaching the integrity of
the person insulting you, it is quite allowable to do so."
"In order to cut short calumny most quickly, one may cause the death of
the calumniator, but as secretly as possible to avoid observation."
"It is absolutely allowable to kill a man whenever the general welfare or
proper security demands it."
If any man has committed a crime, St. Liguori and other Jesuit writers
hold that he may swear to a civil authority that he is innocent of it
provided that he has already confessed it to his spiritual father and
received absolution. It is, they say, no longer on his conscience.
"Pray," said the founder of the society, "as if everything depended on
prayer, and act as if everything depended on action."
"Of what are you thinking?" Sarrion asked suddenly, when they had ridden
almost to the city gates in silence.
"I was wondering what Juanita will say, some day, when she knows and
understands everything."
"I was not wondering what Juanita will say," confessed Sarrion with a
laugh, "but what Evasio Mon will do."
For Sarrion persisted in taking an optimistic view of Juanita and that
which must supervene when she had grown into understanding and knowledge.
Marcos went back to the hotel. He had many arrangements to make. Sarrion
rode to the large house in the Calle de la Dormitaleria where the school
of the Sisters of the True Faith is located to this day. In an hour he
joined Marcos in the little sitting-room looking on to the Plaza de la
Constitucion.
"All is going well," he said, "I have seen Dolores. They go across to the
Cathedral for vespers at five o'clock. It will be almost dark. You have
only to wait in the inner patio, adjoining the cloisters. They pass
through that way. Juanita will be sent back for something that is
forgotten. And then is your time. You can have ten minutes. It is not
long."
"It will do," said Marcos rather gloomily. He was not afraid of the whole
Society of Jesuits, of the king, nor yet of Don Carlos. But he feared
Juanita.
"We need not inquire who will send her back. But she will come. She will
not expect to see you. Remember that and do not frighten her."
So Marcos set out at dusk to await Juanita. The entrance to the two
patios that give entrance to the Cathedral cloister is immediately
opposite to the door of the school of the Sisters of the True Faith. A
lamp swings over the doorway in the Calle de la Dormitaleria. There is no
lamp in the first patio but another hangs in the vaulted arch leading
from one patio to the other. In the cloister itself, which is the most
beautiful in Spain, there are two dim lamps.
Marcos sat down on the wooden bench which runs right round the quadrangle
of the inner patio. He had not long to wait. The girls passed through
whispering and laughing among themselves. Two nuns led the way. Sor
Teresa followed the last two girls, looking straight in front of her
between the wings of her great cap. One of the last pair was Juanita. She
walked listlessly, Marcos thought. He rose and went towards the archway
leading from the inner patio to the cloisters. The moon was rising and
cast a white light down upon the delicate stone-work of the cloister
windows.
Almost immediately Juanita came hurrying back and instinctively drew her
mantilla closer at the sight of his shadowy form. Then she recognised
him.
"Oh, Marcos," she whispered. "At last. I thought you had forgotten all
about me."
"Quick," he answered. "This way. We have only ten minutes."
He took her hand and hurried her back into the cloisters. He led her to
the right, to the corner of the quadrangle farthest removed from the
Cathedral where by daylight few pass, and at night none.
"What do you mean?" she asked, "Only ten minutes."
"It has all been arranged," he answered. "I met you here on purpose. You
have only ten minutes in which to settle."
"To settle what?" she asked with a laugh.
"Your whole life."
"But one cannot settle one's life in an Ave Maria," she said, which means
in the twinkling of an eye. And she looked at him by the dim light and
laughed again. For she was young and they had always made holiday
together, and laughed.
"Did you mean that letter which you wrote to my father about going into
religion?"
"Oh, I don't know. I suppose so. I meant it at the time, Marcos. It seems
to be the only thing to do. Everything seems to point to it. Every sermon
I hear. Everything I read. Everything any one ever says to me. But now--"
she turned and looked at him, "--now that I see you again I cannot think
how I did it."
"Am I so very worldly?"
"Of course you are. And yet I suppose you have some chance of salvation.
It seems to me that you have--a little chance, I give you. But it seems
hard on other people. Oh, Marcos, I hate the idea of it. And yet they are
so kind to me--all except Sor Teresa. If anybody could make me hate it,
she would. She is so unkind and gives me all the punishments she can."
Marcos smiled slowly and with great pity, of which men have a better
understanding than any woman. He thought he knew why Sor Teresa was
cruel.
"They are all so kind. And I know they are good. And they take it for
granted that the religious life is the only possible one. One cannot help
becoming convinced even against one's will."
She turned to him suddenly and laid her two hands on his arm.
"Oh, Marcos," she whispered, with a sort of sob of apprehension. "Can you
not do something for me?"
"Yes," he answered. "That is why I am here. But it must be done at once."
"Why?" she asked. And she was grave enough now.
"Because they have sent to Rome for a dispensation of your novitiate.
They wish to hurry you into religion at once."
"Yes," she said. "I know. But why?"
"Because they want your money."
"But I have none, or very little. They have told me so."
"That is a lie," said Marcos, bluntly.
"Oh, but you must not say that," she whispered, with a sort of horror.
"Father Muro told me so. He represents Heaven on earth. We are told he
does."
"He does it badly," said Marcos, quietly.
Juanita reflected for a moment. Then suddenly she stamped her foot on the
pavement worn by the feet of generations of holy men.
"I will not go into religion," she said. "I will not. I always feel that
there is something wrong in all they say. And with you and Uncle Ramon it
is different. I know at once that what you say is quite simple and plain
and honest; that you have no other meaning in what you say but that which
the words convey. Marcos--you and Uncle Ramon must take me away from
here. I cannot get away. I am hemmed in on every side."
"We can take you away," answered Marcos slowly, "if you like."
She turned and looked at him, her attention caught by some tense note in
his voice.
"What do you mean?" she asked. "Your face is so odd and white. What do
you mean, Marcos?"
"We can take you away, but you must marry me."
She gave a short laugh and stopped suddenly.
"Oh--you must not joke," she said. "You must not laugh. It is my whole
life, remember."
"I am not laughing. It is no joke," said Marcos steadily.
"What...?"
For a moment they sat in silence. The low chanting of vespers came to
their ears through the curtained doors of the Cathedral.
"Listen to them," said Juanita suddenly. "They are half asleep. They are
not thinking of what they are singing. They are taking snuff
surreptitiously behind their hands to keep themselves awake. And it is
we, poor wretched schoolgirls and nuns who have to keep the saints in a
good humour by attending to every word and being most preposterously
devout whether we feel inclined to be or not. No, I will not go into
religion. That is certain. Marcos, I would rather marry you than that--if
it is necessary."
"It is necessary."
"But they can have all the money; every real,'" suggested Juanita
hopefully.
"No; they have tried that way. They cannot do it in these times. The only
way they can get the money is for you to go of your own free will into
religion and to bequeath of your own free will all your worldly
possessions to the Order you join."
"Yes, I know," said Juanita. Her spirits had risen every minute. She was
gay again now. His presence seemed to restore to her the happy gift of
touching life lightly which is of the heart. And the heart knows no age,
neither is it subject to the tyranny of years.
"Well, I will marry you if there is no help for it. But..."
"But..." echoed Marcos.
"But of course it is only a sort of game, is it not?"
"Yes," he answered. "A sort of game."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
They were sitting on the steps of one of the chapels. Juanita swung round
and peered through the railings as if to see what Saint had his
habitation there.
"It is only St. Bartholomew," she said, airily. "But he will do. You have
promised, remember that. And St. Bartholomew has heard you. It is only to
save me from being a nun that we are being married. And I am to be just
the same as I am now. We can go fishing, I mean, as we used to, and climb
the mountains and have jokes just as we always do in the holidays."
"Yes," said Marcos.
She held out her hand as she had seen the peasants in Torre Garda when
they had struck a bargain and would seal it irrevocably.
"Touch it," she said with a gay laugh, as she had heard them say.
And they shook hands in the dark cloisters.
"There is a window at the end of the passage in which is your room," said
Marcos. "It looks out on to a small courtyard and is quite near the
ground. Come to that window to-morrow night at ten o'clock and I shall be
there."
"What for?" she asked.
"To be married," he answered. "My father and I will arrange it. We shall
both be there. If you do not come to-morrow night I shall come again the
next night. You will be back in your room by half-past eleven."
"Married?" asked Juanita.
"Yes."
He had risen and was standing in front of her.
"And now you must go back to the Cathedral."
"But Sor Teresa's breviary?"
"She has it in her pocket," said Marcos.