In the beginning Ramoni could not think. He sat looking dully at the
softened tones of the wall, trying to evolve some order of thought
from the chaos into which the shock of his disappointment had plunged
his mind. It was late in the night before the situation began to
outline itself dimly.
His first thought was, curiously enough, not of himself directly, but
of the people out in Marqua who were anxiously looking for his return
as their leader, confident of his appointment to the new
Archbishopric. He could not face them as the servant of another man.
From the crowd afar his thoughts traveled back to the crowd on the
Pincio--the crowd that welcomed him as the great missionary. He would
go no more to the Pincio, for now they would point him out with that
cynical amusement of the Romans as the man who had been shelved for
his servant. He resented the fate that had uprooted him from Rome ten
years before, sending him to Marqua. He resented the people he had
converted, Pietro, the Consistory--everything. For that black and
bitter night the Church, which he had loved and reverenced, looked to
him like the root of all injustice. The more he thought of the slight
that had been put upon him, the worse it became, till the thought
arose in him that he would leave the Community, leave Rome, leave it
all. After long hours, anger had full sway in the heart of Father
Ramoni.
At midnight he heard the striking of the city's clocks through the
windows, the lattices of which he had forgotten to close. The sound of
the city brought back to him the words of the great prelate who had
returned with him to San Ambrogio from his first audience with the
Holy Father--"_Filius urbis et orbis_." How bitterly the city had
treated him!
A knock sounded at his door. He walked to it and flung it open. His
anger had come to the overflowing of speech. At first he saw only a
hand at the door-casing, groping with a blind man's uncertainty. Then
he saw the old General.
In the soul of Ramoni rose an awful revulsion against the old man.
Instantly, with a memory of that first day in the cloister garden, of
those following days that gave him the unexpected, uncanny glimpses of
the priest, he centered all his bitterness upon Denfili. So fearful
was his anger as he held it back with the rein of years of
self-control, that he wondered to see Father Denfili smiling.
"May I enter, my son?" he asked.
"You may enter."
The old man groped his way to a chair. Ramoni watched him with
glowering rage. When Father Denfili turned his sightless eyes upon him
he did not flinch.
"You are disappointed, my son?" the old man asked with a gentleness
that Ramoni could not apprehend, "and you can not sleep?"
Ramoni's anger swept the question aside. "Have you come here, Father
Denfili," he cried, "to find out how well you have finished the
persecution you began ten years ago? If you have, you may be quite
consoled. It is finished to-night." His anger, rushing over the gates,
beat down upon the old man, who sat wordless before its flood. It was
a passionate story Ramoni told, a story of years in the novitiate when
the old man had ever repressed him, a story of checks that had been
put upon him as a preacher, of his banishment from Rome, and now of
this crowning humiliation. Furiously Ramoni told of them all while the
old man sat, letting the torrent wear itself out on the rocks of
patience. Then, after Ramoni had been silent long moments, he spoke.
"You did not pray, my son?"
"Pray?" Ramoni's laughter rasped. "How can I pray? My life is ruined.
I am ashamed even to meet my brethren in the chapel."
"And yet, it is God one meets in the chapel," the old man said. "God,
and God alone; even if there be a thousand present."
"God?" flung back the missionary. "What has He done to me? Do you
think I can thank Him for this? Yet I am a fool to ask you, for it was
not God who did it--it was you! You interfered with His work. I know
it."
"I hope, my son, that it was God who did it. If He did, then it is
right for you. As for me, perhaps I am somewhat responsible. I was
consulted, and I advised Pietro."
"Don't call me 'my son,'" cried the other.
"Is it as bad as that with you?" There was only compassion in the old
voice. "Yet must I say it--my son. With even more reason than ever
before I must say it to you to-night."
The old man's thin hands were groping about his girdle to find the
beads that hung down from it. He pulled them up to him and laid the
string across his knees; but the crucifix that he could not see he
kept tightly clasped in his hand. His poor, dull, pathetic eyes were
turned to Ramoni who felt again that strange impression that he could
see, as they fixed on his face and stared straight at him without a
movement of their lashes. And Ramoni knew how it was that a man may be
given a finer vision than that of earth, for Father Denfili was
looking where only a saint could look, deep down into the soul of
another.
"Son of the city and the world," he said. "I heard Monsignore call you
that, and he was right. A son of the city and of the world you are;
but alas! less of the city than you know, and more of the world than
you have realized. My son, I am a very old man. Perhaps I have not
long to live; and so it is that I may tell you why I have come to you
to-night." Ramoni started to speak, but the other put out his hand. "I
received you, a little boy, into this Community. No one knows you
better than I do. I saw in you before any one else the gifts that God
had given you for some great purpose. I saw them budding. I knew
before any one else knew that some day you would do a great thing,
though I did not know what it was that you would do. I was a man with
little, but I could admire the man who had much. I had no gifts to lay
before Him, yet I, too, wanted to do a great work. I wanted to make
_you_ my great work. That was my hope. You are the Apostle of Marqua.
I am the Apostle of Ramoni. For that I have lived, always in the fear
that I would be cheated of my reward."