When she answered Mariquita's letter she was to report not only the
judicial end of the plumiverous and specked hens, but the betrothal of
Larry Burke and Ginger. "Nothing," she wrote, "but his dread of your
displeasure could have overcome his dread of what the other cowboys
would say on hearing of his proposing. After all, he has more sense than
some sharp fellows who follow at last the advice they know is worth
least...."
In her next letter Sarella said:
"I am to be made a Catholic on Monday next; so when you're saying your
prayers (and that's all day) you can be thinking of me. Perhaps I gave
in to it first to satisfy your father; but even then I thought 'if it
makes me a bit more like Mariquita he'll get a better bargain in me.' I
shan't ever be at all like you, but I shall be of the same Religion as
you, and I know by this time that it will do me good. It's all a bit
too big for me to understand, but I like what I do understand, and
Sister Aquinas says I shall grow into it. Clothes, she says, fit better
when they're worn a bit, and sit easier. She says, 'It has changed you,
my dear child, already; you are gentler, and kinder.' She said another
thing, 'Your husband has been a Catholic all his life, but you will
gradually make him a better one. He is a very sensible man, and he can't
see you learning to be a Catholic and not want to learn what it really
means himself. He is too honest.' She likes your father a lot, and never
bothers him. 'I know,' she said, 'you will not bother him either. Some
earnest Catholics do bother their men-folks terribly about religious
things--and for all the good they seem to do, might be only half as
earnest and have a better effect.' I make my First Communion the day
after I'm received. And, Mariquita, my dear, we are to be married that
day week. Your father will fetch you home, and mind, _mind_, you come. I
should never forgive you if you didn't. Shall I have Ginger for a
bridesmaid? I know some brides do choose ugly ones to make themselves
look better. The cowboys (this is a dead secret told me by Ginger) have
subscribed to give us a wedding-present. I hope it won't be one of those
clocks like black-marble monuments with a round gilt eye in it. I expect
the cowboys laugh at both these marriages. But they rather like them.
They make a lark, and they never do dislike anything they can laugh at.
They certainly all look twice as amiably at me when we meet about the
place since they _knew_ I was going to be married. And Ginger finds them
so friendly and pleasant I expect she thinks she might, if she had
liked, have married the lot. But that's different. I daresay you notice
that I write more cheerfully, now it is settled. Yes, I do. I like him a
great deal more than at first. It began when he gave in about what you
wanted. I really believe I shall make him happy--and I fancy I think of
that more--I mean less of his making me happy. And, Mariquita, it _is_
good of me to have wanted you to be let alone to be a nun if you thought
it right, because, oh dear, how I should like you to be living near or
at the next range! Before I got to know you, it was just the opposite. I
hoped you'd get a husband of your own and _quit_; I did. I thought you'd
hate your father marrying again, and (if you stayed on here) would be
looking disapproval all day long, and perhaps I thought you would not be
best pleased at not getting all his money when he died. (I think when
people go to Confession they ought to confess things like that. Do
they?) Oh, Mariquita, you will be missed. But I'd rather miss you, and
know you were being what you felt yourself called away to, than think I
had helped to have you interfered with...."
Mariquita, reading Sarella's letter, felt something new in her life,
something strangely moving, that filled her eyes and heart with
something also new--happy tears. The free gift of tenderness came newly
to her; and, it may be, she had least of all looked for it from Sarella.
"'Do people,' she quoted to herself from Sarella _herself_, 'confess
these things?' I will, anyway."
It hurt her to think that she who so loved justice and charity, must
have been both uncharitable and unjust.
But can we agree? Had not Sarella's unforeseen tenderness been her own
gift to her? Had Sarella brought tenderness with her from the East?
At the stranger's first coming Mariquita had not judged but _felt_ her,
and her feeling (of which she herself knew very little) had been
instinctively correct while it lasted.