The Guests Of Hercules. C. N. Williamson
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if—if I'd stayed, and—everything had been as I expected."
"I know. They've let you be with me more as a novice than you could be as a professed nun. Still, you'd have been under the same roof. I could have seen you often. But I am glad. I'm not thinking of myself. And we'll meet just as soon as we can, when my time's up here. Father's coming back to his dear native Fifeshire to fetch me, and I'll make him take me to you, wherever you are, or else you'll visit me; better still. But it seems a long time to wait, for I really did come back here to be a 'parlour boarder,' a heap more to see you than for any other reason. And, besides, there's another thing. Only I hardly know how to say it, or whether I dare say it at all."
Sister Rose looked suddenly anxious, as if she were afraid of something that might follow. "What is it?" she asked quickly, almost sharply. "You must tell me."
"Why, it's nothing to tell—exactly. It's only this: I'm worried. I'm glad you're not going to be a nun all your life, dear; delighted—enchanted. You're given back to me. But—I worry because I can't help feeling that I've got something to do with the changing of your mind so suddenly; that if ever you should regret anything—not that you will, but if you should—you might blame me, hate me, perhaps."
"I never shall do either, whatever happens," the novice said, earnestly and gravely. She did not look at her friend as she spoke, though they were so nearly of the same height as they walked, their arms linked together, that they could gaze straight into one another's eyes. Instead, she looked up at the sky, through the groined gray ceiling of tree-branches, as if offering a vow. And seeing her uplifted profile with its pure features and clear curve of dark lashes, Peter thought how beautiful she was, of a beauty quite unearthly, and perhaps unsuited to the world. With a pang, she wondered if such a girl would not have been safer forever in the convent where she had lived most of her years. And though she herself was four years younger, she felt old and mature, and terribly wise compared with Sister Rose. An awful sense of responsibility was upon her. She was afraid of it. Her pretty blond face, with its bright and shrewd gray eyes, looked almost drawn, and lost the fresh colour that made the little golden freckles charming as the dust of flower-pollen on her rounded cheeks.
"But I have got something to do with it, haven't I?" she persisted, longing for contradiction, yet certain that it would not come.
"I hardly know—to be quite honest," Mary answered. "I don't know what I might have done if you hadn't come back and told me things about your life, and all your travels with your father—things that made me tingle. Maybe I should never have had the courage without that incentive. But, Peter, I'll tell you something I couldn't have told you till to-day. Since the very beginning of my novitiate I was never happy, never at rest."
"Truly? You wanted to go, even then, for two whole years?"
"I don't know what I wanted. But suddenly all the sweet calm was broken. You've often looked out from the dormitory windows over the lake, and seen how a wind springing up in an instant ruffles the clear surface. It's just like a mirror broken into a thousand tiny fragments. Well, it was so with me, with my spirit. And after all these years, when I'd been so contented, so happy that I couldn't even bear, as a schoolgirl, to go away for two or three days to visit Lady MacMillan in the holidays, without nearly dying of homesickness before I could be brought back! As a postulant I was just as happy, too. You know, I wouldn't go out into the world to try my resolve, as Reverend Mother advised. I was so sure there could be no home for me but this. Then came the change. Oh, Peter, I hope it wasn't the legacy! I pray I'm not so mean as that!"
"How long was it after your novitiate began that the money was left you?" Peter asked: for this was the first intimate talk alone and undisturbed that she had had with her old school friend since coming back to the convent three months ago. She knew vaguely that a cousin of Mary's dead father had left the novice money, and that it had been unexpected, as the lady was not a Roman Catholic, and had relations just as near, of her own religion. But Peter did not quite know when the news had come, or what had happened then.
"It was the very next day. That was odd, wasn't it? Though I don't know, exactly, why it should have seemed odd. It had to happen on some day. Why not that one? I was glad I should have a good dowry—quite proud to be of some use to the convent. I didn't think what I might have done for myself, if I'd been in the world—not then. But afterward, thoughts crept into my head. I used to push them out again as fast as they crawled in, and I told myself what a good thing I had a safe refuge, remembering my father, what he wrote about himself, and my mother."
For a moment she was silent. There was no need to explain, for Peter knew all about the terrible letter that had come from India with the news of Major Grant's death. It had arrived before Mary resolved to take vows, while she was still a fellow schoolgirl of Peter's, older than most of the girls, looked up to and adored, and probably it had done more than anything else to decide her that she had a "vocation." Mary had told about the letter at the time, with stormy tears: how her father in dying wrote down the story of the past, as a warning to his daughter, whom he had not loved; told the girl that her mother had run away with one of his brother officers; that he, springing from a family of reckless gamblers, had himself become a gambler; that he had thrown away most of his money; and that his last words to Mary were, "You have wild blood in your veins. Be careful: don't let it ruin your life, as two other lives have been ruined before you."
"Then," Mary went on, while Peter waited, "for a few weeks, or a few days, I would be more peaceful. But the restlessness always came again. And, after the end of the first year, it grew worse. I was never happy for more than a few hours together. Still I meant to fight till the end. I never thought seriously of giving it up."
"Until after I came?" Peter broke in.
"Oh, I was happier for a while after you came. You took my mind off myself."
"And turned it to myself, or, rather, to the world I lived in. I'm glad, yes, I'm glad, I was in time, and yet—oh, Mary, you won't go to Monte Carlo, will you?"
Mary stopped short in her walk, and turned to face Peter.
"Why do you say that?" she asked, sharply. "What can make you think of Monte Carlo?"
"Only, you seemed so interested in hearing me tell about staying with father at Stellamare, my cousin's house. You asked me such a lot of questions about it and about the Casino, more than about any other place, even Rome. And you looked excited when I told you. Your cheeks grew red. I noticed then, but it didn't matter, because you were going to live here always, and be a nun. Now——"
"Now what does it matter?" the novice asked, almost defiantly. "Why should it occur to me to go to Monte Carlo?"
"Only because you were interested, and perhaps I may have made the Riviera seem even more beautiful and amusing than it really is. And besides—if it should be true, what your father was afraid of——"
"What?"
"That you inherit his love of gambling. Oh, I couldn't bear it, darling, to think I had sent you to Monte Carlo."
"He didn't know enough about me to know whether I inherited anything from him or not. I hardly understand what gambling means, except what you've told me. It's only a word like a bird of ill omen. And what you said about the play at the Casino didn't interest me as other things did. It didn't sound attractive at all."
"It's different when you're there," Peter said.
"I don't think it would be for me. I'm almost sure I'm not like that—if I can be sure of anything about myself. Perhaps I can't! But you described the place as if it were a sort of paradise—and all the Riviera. You said you would go back in the spring with your father. You didn't seem to think it wicked and dangerous for yourself."
"Monte Carlo isn't any more wicked than other places, and it's dangerous only for born gamblers," Peter argued. "I'm not one. Neither is my father, except in Wall Street. He plays a little for fun, that's all. And my cousin Jim Schuyler never goes near the Casino except for a concert or the opera. But you—all alone there—you who know no more of life than a baby! It doesn't bear thinking of."
"Don't