II.
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.
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."
Ramoni turned to him. "Your reward? I do not understand."
"My reward," the old man repeated. "I watched over you, I instructed you, I prayed for you, I loved you. I tried to teach you by checking you, the way to govern yourself. I tried to make a channel in your soul that your great genius might not burst its bonds. I knew that there was conflict ever within you between your duty to God and what the world had to offer you—the old, old conflict between the city and the world. I always feared it. All unknown to you I watched the fight, and I saw that the world was winning. Then, my son, I sent you to Marqua."
The old man paused, and his trembling hand wiped away the tears that streamed down his face. Ramoni did not move. "I am afraid, my son," the voice came again, "that you never knew the city—well called the Eternal—where with all the evil the world has put within its walls the good still shines always. This, my son, is the city of the soul, and you were born in it. It lives only for souls. It has no other right to existence at all. There is only one royalty that may live in Rome. We, who are of the true city, know that.
"And you, too, might have been of the city. The power of saving thousands was given to you. I prayed only for the power of saving one. I had to send you away, for you were not a Philip Neri. Only a saint may live to be praised and save himself—in Rome.
"When you went away, my son, you went away with a sacrifice as your merit, your salvation. Of that sacrifice the Church in Marqua was born. It will grow on another sacrifice. Ask your heart if you could make it? Alas, you can not! Then it will have to grow on Pietro's pain.
"I have not seen you, for I am blind, but I have heard you. You want to go back an Archbishop to finish what you say is 'your work.' You think that your people are waiting. You want to bring the splendor of the city to the world. My son, the work is not yours. The people are not yours. The city, the true city, does not know you, for you have forgotten the spirit of sacrifice. You went out to the world an apostle, and you came back to the city a conqueror, but no longer an apostle. Can't you see that God does not need conquerors?"
The old priest pressed the crucifix tightly against his breast. "What would you take back to Marqua?" he demanded. "Nothing but your purple and your eloquence. How could you, who have forgotten to pray in the midst of affliction, teach your people how to pray in the midst of their sorrows? Marqua does not need you, for Marqua needs the man you might have been, but which you are not. The city does not need you, for the city needs no man; but it is you who need the city, that you may learn again the lesson that once made you the missionary of a people."
Faintly, through the silence that fell the deeper as the old man's words died away, there came the sound of footsteps pacing in another room. Once more the old man took up his speech.
"They are Pietro's steps," he said. "All night long I have heard you both. He has been sobbing under the burden he believes he is unworthy to bear, while you have been raging that you were not permitted to bear it. Pietro was only your servant. He would be your servant again if he could. He loves you. I, too, love you. Perhaps I was selfish in loving you, but I wanted for God your soul and the souls you were leading to Him."
The old man arose. He put out his hand to grope his way back to the door. It touched Ramoni, sitting rigid. He did not stir. The hand reached over him, caught the lintel of the door and guided the blind man to the hall. Then Ramoni stood up. Without a word he followed the other. When he had overtaken him he laid his hand gently on the blind man's arm and led him back to his cell.
When he came back the door of the chapel was open. Ramoni, going within, found Pietro there, prostrate at the foot of the altar. Ramoni knelt at the door, his eyes brimming with tears. He did not pray. He only gazed upon the far-off tabernacle. And while he knelt the Great Plan unfolded itself to him. He looked back on Marqua as a man who has traveled up the hills looks down on the valleys. And, looking back, he could see that Pietro's had been the labor that had won Marqua. There came back to him all the memories of his servant's love of souls, his ceaseless teaching, his long journeys to distant villages, his zeal, his solicitude to save his superior for the more serious work of preaching. Pietro had been jealous of the slightest infringement on his right to suffer. Pietro had been the apostle. Before God the conquest of Marqua had been Pietro's first, since he it was who had toiled and claimed no reward.
A great peace suddenly mantled the troubled soul of Father Ramoni, and with it a great love for the old General whose hand had struck him. He thought of the painting hanging near where he knelt—"Moses Striking the Rock." The features of Father Denfili merged into the features of the Law Giver, and Father Ramoni knew himself for the rock, barren and unprofitable. He fell on his face, and then his prayer came:
"Christ, humble and meek, soften me, and if there be aught of living water within, let me give one drop for thirsty souls yet ere I am called."
He could utter no other prayer.
Morning found both master and servant, now servant and master, before the altar where both were servants.