III
That afternoon, seated on the moss, under a tall eucalyptus tree near to Frau Brandt's pavilion, Maria Dolores received a visit from Annunziata.
Annunziata's pale little face was paler, her big grave eyes were graver, even than their wont. She nodded her head, slowly, portentously; and her glance was heavy with significance.
Maria Dolores smiled. "What is the matter?" she cheerfully inquired.
"Ah," sighed Annunziata, deeply, with another portentous head-shake, "I wish I knew."
Maria Dolores laughed. "Sit down," she suggested, making room beside her on the moss, "and try to think."
Annunziata sat down, curled herself up. "Something has happened to Prospero," she said, de profundis.
"Oh?" asked Maria Dolores. "What?" She seemed heartlessly cheerful, and even rather amused.
"Ah," sighed Annunziata, "that is what I wish I knew. He has had a friend to pass the day with him."
"Yes?" said Maria Dolores. "I expect I saw his friend walking with him this morning?"
"Già," said Annunziata. "They have been walking about all day. His friend Prospero he calls him. But he doesn't look very prosperous. He looks like a slate-pencil. He is long and thin, and dark and cold, and hard, just like a slate-pencil. He would not stay the night, though we had a bed prepared for him. He is going to Rome, and Prospero has driven him to the railway station at Cortello. I hate him," wound up Annunziata, simply.
"Mercy!" exclaimed Maria Dolores, opening her eyes. "Why do you hate him?"
"Because he must have said or done something very unkind to Prospero," answered Annunziata. "Oh, you should see him. He is so sad—so sad and so angry. He keeps scowling, and shaking his head, and saying things in English, which I cannot understand, but I am sure they are sad things and angry things. And he would not eat any dinner,—no, not that much," (Annunziata measured off an inch on her finger), "he who always eats a great deal,—eh, ma molto, molto," and, separating her hands, she measured off something like twenty inches in the air.
Maria Dolores couldn't help laughing a little at this. But afterwards she said, on a key consolatory, "Ah, well, he has gone away now, so let us hope your friend Prospero will promptly recover his accustomed appetite."
"Yes," said Annunziata, "I hope so. But oh, that old slate-pencil man, how I hate him! I would like to—uhhh!" She clenched her little white fist, and shook it, threateningly, vehemently, while her eyes fiercely flashed. ... Next instant, however, her mien entirely changed. Like a light extinguished, all the fierceness went out of her face, making way for what seemed pain and terror. "There," she cried, pain and terror in her voice, "I have offended God. Oh, I am so sorry, so sorry. My sin, my sin, my sin," she murmured, bowing her head, and thrice striking her breast.
"I take back every word I said. I do not hate him. I would not hurt him—I would not even stick a pin in him—if I had him at my mercy. No—I would do anything I could to help him. I would give him anything I had that he could want. I would give him my coral rosary. I would give him"—she hesitated, struggled, and at last, drawing a deep breath, gritting her teeth, in supreme renunciation—"yes, I would give him my tame kid," she forced herself to pronounce, with a kind of desperate firmness. "But see," she wailed, her little white brow a mesh of painful wrinkles, "it is all no good. God is still angry. Oh, what shall I do?" And, to the surprise and distress of Maria Dolores, she burst into a sudden passion of tears, sobbing, sobbing, with that abandonment of grief which only children know.
"My dear, my dear," exclaimed Maria Dolores, drawing her to her. "My dearest, you mustn't cry like that. Dear little Annunziata. What is it? Why do you cry so, dear one? Answer me. Tell me."
But Annunziata only buried her face in Maria Dolores' sleeve, and moaned, while long, tremulous convulsions shook her frail little body. Maria Dolores put both arms about her, hugged her close, and laid her cheek upon her hair.
"Darling Annunziata, don't cry. Why should you cry so, dearest? God is not angry with you. Why should you think that God is angry with you? God loves you, darling. Everyone loves you. There, there—dearest—don't cry. Sweet one, dear one."
Transitions, with Annunziata, were sometimes inexplicably rapid. All at once her sobbing ceased; she looked up, and smiled, smiled radiantly, from a face that was wet and glistening with tears. "Thanks be to God," she piously exulted; "God is not angry any more."
"Of course He isn't," said Maria Dolores, tightening her hug, and touching Annunziata's curls lightly with her lips. "But He was never angry. What made you think that God was angry?"
Annunziata's big eyes widened. "Didn't you notice?" she asked, in a hushed voice, amazed.
"No," wondered Maria Dolores. "What was there to notice?"
"He made them draw a cloud over the sun," Annunziata whispered. "Didn't you notice that when I said I would like to—when I said what I said about that friend of Prospero's—just then they drew a cloud across the sun? That is a sign that God is angry. The sun, you know, is the window in Heaven through which God looks down on the world, and through which the light of Heaven shines on the world. And when the window is open, we feel happy and thankful, and wish to sing and laugh. But when we have done something to make God angry with us, then He sends angels to draw clouds over the window, so that we may be shut out of His sight, and the light of Heaven may be shut off from us. And then we are lonely and cold, and we could quarrel with anything, even with the pigs. God wishes to show us how bad it would be always to be shut off from His sight. But now they have drawn the cloud away, so God is not angry any more. I made a good act of contrition, and He has forgiven me."
Maria Dolores smiled, but under her smile there was a look of seriousness, a look of concern.
"My dear," she said smiling, and looking concerned, "you should try to control your vivid little imagination. If every time a cloud crosses the sun, you are going to assume the responsibility for it, and to fancy that you have offended God, I'm afraid you'll have rather an agitated life."
"Oh, no; not every time," exclaimed Annunziata, and she was manifestly on the point of making a fine distinction, when abruptly the current of her ideas was diverted. "Sh-h! There comes Prospero," she cried, starting up. "I can see the top of his white hat above the rhododendron bushes. He has driven his friend to Cortello, and come home. I must run away, or he will see that I've been crying. Don't tell him," she begged, putting her finger on her lips; and she set off running, towards the presbytery, just as John stepped forth from behind the long hedge of rhododendrons.