“Not too much,” the priest said. “For then we shall lose much Christian charity. I know a lady who resides near our church and is noted for a frosty sort of charity, going with tracts into the poorer regions. I have heard that she said once to her niece: ‘My dear, never keep a diary; it may be used against you!’” The priest pronounced these words with a singular mixture of laughter and contempt. “Do you not hear all England speaking in these words?” he asked suddenly.
A nurse, tall, pink and white, with a dove-coloured veil and cloak, passed them, with averted face, pushing in a low cart a child, whose blue eyes gazed with contentment upon the tree-tops.
“Well, hasn’t it given us that?” Grimshaw said.
“Yes, it has given that to the world,” the priest said. “A menial who averts her eyes—a child who is inanimate by force of being kept ‘good’—a ‘good’ child. My son, a ‘good’ child is a thing to make the angels cry; for is it not recorded of our Comforter that once He struck His mother?”
“But should not the nursemaid avert her eyes?” Grimshaw said.
“Consider,” the black pope answered, “with what a laughing glance she would have passed you had she been a Cypriote; or how she would have gazed till her eyes started from her head at an English Bishop. But as for this girl, she averts her gaze. Her aunt has told her that it might be used against her.”
“It might be used against her, you know,” Grimshaw said.
“Oh, my son,” the priest said, “for what has God given a maiden eyes, save to use them in innocent glances? And what use is the teaching of our Church if passer-by may not smile upon passer-by and pass the time of day by well-heads and in the shady groves? It may be used against them. But tell me this, my son: Are there not four times more fallen women and brothels in one-half of this city than in all Greece and Cyprus and the Isles?”
“Yet there there is not one such nursemaid,” Grimshaw said. “And it is that that our civilization has bent all its energies to produce. That, without doubt, is why you and I are lonely here.” He added: “But is it not wiser to strive to produce nursemaids?”
“Son,” the priest asked, “will you not come with me and confess your troubles? For I am very certain that you have troubles. You have, is it not, done what you wanted; you are now, therefore, taking what you get for it? I have heard you say, may God pardon the ill you have done! It is not that you regret having rained your cigarettes upon that poor man?”