When Julie became conscious of the dimly lit altar, with its faded velvet and gold lace, its figure of the Virgin in painted wood, she stood transfixed; she saw herself on the day of her confirmation, her mother putting around her neck a gold chain and cross, she heard her own voice repeating the Confession of Faith, the organ pealing the Hymn of Praise, the lights, the Presence! With a cry of anguish she fell on her knees.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, have pity!”
Then a deep, tender voice filled the chapel—the voice of Father Cabello.
24
Father Cabello was a mystic. Brought up within the walls of a monastery, dedicated to Heaven from his birth, he saw the will of God in every event of his kaleidoscopic existence. He had travelled much, studied much, with the one ever-dominating ambition, which slowly but inevitably came to its fulfillment. The Gonzola family, with money and influence, had in those two generations been a great Catholic influence in America. Father Cabello was the power behind it. He had sustained Mrs. Gonzola, that devout, pious woman, in her awful struggles with Joseph Abravanel. He loved Julie, held himself responsible for her soul. He would save her, as he had saved her mother.
He had been ill in Rome, stricken down with fever, caught in the unsanitary quarters, trying to improve the deplorable condition of the people; he went down under a hopeless task. Many a night, seated at his luxurious table, with its rich appointments, its costly wines, a terrible thought would come again and again: Was the poverty of its children a curse laid upon the Holy City, for the generations of intolerance—its auto-da-fé, its crusades? He tried to drive those haunting spirits away; he was not the Judge, only an insignificant part of an indestructible Institution, a symbol, the moulded image of an Iron Will. Delirium consumed him. He was for weeks near death; then came very slowly back to life. Lying on his flowered terrace, the great panorama of Rome before him, he thought of Julie. She had written to him often after he left America, but her letters grew less frequent. Before his sickness he had received a short note from Mary, telling of Julie’s second collapse and her trip to Switzerland: the arsenic waters at the Val Sinestra had helped her wonderfully; the cure would end July twenty-second. There was apparently nothing to cause uneasiness in the letter.
Father Cabello was ostensibly of Jesuit origin, but he possessed a much older secret inheritance from the time when his ancestors were noble Spanish-Maranos, deeply versed in deception and the Talmud. He scented the trail of disaster. Why had not Julie written to him herself? Why had she travelled to Europe without her husband, her child? Why? Why?
The doctors advised him to go on a visit to America, where the climate would drive the malaria out of his system. He refused; his strength was not equal to so long a journey. Then they advised Disentis in Switzerland—one of the few strong-holds left to the Church. He was haunted with the thought of Julie. He would go to the Val Sinestra and see for himself.
Disentis—its crumbling piles of stone, monasteries of the seventh century, its stillness, its health-giving air, the wonderful healing waters, gushing from the earth into natural rock basins, hollowed out by Nature’s hand, the frugal fare, the rising at the first glimpse of dawn, the pervading sweetness of the bells, prayer, which had a new sanctity, as if nearer the Divine Fount—there he gained new spiritual inspiration, new physical strength—there during the summer months the Benedictine Friars welcome their brothers from all corners of the world. Father Cabello clasped hands with monks of many orders. The Trappists appealed strongly to his affection—bare-footed, humble, rich in knowledge; he never tired listening to their many colored experiences. He was eagerly questioned about America, “the land of unbounded possibilities.” He had a store of humorous stories, which were greeted with low chuckles and spasmodic movements of the diaphragm.
Walking with the Father Superior one day, in the surrounding woods, that benign forest which protects the children of God from the avalanche, Father Cabello asked about Val Sinestra and how he could get there.