A visit from His Reverence the parroco was announced.
This heroic priest, accompanied by two acolytes bearing torches, had braved the downpour of ashes. He never shirked his duty. It was his duty that morning to confer with Mr. Parker anent the delayed funeral and other painfully material matters. For the deceased lady had not deserted the creed of her fathers; she was an ardent Catholic—so ardent that she professed great pain at her stepbrother's alien leanings and had taken considerable trouble to convert him to her own way of thinking. She used to say, in her flowery language, that his contumacious attitude towards the true Faith gnawed at her vitals—meaning, presumably, that it annoyed her. Often she pointed out how many social and other advantages they would gain—living in a Catholic country—if he, too, could bring himself to enter the field of believers. In vain! The Commissioner had a knack of being ultra-protestant on such occasions.
Not that he greatly cared to what Church he belonged. But if nobody made it worth his while—why, he remained an Englishman. He knew perfectly well that the parroco, his lady's confessor, was anxious to do something in the proselytizing line which might lower the prestige of Don Francesco. And he was clever enough to realize that, by embracing Catholicism at Torquemada's hands, he, the Official Representative of Nicaragua, would be putting a feather in the priest's cap. He was not going to put a feather in anybody's cap—not for nothing. It was not good enough. Some strong leader of nations had once remarked, "Every man his price." Mr. Parker liked that phrase; he was deeply convinced of its veracity. He also had his price, and once, in a moment of extreme financial embarrassment, he had delighted his stepsister by announcing that he was prepared to consider the question of conversion. He then named his price. It was a condition not to be expressed by such terms as a gratified church might have been able to concede—by some elevation to a higher sphere of influence or other worldly favour; it was a figure baldly commercial, expressible, that is, in pounds, shillings and pence.
"You've got some cheek, Freddy," was all she could bring herself to say.
"My dear Lola, he can take it or leave it," the Commissioner had replied, sulkily.
His Reverence never found himself in the odious dilemma of either taking it or leaving it, for the lady was wise enough not to divulge so ignoble a proposition.
But now, while the good priest uttered a few parting platitudes of condolence, the other was revolving in his mind how negotiations—direct negotiations, this time—could be opened up. He needed fifteen pounds; well, one might be able to do a little juggling with the Club money for that part of the business. It was necessary, above all, to devise some means whereby the Nicaraguan Government might be induced to keep him at his old post. Here was Torquemada. How could the fellow be turned to account?
"The Nuncio!" he suddenly thought. A Catholic republic like Nicaragua was sure to have a Papal Nuncio whatever that might be; and if he became a convert to the official faith of that country, the Nuncio would be delighted and might whisper in the ear of the President a few words commending his act and requesting that so good a servant of the Church should not be despoiled of his post. And if the President, himself a Catholic, could be brought to share this view, then he, Freddy Parker, could snap his fingers at the machinations of Senor Vergara's successor.
He decided to show some signs of devotion to what he had been accustomed to call the grossest of superstitions; to reveal symptoms of latent Roman proclivities. Grief seemed to have sharpened his wits, for an inspiration came to him. After the sordid and melancholy details of the funeral had been discussed yet again—it was to take place as soon as ever the state of the sky would allow of it—Mr. Parker, pointing to the blackened world outside, made an oracular remark.
"Something must be done," he said.