“No, I can’t pretend even to the negative glory of a struggle. I am ashamed to say the desire was a mere transient caprice. I got the length of spending ten days learning the language, and by that time the dirt and stupidity and cruelty of the neophytes had done for my apostolic vocation; the debased condition of the poor creatures was brought home to me so fearfully that I gave it up in disgust. I dare say it was very cowardly, very selfish; but, looking back on it, I can’t help feeling that the savages had no great loss. It takes more than an impulse of emotional pity to make a hero of the Francis Xavier type; one can’t be an apostle by mere willing and wishing.”
“Yes, but one can,” denied Franceline; “that is just the one kind of hero that it only wants will to be. One cannot be a warrior or a poet, or that kind of thing, because that requires genius; but one may be a martyr or an apostle simply by willing. Love is the only genius that one wants; it was love that turned the twelve fishermen into apostles and heroes, you know.”
“Just so; but I didn’t love the savages.”
“Perhaps you would if you had tried.”
“Do you think it is possible to love any one by trying?”
“Well, I don’t know; if they were very unhappy and wanted my love very much, I think I might.”
Clide stole a quick glance at her; but Franceline was peeling a pear, and evidently an undue portion of her thoughts were concentrated on that operation and a care not to let the juice run on her fingers. “Then you think it was very wicked of me not to have loved those savages?” he began again.
“I don’t say it was wicked. If they were so very dirty and cruel, it must have been hard enough; but you might have found another tribe that would have been more lovable, and that wanted quite as much to be civilized and converted—nice, simple savages, like wild flowers or dumb animals, that would have been docile and grateful, perhaps revengeful too; but then when they were Christians they would have conquered that—”
Clide laughed outright.
“I don’t think your vocation for converting the savages is so very much superior to mine,” he said; “it certainly would not have lived through my three days’ novitiate.”