He wanted to take their picture! The nuns were completely at sea. Why should this stranger, this man with queer apparel and strange speech, want their picture? They possessed only one—the portrait of Our Lady of Mercy above the little altar of the chapel—and why should any one want a thing that so obviously it was impossible for them to give? Bewildered, they looked from one to another. Sister Rose, being the youngest and most mentally alert, became aware of the sacerdotal character of their visitor: the gold cross at the end of his chain, the wide-bordered felt hat which he waved so gracefully, the neat black clothes, the breviary that bulged from his pocket; but, more than all, the expression of his smiling face and gentle, near-sighted eyes.
“He is a priest—see you not?” she said excitedly. “His dress, his manner, bespeak it. He comes from some foreign land. Alas! that the reverend Mother cannot speak with him in Latin!”
“It is true,” said Catalina. “Pardon, reverend Father,” she quavered, “I did not know! Our picture—you shall see it.”
She turned toward the chapel, but the visitor waved her back. The group before him was irresistible, just as they were. Catalina instinctively obeyed his gesture, marveling.
“Are—are there any more of you?” he inquired in his halting Spanish.
Now at last they understood. The reverend Father was making the rounds of the clerical houses in order to make his report to the bishop. That had happened once before. Sister Rose launched into explanations.
“No. We are all that are left, except the Mother Superior,” she told him. “We are allowed here on sufferance only, for as, of course, the reverend Father knows, the churches have all been taken by the state, and but for the reverend Mother, who was kinswoman to some one great in the land, we should have been sent forth. Alas! our numbers have dwindled—grave upon grave we have made, each nun for herself, and now all are filled save five. We have not, it is quite true, turned the holy sod of our last sleeping-places as often as is the rule; but we have grown old, and the work is hard—”
It was the lecturer’s turn to be utterly confused and routed; the sudden change of manner, the deference shown to him all at once; above all the avalanche of Spanish was too much for him, but he still retained his amateur photographer’s zeal. With a hand raised to draw their attention, but which the nuns mistook for pastoral blessing, he steadied the camera against his narrow chest, and snapped a second picture. With a polite “Thank you” and a sigh of satisfaction, he wound the reel, heartily regretting the while that the limits of the camera’s focus must necessarily leave out the perfection of the setting—the towering, smoking peak of the Volcan de Fuego on the right, stained red and yellow by its sulphurous outpourings, and the menacing green inactivity of Agua’s deadly summit; all the gloom and glow of those earthquake-seamed walls, and tottering, carved gateways.
“Mil gracias!” He thanked them awkwardly. “I—well—goodness! how does one say it?” He seized upon the “Handy Spanish Phrases” again, and ran his finger down the line of camera sentences. “Please make me six prints.” “This is over-exposed.” “You have fogged the plate.”—“Tut, tut!” he exclaimed impatiently, “how in the world do you say ‘I’ll give you a blue-print’?—blue-print—blue-print—Ah! this will do. ‘An excellent portrait’—presented—for you,” he explained, and supplemented the statement with an elaborate pantomime. The nuns watched his gesticulations with breathless interest. He pointed to each in turn, made a circle around his own face, smiling blandly and nodding appreciation.