The Heavenly Twins Part 46

She sat for some time, looking down at the floor, and lost in thought when she had said this; and then, rousing herself, she turned to Father Ricardo, "I had a fit of Roman Catholicism once myself," she said to him, pleasantly, "I enjoyed it very much while it lasted. But you do a great deal of harm, you clergy! In the first place you begin by setting up Christ as an ideal of perfect manhood, and then you proceed to demolish him as a possible example, by maintaining that he was not a man, but a G.o.d, and therefore a being whom it is beyond the power of man to imitate!

Oh, you terrible, terrible clergy! You preach the parable of the buried talents, and side by side with that you have always insisted that women should put theirs away; and you have soothed their sensitive consciences with the dreadful cant of obedience--not obedience to the moral law, but obedience to the will of man; for what moral law could be affected by the higher education of women?"

"The Anglican Church is rather countenancing the higher education of women, is it not?" said Mr. Kilroy.

"You don't put it properly," Ideala answered. "Women, after a hard battle, secured for themselves their own higher education, and now that it is being found to answer, the churches are coming in to claim the credit.

Dear, how rapidly reforms are carried out when we take them in hand ourselves!" she exclaimed. "All the spiritual power is ours, and while we refuse to know, it must be wasted for want of direction."

"But that is what you reject," said Father Ricardo. "The Church is ever ready to direct her children."

"For her own advantage, and very badly," Ideala answered. "Does her direction ever benefit the human race generally, or anybody but herself in particular? Every great reform has been forced on the Church from outside.

Just consider the state of degradation, and the dense ignorance of the people of every country upon which the curse of Catholicism rests!

'Wherever churches and monasteries abound the people are backward' it is written. Just lately, there has been a little revival of Catholicism, a flash in the pan, here in England, due to Cardinal Newman and Cardinal Manning, who introduced some good old Protestant virtues into your teaching; but that cannot last. You carry the instrument of your own destruction along with you in the degrading exercises with which you seek to debase our beautiful, wonderful, perfectible human nature."

"But the Church has done all that is possible for the people," Father Ricardo began lamely. "The Church has always taught, for one thing, that the labourer is worthy of his hire."

"But the Church never used its influence to make the hire worthy of the labourer; instead of that, it has always sought to grind the last penny out of the people, and then it pauperized them with alms," said Ideala.

"Why have the priests done so little good, Uncle Dawne?" Diavolo asked.

"Because they are no better than other people," was the answer, "and when they get money they use it just as everybody else does, to strengthen their own position, and make a display with."

"Ah, the terrible mistake it has been, this making a paid profession of the doing of good!" Ideala exclaimed.

Angelica, who had put her arm round Diavolo again, and was sitting with her head against his, listening gravely, now looked at Ideala: "I want to know where the true spirit of G.o.d is," she said.

"I can tell you," Ideala answered fearlessly. "It is in us _women_.

_We_ have preserved it, and handed it down from one generation to another of our own s.e.x unsullied; and very soon we shall be called upon to prove the possession of it, for already"--she turned to Father Ricardo here, and specially addressed him, speaking always in gentle tones, without emphasis--"already I--that is to say Woman--am a power in the land, while you--that is to say Priest--retain ever less and less even of the semblance of power.

"Pardon me, dear lady," the priest replied; "but it shocks me to hear you a.s.sume such an arrogant tone."

"I don't think the tone was in the least arrogant," Angelica put in briskly; "and, at any rate, it's your own tone exactly, for I've heard you say as much and more, speaking of the priesthood."

"Not exactly," Diavolo corrected her. "Father Ricardo always says: 'Heaven, for some great inscrutable purpose, has mercifully vouchsafed this wondrous power to us, poor'--or humble or unworthy; the first adjective of that kind he can catch--'priests.' I like the short way of putting it myself."

"But why do you always try to make out that it is our duty to be _miserable_ sinners?" Angelica asked.

"If we taught ourselves to be happy in this world, we should grow to love it too much, and then we should not strive to win the next."

"And that would impoverish the Church?" Diavolo suggested.

"But why not let _us_ be happy, and you raise money in some other way?" Angelica wanted to know. "Miracles--now I should try some miracles; a miracle must be much better than a bazaar to raise the funds."

"Oh, but you forget the nunneries Father Ricardo was telling us about the other day," Diavolo said; "the austere orders where they only live a few years, you know."

"I had forgotten for the moment, but I read up the subject at the time, and found out that when the nuns die all their money remains in the Church; is that what you mean?" said the practical Angelica.

"Yes," said Diavolo. "You see, it would hardly cost ten s.h.i.+llings a week to keep a nun, and of course," he said to Father Ricardo, "the more fasting you counsel the less outlay there would be; so I don't wonder you promise them more goodies in the next world, the more austerities they practise in this."

"It must really work like a provision of nature for the enrichment of Holy Church--so many nuns worked off on the prayer and fasting mill per annum, so many unenc.u.mbered fortunes added to the establishment," Angelica observed.

_"Jerusalem!_" said Diavolo. "How easy it is to gull the public!"

The Heavenly Twins had been speaking in a confidential tone, as if they were behind the scenes with Father Ricardo, and now they watched him, seeming to wait for him to wink--at least, that was how Dr. Galbraith afterward interpreted the look. Nothing of this kind coming to pa.s.s, however, they, both got up, and both together strolled out of the room, yawning undisguisedly.

"That child, Angelica, will be one of us," Ideala whispered to Lord Dawne.

"Yes," he answered gravely; "They will both be of us eventually; only we must make no move, but wait in patience 'Until the day break, and the shadows flee away.'"

CHAPTER IV.

There was much high talk of doing good and living for others at Morne in these days, to which the twins listened attentively. It is evident from the thoughts they expressed at this time that the minds of both were in a state of fermentation, and that the more active pursuits in which they still indulged occasionally were the mere outcome of habit. When the conversation was interesting, they would sit beside Father Ricardo (whom they insisted on cla.s.sing with themselves as an inferior being) and watch the speakers by the hour together, and Father Ricardo too, gauging his moral temperature, and noting every sigh of pity or s.h.i.+ver of disapprobation that shook his sensitive frame.

"Where does it hurt you, _dear?_" Diavolo asked him once. "I know you are a bad, bad man, because you say so yourself--"

"I never said so!" Father Ricardo exclaimed with a puzzled air.

"Well, you said you were a miserable sinner, not worthy, _et cetera_, and it comes to the same thing," Diavolo rejoined; "and I don't wonder you are disheartened when you see how impossible it is for you to be as disinterestedly good as Uncle Dawne and Dr. Galbraith. I feel so myself sometimes."

"Oh, I hope I am disinterested," Father Ricardo protested.

"I can't make it out if you are," said Diavolo, shaking his head. "You don't seem to love goodness for its own sake, but for the reward here and hereafter. The whole system you preach is one of reward and punishment."

Father Ricardo had an innocent hobby. He was fond of old china, and had made a beautiful collection, with the help of such friends as Lord Dawne, Dr. Galbraith, and Lady Adeline Hamilton-Wells, who never failed to bring him back any good specimen they might find in the course of their travels.

One day at this time, after the talk had been running, as usual, upon self-sacrifice and living for others, he invited the whole party to inspect his collection; and they all went, with the exception of the Heavenly Twins, who were not to be found at the moment. When the others reached the room in which Father Ricardo kept his treasures, however, they were surprised to find the cabinets comparatively speaking bare, and with great gaps on the shelves as if someone had been weeding them indiscriminately. The good Father looked very blank at first; but the windows were wide open, and before he could think what had happened, a noise on the lawn below attracted everybody's attention, and on looking out to see what was the matter, they beheld the Heavenly Twins apparently intent upon organizing a revel. They were very busy at the moment, and had been for some hours evidently, for they had collected an organ man with a monkey; a wandering musician with a harp; a man with a hammer who had been engaged in breaking stones; a Punch and Judy party, consisting of a man, woman, and boy, with their Toby-dog; five christy minstrels in their war paint; a respectable looking mechanic with his wife and three children who were tramping from one place to another in search of work; and a blind beggar; and all these were seated in more or less awkward and constrained att.i.tudes on easy-chairs, covered with satin, velvet, or brocade, about the lawn, with little tables before them on which was spread all the cooked food, apparently, that the castle contained. When their admiring relatives first caught sight of the twins, Angelica--who had coiled up her hair, and wore a long black dress, borrowed from her Aunt Fulda's wardrobe; a white ap.r.o.n with a bib, and a white cap like a nurse's, the property of one of the lady's maids--was pouring tea out of a silver urn, and Diavolo, in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves, with a serviette under his arm like a waiter in a restaurant, was standing beside her with a salver in his hand, waiting to carry it to the mechanic's lady.

"What on earth are you children doing?" Lord Dawne exclaimed.

"Feeding the hungry, sir," Diavolo drawled cheerfully.

"Well," groaned the poor priest, "you needn't have taken all my best china for that purpose."

"We did that, sir," Diavolo replied with dignity, "in order that you, all unworthy as you are, might have the pleasure of partic.i.p.ating in this good work. But, there!" he said to Angelica, "I told you he wouldn't appreciate it!"

To the credit of the Heavenly Twins and their guests, it must be recorded that no harm happened either to the china or the plate.

The next day was a Saint's day, and the children announced at breakfast that they intended to keep it. They said they were going to compose a religion for themselves out of all the most agreeable practices enjoined by other religions, and they proposed to begin by making that day a holiday.

Mr. Ellis would have remonstrated at the waste of time, and Father Ricardo at the absence of proper intention, but the way the twins had put the proposition happened to amuse the duke, and therefore they gained their point. But, having gained it, they did not know very well what to do with themselves. Angelica wouldn't make plans. She was thinking of the long dress she had worn the day before, and feeling a vague desire to have her own lengthened; and she wanted also to take that mysterious packet known as her "work" to her Aunt Fulda's sitting room, where the ladies usually spent the morning, so as to be with them, but she knew that Diavolo would scorn her if she did; and the outcome of all this vagueness of intention was a fit of excessive irritability. She wanted sympathy, but without being aware of the fact herself, and the way she set about obtaining it was by being excessively disagreeable to everybody. There was a rose in a gla.s.s beside her plate, and she took it out, and began to twiddle it between her fingers and thumb impatiently, till she managed to p.r.i.c.k herself with the thorns, and then she complained of the pain.

"Oh, that sort of thing doesn't hurt much," Diavolo declared.

"It _does_ hurt," she maintained aggressively; "and pain is pain, whether the seat of it be your head, heart, or hind-quarters."

"_Angelica!_" Lady Fulda exclaimed with tragic emphasis. "Someone must really talk to you _seriously!_ you are positively _vulgar!_"