The Cardinal's Snuff Box

"God help them, indeed," said Peter.

"And the little girl, with her medal of the Immaculate

Conception. The father, after all, can hardly be the brute one

might suspect, since he has given them a religious education.

Oh, I am sure, I am sure, it was the Blessed Virgin herself who

sent us across their path, in answer to that poor little

creature's prayers."

"Yes," said Peter, ambiguously perhaps. But he liked the way

in which she united him to herself in the pronoun.

"Which, of course," she added, smiling gravely into his eyes,

"seems the height of absurdity to you?"

"Why should it seem the height of absurdity to me?" he asked.

"You are a Protestant, I suppose?"

"I suppose so. But what of that? At all events, I believe

there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of

in the usual philosophies. And I see no reason why it should

not have been the Blessed Virgin who sent us across their

path."

"What would your Protestant pastors and masters do, if they

heard you? Isn't that what they call Popish superstition?"

"I daresay. But I'm not sure that there's any such thing as

superstition. Superstition, in its essence, is merely a

recognition of the truth that in a universe of mysteries and

contradictions, like ours, nothing conceivable or inconceivable

is impossible."

"Oh, no, no," she objected. "Superstition is the belief in

something that is ugly and bad and unmeaning. That is the

difference between superstition and religion. Religion is the

belief in something that is beautiful and good and significant

--something that throws light into the dark places of life--that

helps us to see and to live."

"Yes," said Peter, "I admit the distinction." After a little

suspension, "I thought," he questioned, "that all Catholics

were required to go to Mass on Sunday?"

"Of course--so they are," said she.

"But--but you--" he began.

"I hear Mass not on Sunday only--I hear it every morning of my

life."

"Oh? Indeed? I beg your pardon," he stumbled. "I--one--one

never sees you at the village church."

"No. We have a chapel and a chaplain at the castle."

She mounted her bicycle.

"Good-bye," she said, and lightly rode away.

"So-ho! Her bigotry is not such a negligible quantity, after

all," Peter concluded.

"But what," he demanded of Marietta, as she ministered to his

wants at dinner, "what does one barrier more or less matter,

when people are already divided by a gulf that never can be

traversed? You see that river?" He pointed through his open

window to the Aco. "It is a symbol. She stands on one side of

it, I stand on the other, and we exchange little jokes. But

the river is always there, flowing between us, separating us.

She is the daughter of a lord, and the widow of a duke, and the

fairest of her sex, and a millionaire, and a Roman Catholic.

What am I? Oh, I don't deny I 'm clever. But for the rest?

. . . My dear Marietta, I am simply, in one word, the victim

of a misplaced attachment."