But are you happy, Meggie? Is he good to you? Do you love him, this Luke O'neill? What kind of man is he, that you turned from me to him? What was it about him, an ordinary stockman, that you liked better than Enoch Davies or Liam O'Rourke or Alastair MacQueen? Was it that 1 didn't know him, that 1 couldmake no comparisons? Did you do it to torture me, Meggie, to pay me back? But why are there no children? What's the matter with the man, that he roams up and down the state like a vagabond and puts you to live with friends? No wonder you have no child; he's not with you long enough. Meggie, why? Why did you marry this Luke O'neill?
Turning, he made his way down from the Acropolis, and walked the busy streets of Athens. In the open-air markets around Evripidou Street he lingered, fascinated by the people, the huge baskets of kalamari and fish reeking in the sun, the vegetables and tinsel slippers hung side by side; the women amused him, their unashamed and open cooing over him, a legacy of a culture basically very different from his puritanical own. Had their unabashed admiration been lustful (he could not think of a better word) it would have embarrassed him acutely, but he accepted it in the spirit intended, as an accolade for extraordinary physical beauty. The hotel was on Omonia Square, very luxurious and expensive. Archbishop di Contini-Verchese was, sitting in a chair by his balcony windows, quietly thinking; as Bishop Ralph came in he turned his head, smiling. "In good time, Ralph. I would like to pray."
"I thought everything was settled? Are there sudden complications, Your Grace?"
"Not of that kind. I had a letter from Cardinal Monteverdi today, expressing the wishes of the Holy Father."
Bishop Ralph felt his shoulders tighten, a curious prickling of the skin around his ears. "Tell me."
"As soon as the talks are over-and they are over-I am to proceed to Rome. There I am to be blessed with the biretta of a cardinal, and continue my work in Rome under the direct supervision of His Holiness."
"Whereas I?"
"You will become Archbishop de Bricassart, and go back to Australia to fill my shoes as Papal Legate."
The prickling skin around his ears flushed red hot; his head whirled, rocked. He, a non-Italian, to be honored with the Papal Legation! It was unheard of! Oh, depend on it, he would be Cardinal de Bricassart yet! "Of course you will receive training and instruction in Rome first. That will take about six months, during which I will be with you to introduce you to those who are my friends. I want them to know you, because the time will come when I shall send for you, Ralph, to help me with my work in the Vatican."
"Your Grace, I can't thank you enough! It's due to you, this great chance." "God grant I am sufficiently intelligent to see when a man is too able to leave in obscurity, Ralph! Now let us kneel and pray. God is very good." His rosary beads and missal were sitting on a table nearby; hand trembling, Bishop Ralph reached for the beads and knocked the missal to the floor. It fell open at the middle. The Archbishop; who was closer to it, picked it up and looked curiously at the brown, tissue thin shape which had once been a rose.
"How extraordinary! Why do you keep this? Is it a memory of your home, or perhaps of your mother?" The eyes which saw through guile and dissimulation were looking straight at him, and there was no time to disguise his emotion, or his apprehension.
"No." He grimaced. "I want no memories of my mother."
"But it must have great meaning for you, that you store it so lovingly within the pages of the book most dear to you. Of what does it speak?" "Of a love as pure as that I bear my God, Vittorio. It does the book nothing but honor."
"That I deduced, because I know you. But the-love, does it endanger your love for the Church?"
"No. It was for the Church I forsook her, that I always will forsake her. I've gone so far beyond her, and I can never go back again."
"So at last I understand the sadness! Dear Ralph, it is not as bad as you think, truly it is not. You will live to do great good for many people, you will be loved by many people. And she, having the love which is contained in such an old, fragrant memory as this, will never want. Because you kept the love alongside the rose."
"I don't think she understands at all."
"Oh, yes. If you have loved her thus, then she is woman enough to understand. Otherwise you would have forgotten her, and abandoned this relic long since."
"There have been times when only hours on my knees have stopped me from leaving my post, going to her."
The Archbishop eased himself out of his chair and came to kneel beside his friend, this beautiful man whom he loved as he had loved few things other than his God and his Church, which to him were indivisible. "You will not leave, Ralph, and you know it well. You belong to the Church, you always have and you always will. The vocation for you is a true one. We shall pray now, and I shall add the Rose to my prayers for the rest of my life. Our Dear Lord sends us many griefs and much pain during our progress to eternal life. We must learn to bear it, I as much as you."
At the end of August Meggie got a letter from Luke to say he was in Townsville Hospital with Weil's disease, but that he was in no danger and would be out soon.
"So it looks like we don't have to wait until the end of the year for our holiday, Meg. I can't go back to the cane until I'm one hundred percent fit, and the best way to make sure I am is to have a decent holiday. So I'll be along in a week or so to pick you up. We're going to Lake Eacham on the Atherton Tableland for a couple of weeks, until I'm well enough to go back to work."