"That if necessary you must face death, imprisonment, starvation in His Name? That you must own nothing, value nothing which might tend to lessen your love for Him?"
"Yes."
"Are you strong, Dane?"
"I am a man, Your Eminence. I am first a man. It will b[*thorn] hard, I know. But I pray that with His help I shall find the strength."
"Must it be this, Dane? Will nothing less than this content you?" "Nothing."
"And if later on you should change your mind, what would you do?" "Why, I should ask to leave," said Dane, surprised. "If I changed my mind it would be because I had genuinely mistaken my vocation, for no other reason. Therefore I should ask to leave. I wouldn't be loving Him any less, but I'd know this isn't the way He means me to serve Him."
"But once your final vows are taken and you are ordained, you realize there can be no going back, no dispensation, absolutely no release?" "I understand that," said Dane patiently. "But if there is a decision to be made, I will have come to it before then." Cardinal Ralph leaned back in his chair, sighed. Had he ever been that sure? Had he ever been that strong? "Why to me, Dane? Why did you want to come to Rome? Why not have remained in Australia?" "Mum suggested Rome, but it had been in my mind as a dream for a long time. I never thought there was enough money."
"Your mother is very wise. Didn't she tell you?" "Tell me what, Your Eminence?"
"That you have an income of five thousand pounds a year and many thousands of pounds already in the bank in your own name?" Dane stiffened. "No. She never told me."
"Very wise. But it's there, and Rome is yours if you want. Do you want Rome?"
"Yes."
"Why do you want me, Dane?"
"Because you're my conception of the perfect priest, Your Eminence." Cardinal Ralph's face twisted. "No, Dane, you can't look up to me as that. I'm far from a perfect priest. I have broken all my vows, do you understand? I had to learn what you already seem to know in the most painful way a priest can, through the breaking of my vows. For I refused to admit that I was first a mortal man, and only after that a priest."
"Your Eminence, it doesn't matter," said Dane softly. "What you say doesn't make you any less my conception of the perfect priest. I think you don't understand what I mean, that's all. I don't mean an inhuman automaton, above the weaknesses of the flesh. I mean that you've suffered, and grown. Do I sound presumptuous? I don't intend to, truly. If I've offended you, I beg your pardon. It's isn't that it's so hard to express my thoughts! What I mean is that becoming a perfect priest must take years, terrible pain, and all the time keeping before you an ideal, and Our Lord."
The telephone rang; Cardinal Ralph picked it up in a slightly unsteady hand, spoke in Italian.
"Yes, thank you, we'll come at once." He got to his feet. "It's time for afternoon tea, and we're to have it with an old, old friend of mine. Next to the Holy Father he's probably the most important priest in the Church. I told him you were coming, and he expressed a wish to meet you."
"Thank you, Your Eminence."
They walked through corridors, then through pleasant gardens quite unlike Drogheda's, with tall cypresses and poplars, neat rectangles of grass surrounded by pillared walkways, mossy flagstones; past Gothic arches, under Renaissance bridges. Dane drank it in, loving it. Such a different world from Australia, so old, perpetual.
It took them fifteen minutes at a brisk pace to reach the palace; they entered, and passed up a great marble staircase hung with priceless tapestries.
Vittorio Scarbanza, Cardinal di Contini-Verchese was sixty-six now, his body partially crippled by a rheumatic complaint, but his mind as intelligent and alert as it had always been. His present cat, a Russian blue named Natasha, was curled purring in his lap. Since he couldn't rise to greet his visitors he contented himself with a wide smile, and beckoned them. His eyes passed from Ralph's beloved face to Dane O'neill and widened, narrowed, fixed on him stilly. Within his chest he felt his heart falter, put the welcoming hand to it in an instinctive gesture of protection, and sat staring stupidly up at the younger edition of Ralph de Bricassart. "Vittorio, are you all right?" Cardinal Ralph asked anxiously, taking the frail wrist between his fingers, feeling for a pulse. "A little passing pain, no more. Sit down, sit down!"
"First, I'd like you to meet Dane O'neill, who is as I told you the son of a very dear friend of mine. Dane, this is His Eminence Cardinal di Contini-Verchese."
Dane knelt, pressed his lips to the ring; over his bent tawny head Cardinal Vittorio's gaze sought Ralph's face, scanned it more closely than in many years. Very slightly he relaxed; she had never told him, then. And he wouldn't suspect, of course, what everyone who saw them together would instantly surmise. Not father-son, of course, but a close relationship of the blood. Poor Ralph! He had never seen himself walk, never watched the expressions on his own face, never caught the upward flight of his own left eyebrow. Truly God was good, to make men so blind. "Sit down. The tea is coming. So, young man! You wish to be a priest, and have sought the assistance of Cardinal de Bricassart?" "Yes, Your Eminence."
"You have chosen wisely. Under his care you will come to no harm. But you look a little nervous, my son. Is it the strangeness?" Dane smiled Ralph's smile, perhaps minus conscious charm, but so much Ralph's smile it caught at an old, tired heart like a passing flick from barbed wire. "I'm overwhelmed, Your Eminence. I hadn't realized quite how important cardinals are. I never dreamed I'd be met at the airport, or be having tea with you."
"Yes, it is unusual .... Perhaps a source of trouble, I see that. Ah, here is our tea!" Pleased, he watched it laid out, lifted an admonishing finger. "Ah, no! I shall be "mother." How do you take your tea, Dane?" "The same as Ralph," he answered, blushed deeply. "I'm sorry, Your Eminence, I didn't mean to say that!"