There was a long pause, during which she watched her cousin narrowly.
He seemed to be thinking deeply, with eyes intent on the fire. She was so little prepared for the direction which his thought took that she was startled when he said at last with a sigh:--
"I do sometimes find myself envying the absolute authority with which the Roman Catholic Church speaks."
"Authority!" she repeated indignantly. "Do you mean that you wish to give up your individuality?"
"No; not that; but it must be of unspeakable comfort in times of mental doubt to repose on unquestioned and unquestionable authority."
Helen rose from her place by the fire and walked to the window. She felt that she was on very delicate ground, and she would gladly have escaped from the discussion could she have done so without the feeling of having evaded. She stood a moment looking out into the darkening street, dusky in the growing January twilight, bleak and dreary. Then with a sudden movement she went to her husband"s desk and took up a picture of her boy, a beautiful, manly little fellow of three years, of whom Philip was especially fond. Crossing to her cousin, she put the picture in his hand, at the same time turning up the electric light behind him.
"See," she said, with feminine adroitness. "I don"t think I"ve shown you this picture of Greyson."
He looked at it earnestly, and sighed.
"It is beautiful," said he. "Greyson is a son to be proud of and to love."
"Well?" she asked significantly.
"What do you mean?" returned he. "What has Greyson"s picture to do with what we were talking about?"
She took the photograph from his hand, extinguished the light, and walked back toward the desk. The room seemed darker than before now that the firelight only was left. Suddenly she turned, with an outburst almost pa.s.sionate:--
"O Philip!" she exclaimed. "Can"t you see? My son! Surely if there is anything in this world that is holy, that is entirely pure and n.o.ble, it is parentage. Do you suppose that all the churches in the world, with authority or without it, could make Grant and me feel that there is anything higher for us than to take our little son in our arms and thank G.o.d for him!"
He did not answer, and she controlled her emotion, smiling at her own extravagance, while she wiped away a tear. She kissed the picture, and put it in its place; then she returned to her chair by the fire.
"I don"t expect you to understand my feeling," she said. "You never can until you have a son of your own. If a little cherub like Grey puts his baby hands into your eyes and pulls your hair, you"ll suddenly discover that a good many of your old theories have evaporated."
"But, Cousin Helen," he began hesitatingly, "certainly there is often sin"--
She interrupted him indignantly.
"There is no sin in faithful, loving, self-respecting marriage," she insisted. "That is what I am talking about. It is the holiest thing on earth. Anything may be degraded. I"ve even heard of a burlesque of the sacrament. I don"t see why I shouldn"t speak frankly, Philip. You are in a state of mind that is morbid and self-tormenting. If you love a woman, tell her so honestly and clearly; and if she is a good woman and can love you, go down on your knees, and thank G.o.d."
He leaned his forehead on his hands, as if he were struggling with himself. The firelight shone on his rich hair, auburn like her own.
Helen watched him anxiously, wondering if she had said too much, and whether she were taking too great a responsibility in the advice she gave. Certainly anything must be good that took him out of his unhealthy mood.
"Come," she said, rising, and turning on the electric light again. "It is time for Grant to be at home, and for me to be dressing. We are to dine at the Bodewin Rangers to-night."
He put up his hand to arrest her, and said in a tone that wrung her heart:--
"But, Cousin Helen, I cannot speak of love to a woman until I am ready to give up for her my priestly calling."
"Until you are willing to give up your unwholesome idea of celibacy and asceticism, you mean."
"It would be sacrificing a principle to a pa.s.sion."
Helen sighed.
"I could reason with you," she returned, half-humorously, "but how shall I get on with all the Puritan ancestors who prevail in you and me! The thing that I say isn"t that you are to give up your notions about the celibacy of the priesthood in order to marry, but because they are unwholesome and abnormal. The thing that most closely links you to humanity is the thing that best fits you to be of use in the world."
He regarded her with a glance of painful intensity.
"But suppose," he suggested, "that the woman I loved could not love me?
Then I should come back to the church, and lay on the altar only a discarded and worthless sacrifice."
"Come back to the church!" she echoed. "You don"t leave it. If marriage takes you out of the church, then the sooner such a church is left the better! Do you realize what you are doing, Philip? Do you remember that you insult the good name of your mother by the view you take of marriage? I am sick of all this infamous condemnation of what to me is holy! If the church cannot rise to a n.o.ble and pure conception of it, the sooner the church is done away with, the better for mankind!"
"But you wrong the church," he interrupted eagerly. "The church makes marriage a sacrament; it recognizes its purity; it"--
"Then what are you doing," she burst in, "with your exceptions to the theory of the church? It is you who degrade it--Pardon me, cousin," she added in a calmer voice, coming to him and laying her fingers lightly on his shoulder. "I am speaking out of my heart. I have the shame of knowing that I once failed to realize how high and how n.o.ble a thing marriage is. I am older than you, and I have suffered as I hope you may never have to suffer; the end of it all is that I have learned that there is nothing else on earth so blessed as the real love of husband and wife. Of course," she concluded, as he would have interrupted, "I talk as a woman, and I cannot decide what you are to do. Only I would like you to believe that I would help you if I could, and that what I say of marriage is the thing which seems to me the truest thing on earth."
Then without waiting for reply, she went away and left him to his thoughts.
IX
HIS PURE HEART"S TRUTH Two Gentlemen of Verona, iv. 2.
"Who is Mr. Rangely?" Ashe inquired one morning at breakfast.
Mrs. Herman looked at her husband as if she expected him to reply, although the question had been addressed to her.
"Fred Rangely," Grant Herman answered, "is a writer. He writes for the magazines and is a newspaper man. He"s written one or two novels, and the first one was pretty successful. He"s written plays too."
Helen smiled.
"Grant is too good-natured to tell you what you really want to know,"
she commented. "Mr. Rangely was once in some sort a friend of his, in the old days when there was still something like an artistic brotherhood in Boston, and he can"t bear to say things that are not to his credit. Now I should have answered your question by saying that Fred Rangely is a warning."
"A what?" Ashe asked, while Herman sighed.
"A warning. A dozen years ago he was one of the most promising men about. He had made a good beginning, he was clever and popular, and both as a novelist and as a playwright we hoped for great things from him."
"And now?"
"Now he is a failure."
Herman looked up almost reprovingly.
"I don"t think he would recognize that," he observed.
"No, he wouldn"t; and that"s the worst of it. Ten years ago if anybody had said of Fred Rangely: "Here"s a fellow that has started out to do good work, but has found that there"s more money in sensationalism; who despises the popular taste and caters to it; who writes things he doesn"t believe for the newspapers and spends the money in running after society," he would have p.r.o.nounced such a fellow a cad. Now he would say: "Well, a man must live, you know; and the public will only pay for what it wants." It"s lamentable."
"You put it rather worse than it is," her husband responded. "We are all in the habit of judging men as if their degradation was deliberate, which as a matter of fact I suppose it never is. Rangely hasn"t coolly accepted the choice between honesty and Philistinism. It"s all come gradually."