There! Now never say I didn"t trust you."
In the first shock of this fall from her antic.i.p.ations Aunt Bell neglected to remember that All is Good. Yet she was presently far enough mollified to accompany her niece to the station.
Returning from thence after she had watched Nancy through the gate to the 3:05 Edom local, Aunt Bell lingered at the open study door of the rector of St. Antipas. He looked up cordially.
"You know, Allan, it may do the child good, after all, to be alone a little while."
"Nancy--has--not--pleased--me!" The words were clean-cut, with an illuminating pause after each, so that Aunt Bell might by no chance mistake their import, yet the tone was low and not without a quality of winning sweetness--the tone of the injured good.
"I"ve seen that, Allan. Nance undoubtedly has a vein of selfishness.
Instead of striving to please her husband, she--well, she has practically intimated to me that a wife has the right to please herself.
Of course, she didn"t say it brutally in just those words, but--"
"It"s the modern spirit, Aunt Bell--the spirit of unbelief. It has made what we call the "new woman"--that noxious flower on the stalk of scientific materialism."
He turned and wrote this phrase rapidly on a pad at his elbow, while Aunt Bell waited expectantly for more.
"There"s a sermon that writes itself, Aunt Bell. "Woman"s deterioration under Modern Infidelity to G.o.d." As truly as you live, this thing called the "new woman" has grown up side by side with the thing called the higher criticism. And it"s natural. Take away G.o.d"s word as revealed in the Scriptures and you make woman a law unto herself. Man"s state is then wretched enough, but contemplate woman"s! Having put aside Christ"s authority, she naturally puts aside _man"s_, hence we have the creature who mannishly desires the suffrage and attends club meetings and argues, and has views--_views_, Aunt Bell, on the questions of the day--the woman who, as you have just succinctly said of your niece, "believes she has a right to please herself!" There is the keynote of the modern divorce evil, Aunt Bell--she has a right to please herself. Believing no longer in G.o.d, she no longer feels bound by His commandment: "Wives be subject to your husbands!" Why, Aunt Bell, if you can imagine Christianity shorn of all its other glories, it would still be the greatest religion the world has ever known, because it holds woman sternly in her sphere and maintains the sanct.i.ty of the home. Now, I know nothing of the real state of Nancy"s faith, but the fact that she believes she has a right to please herself is enough to convince me. I would stake my right arm this moment, upon just this evidence, that Nancy has become an unbeliever. When I let her know as plainly as English words can express it that she is not pleasing me, she looks either sullen or flippant--thus showing distinctly a loss of religious faith."
"You ought to make a stunning sermon of that, Allan. I think society needs it."
"It does, Aunt Bell, it does! And we are going from bad to worse. I foresee the time in this very age of ours when no woman will continue to be wife to a man except by the dictates of her own lawless and corrupt nature--when a wife will make so-called love her only rule--when she will brazenly disregard the law of G.o.d and the word of his only begotten crucified Son, unless she can continue to feel what she calls "love and respect" for the husband who chose her. We prize liberty, Aunt Bell, but liberty with woman has become license since she lost faith in the word of G.o.d that holds her subject to man. We should be thankful that the mother Church still stands firm on that rock--the rock of woman"s subjection to man. Our own Church has quibbled, Aunt Bell, but look at the fine consistency of the Church of Rome. As truly as you live, the Catholic Church will one day hold the only women who subject themselves to their husbands in all things because of G.o.d"s command--regardless of their anarchistic desire to "please themselves." There is the only Christian Church left that knows woman is a creature to be ruled with an iron hand--and has the courage to send them to h.e.l.l for "pleasing themselves.""
He glowed in meditation a moment, then, in a burst of confidence, continued:
"This is not to be repeated, Aunt Bell, but I have more than once questioned if I should always allow the Anglo-Catholic Church to modify my true Catholicism. I have talked freely with Father Riley of St.
Clements at our weekly ministers" meetings--there"s a bright chap for you--and really, Aunt Bell, as to mere universality, the Church of Rome has about the only claim worth considering. Mind you, this is not to be repeated, but I am often so much troubled that I have to fall back on my simple childish faith in the love of the Father earned of him for me by the Son"s death on the cross. But what if I err in making my faith too simple? Even now I am almost persuaded that a priest ordained into the Episcopal Church cannot consecrate the elements of the Eucharist in a sacrificial sense. Doubts like these are tragedies to an honest man, Aunt Bell--they try his soul--they bring him each day to the foot of that cross whereon the Son of G.o.d suffers his agony in order to ransom our souls from G.o.d"s wrath with us--and there are times, Aunt Bell, when I find myself gazing longingly, like a little tired child, at the open arms of the mother Church--on whose loving bosom of authority a man may lay all his doubts and be never again troubled in his mind."
Aunt Bell sighed cheerfully.
"After all," she said briskly, "isn"t Christianity the most fascinating of all beliefs, if one comes into it from the higher unbelief? Isn"t it fine, Allan--doesn"t the very thought excite you--that not only the souls of thousands now living, but thousands yet unborn, will be affected through all eternity for good or bad, by the clearness with which you, here at this moment, perceive and reason out these spiritual values--and the honesty with which you act upon your conclusions. How truly G.o.d has made us responsible for the souls of one another!"
The rector of St. Antipas shrugged modestly at this bald wording of his responsibility; then he sighed and bent his head as one honestly conscious of the situation"s gravity.
CHAPTER X
THE REASON OF A WOMAN WHO HAD NO REASON
It was not a jest--Nancy"s telling Aunt Bell that her reason for going to Edom was too foolish to give even to herself. At least such reticence to self is often sincerely and plausibly a.s.serted by the very inner woman. Yet no sooner had her train started than her secret within a secret began to tell itself: at first in whispers, then low like a voice overheard through leafy trees; then loud and louder until all the noise of the train did no more than confuse the words so that only she could hear them.
When the exciting time of this listening had gone and she stepped from the train into the lazy spring silence of the village, her own heart spelled the thing in quick, loud, hammering beats--a thing which, now that she faced it, was so wildly impossible that her cheeks burned at the first second of actual realisation of its enormity; and her knees weakened in a deathly tremble, quite as if they might bend embarra.s.singly in either direction.
Then in the outer s.p.a.ces of her mind there grew, to save her, a sense of her cra.s.s fatuity. She was quickly in a carriage, eager to avoid any acquaintance, glad the driver was no village familiar who might amiably seek to regale her with gossip. They went swiftly up the western road through its greening elms to where Clytie kept the big house--her own home while she lived, and the home of the family when they chose to go there.
At last, the silent, cool house with its secretive green shutters rose above her; the wheels made their little crisping over the fine metal of the driveway. She hastily paid the man and was at the side door that opened into the sitting-room. As she put her hand to the k.n.o.b she was conscious of Clytie pa.s.sing the window to open the door.
Then they were face to face over the threshold--Clytemnestra, of a matronly circ.u.mference, yet with a certain prim consciousness of herself, which despite the gray hair and the excellent maturity of her face, was unmistakably maidenish--Clytie of the eyes always wise to another"s needs and beaming with that fine wisdom.
She started back from the doorway by way of being playfully dramatic--her hands on her hips, her head to one side at an astounded angle. Yet little more than a second did she let herself simulate this welcoming incredulity--this stupefaction of cordiality. There must be quick speech--especially as to Nancy"s face--which seemed strangely unfamiliar, set, suppressed, breathless, unaccountably young--and there had to be the splendid announcement of another matter.
"Why, child, is it you or your ghost?"
Nancy could only nod her head.
"My suz! what ails the child?"
Here the other managed a shake of the head and a made smile.
"And of all things!--you"ll never, never, never guess!--"
"There--there!--yes, yes--yes! I know--know all about it--knew it--knew it last night--"
She had put out a hand toward Clytie and now reached the other from her side, easing herself to the doorpost against which she leaned and laughed, weakly, vacantly.
"Some one told you--on the way up?"
"Yes--I knew it, I tell you--that"s what makes it so funny and foolish--why I came, you know--" She had now gained a little in coherence, and with it came a final doubt. She steadied herself in the doorway to ask--"When did Bernal come?"
And Clytie, somewhat relieved, became voluble.
"Night before last on the six-fifteen, and me getting home late from the Epworth meeting--fire out--not a stick of kindling-wood in--only two cakes in the b.u.t.tery, neither of them a layer--not a frying-size chicken on the place--thank goodness he didn"t have the appet.i.te he used to--though in another way it"s just downright heartbreaking to see a person you care for not be a ready eater--but I had some of the plum jell he used to like, and the good half of an apple-John which I at once het up--and I sent Mehitty Lykins down for some chops--"
"Where is he?"
There had seemed to be a choking in the question. Clytie regarded her curiously.
"He was lying down up in the study a while ago--kicking one foot up in the air against the wall, with his head nearly off the sofy onto the floor, just like he used to--there--that"s his step--"
"I can"t see him now! Here--let me go into your room till I freshen and rest a bit--quick--"
Once more the indecisive knees seemed about to bend either way under their burden. With an effort of will she drew the amazed Clytie toward the open door of the latter"s bedroom, then closed it quickly, and stood facing her in the dusk of the curtained room.
"Clytie--I"m weak--it"s so strange--actually weak--I shake so--Oh, Clytie--I"ve got to cry!"
There was a mutual opening of arms and a head on Clytie"s shoulder, wet eyes close in a corner that had once been the good woman"s neck--and stifling sobs that seemed one moment to contract her body rigidly from head to foot--the next to leave it limp and falling. From the nursing shoulder she was helped to the bed, though she could not yet relax her arms from that desperate grip of Clytie"s neck. Long she held her so, even after the fit of weeping pa.s.sed, clasping her with arms in which there was almost a savage intensity--arms that locked themselves more fiercely at any little stirring of the prisoned one.
At last, when she had lain quiet a long time, the grasp was suddenly loosened and Clytie was privileged to ease her aching neck and cramped shoulders. Then, even as she looked down, she heard from Nancy the measured soft breathing of sleep. She drew a curtain to shut out one last ray of light, and went softly from the room.
Two hours later, as Clytemnestra attained ultimate perfection in the arrangement of four gla.s.s dishes of preserves and three varieties of cake upon her table--for she still kept to the sinfully complex fare of the good old simple days--Nancy came out. Clytie stood erect to peer anxiously over the lamp at her.
"I"m all right--you were a dear to let me sleep. See how fresh I am."
"You do look pearter, child--but you look different from when you came.
My suz! you looked so excited and kind of young when I opened that door, it give me a start for a minute--I thought I"d woke out of a dream and you was a Miss in short skirts again. But now--let me see you closer."
She came around the table, then continued: "Well, you look fresh and sweet and some rested, and you look old and reasonable again--I mean as old as you had ought to look. I never did know you to act that way before, child. My neck ain"t got the crick out of it yet."