The spiritual uncertainty of Protestantism frightened her with its easy-going tolerance. She saw the doctrine of the English Church as a broad-pathed quagmire, through which one trod with individual and uncertain steps toward an individual and uncertain heaven; while Roman Catholicism, knowing neither tolerance nor uncertainty, indicated the only road, the safe and the narrow road to constitutional bliss.
Constantly Marie Fullerford tried to recall her old courage, the individual fortitude which had broken her loose from Roman Catholicism. But the old fortitude would not return. She yearned in her weakness for the guidance of the priest, for the infallible laws, for the infallible dogmas of an infallible hierarchy.
Her spiritual knees ached, and the hard hassock of Protestantism could not rest them. Stumbling, she desired to cast the heavy pack of her doubts at the feet of a father-confessor--of a father-confessor who would give one orders, definite commands: "Let your daughter sin no more. Let her return to her husband, expiate her offenses." No doubting there! No leaving of the individual case to individual judgment!
And yet--and yet Aliette's mother could not bring herself to answer Aliette's confession in the spirit of Rome. She herself had been so long free, so long undisciplined, that she wanted, desperately, to find the solution of this problem by the aid of that very love in which she had given herself to Andrew.
At last, in her uncertainty, she consulted with her eldest daughter.
Eva, without the slightest hesitation, forbade any answer at all. The colonel's lady, always adverse to her juniors, sided from the first definitely with Hector. Aliette, opined Eva, had brought disgrace upon the entire family. No fact that Mollie, no argument that her husband could adduce in the culprit's favor, availed to bend Mrs. Harold Martin's domestic rigidity; a rigidity socketed home on the two unshifting rocks of personal dislike and personal rectitude.
4
Meanwhile Moor Park, though spiritually less troubled than Clyst Fullerford, failed egregiously in presenting a united front to its domestic troubles. Hector, returning thither from a lonely holiday in Scotland, found Rear-Admiral Billy in quarter-deck mood, and the Rev. Adrian--invited for obvious reasons to dine without his Margery--uncomfortably silent through an interminable meal.
Purposely the admiral had staved off discussion of the matter at heart until the mastodontic dining-table should be cleared of its food. Now--the port decanter being in its third circulation--he drew back his chair from the board, screwed a cigar firmly between his bearded lips, and began:
"Well, Hector, you've had a couple of months to make up your mind. What are you going to do about Alie?"