“Perhaps far worse,” said the priest. “You do not know her temptations, her enlightenment, her instruction; she may have been weak and wretched, rather than deliberately wicked; you don’t know. But you, clear-eyed, instructed, independent, able to look after yourself, you are dallying deliberately with good and evil, weighing both. If you denied your God what excuse would you give Him when you saw Him at last? That man tells you to come out from the Church bravely! Bravely! Faugh! That is not courage; it is cowardice, the coward who will not face pain for the sake of the Lord Who bore so much for her! A coward, I tell you! And do you realize that this country of ours is honeycombed with the divorce evil? That homes are wrecked, children made destitute, men and women sunk into vileness because they will not be denied their successive fancies, and that they profane marriage because they will not bear the brand of their true label? Will you tolerate the idea of joining their ranks, of helping to spread the poison which eats away the very foundation of civilization? And then call that brave? Benedict Arnold tried to betray Washington and the gate to the north. What would your treason betray? You are disloyal, even to your land, when you do not set your face against that which is undermining her. Don’t let yourself call your temptation by pretty names. It is not courage, but cowardice. It is not being married by a magistrate, for they cannot marry; it is being licensed to be called Mrs. Rodney Moore, but remaining the shamed Cicely Adair.”
“Father Morley,” poor Cicely’s voice shook with dry sobs, “don’t you see? Rod is great; he is not bad. Didn’t God Himself give him to me to love?”
“Possibly; I don’t say no,” said the priest gently. “There are many strange ways by which souls are led home. But decidedly God did not give Rodney to you to marry, for he is not free to marry, and God does not want you to help Rodney to go lower. Perhaps he is given you to love and to save by sacrificing for him your happiness; it looks to me probable. Evidently Rodney has good in him, or he would not have told you that he was married, until he had you in his power. I can see how you love him when you can entertain an idea so repugnant to you as denying your Faith for him. This is your way of salvation, and in taking the right turn you can offer to God your pain; it will plead for grace for Rodney, cut off from it by his own act.”
“I thought of that, Father,” whispered Cis. “But, oh—never to see him? Never, never? This is my engagement ring; Rodney made the design; I am a Christmas child.”
The priest bent forward better to see it; his vision was short.
“A beautiful ring, my child; a beautiful design, beautifully wrought, but I see in it far more than the Christmas thought of your nativity which Rodney Moore meant to embody. It is the ring of prophecy. Red, the color of the martyrs; the heart’s blood upheld by thorns, but therein glowing and burning celestially. Yes, my child, it is indeed your betrothal ring!”
Cis lifted her hand closer to her own eyes, dimmed with tears, and studied the ring as if it were new to her. Her hand shook so that the beautiful ruby emitted gleams of light, emphasizing the priest’s interpretation of it. Its wearer’s grief made it more beautiful.
For some time there was silence in the bare little parlor. Father Morley spoke no word; he left Cicely to absorb the words which he had spoken to her, spoken in his low, thrilling voice, straight to her soul. He ran through his fingers the beads of the rosary which hung from the black braid girdle that strapped his cassock, not speaking, praying for the soul before him fighting, tossing on black waters into which he could not enter. As each soul must struggle alone in mortal danger, seizing or rejecting aid, so this priest could only stand on the shore ready with powerful help, but he could not force the issue.
At last Father Morley arose and crossed the narrow room. He took from the wall a crucifix which Cicely had not noticed in taking account of its furnishings; it hung back of where she was sitting. It was a rare, a wonderful crucifix; the livid Figure upon it was marvellously carved with an expression of utter agony, dominated by a supreme love. This crucifix the Jesuit took from its nail, and, coming back, he bent over Cicely, holding out to her the cross.
She dropped her shaking hands into her lap, and lifted her eyes, first to the crucifix, then, piteously, to the kind, insistent face above it which looked down on her with pity yet with the assurance of awaiting good in the deep-set eyes.