There were but few people in it at this hour, when dinner and the companionship of the weekly holiday occupied most of its frequenters. Those who were there were kneeling at the farther end of the deep building, before the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, or the Sacred Heart altar, or before the Pietà that stood near the sanctuary rail, just within it. A half dozen, or less, knelt before the candelabrum which held the votive candles; they had each lighted one, and were praying raptly that the boon which they implored by whispered prayer and representative little candle might be granted.
Cis went into a pew close to the door, and from habit, but without consciousness of her action, knelt and made the sign of the cross because she had just come into church. She had long ago fallen into the way of thus kneeling on entering, and, first of all prayers, repeating the Act of Contrition.
Now she began slowly, without knowing what she said, to whisper: “In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. O my God, I am heartily sorry that—” Her lips ceased moving; she could go no farther. Heartily sorry—for what?
Rodney Moore had a living wife; he was unhappy about it. So was she. She was sorry that this was so. There was that nice apartment which he had shown her, and those chairs; one was the chair for the lady of the house. What hurt her so? Was it her head? It did not seem to her that she had brought it with her, yet she felt a terrible pain; it seemed to be in her head. What was it she had to think about? Rodney was not dead. Why did she feel as though he were dead? Or was it that there was no Rodney? He had a wife, alive. He had none, so he had said, but if she were alive? He must have forgotten, poor Rodney, that when one’s wife is alive—there she is: alive! Still the wife. She was not thinking, and she had come here to think; it was quiet, deeply, peacefully quiet, and somehow quieting, as well. She would be able to think here.
Cis knelt staring at the altar, her face so white that an old woman, entering, turned as if to speak to her, then changed her mind and went on, shaking her head pityingly, saying to herself: “God pity and help her, the poor young creature!” as she ducked her edition of a genuflection toward the altar and knelt in a pew, rattling big brown rosary beads, supplemented by several large medals, on the back of the pew against which she rested her gnarled hands.
Was it that the benison was effective? It was not long before the strange submergence of her conscious self which had overwhelmed Cicely on hearing Rodney’s knell of her joy, broke and rolled back, leaving her soul bare to an agony that saw only too clearly, grasped only too acutely exactly what had befallen her.
She was promised to marry within four weeks a man whose wife was still alive!
Under the law of the country Rodney was entirely free. It was the woman, not he, who had broken the marriage vow, who had desecrated the marriage, sinned against herself, against Rodney, against God. No one would ask a man to condone her sin, unrepented, persisted in. The state issued licenses to marry; it protected the legality of marriage; under its laws children were made legitimate, their rights protected; marriage was a civil institution, the foundation of decent living, of homes which were the unit of the state; it was essentially the bulwark of civilization. When it ceased to be the foundation of decent living, when the sin of a parent endangered the legitimacy of children, when the home was corrupted, the yoke become a galling chain, even disgrace, then the state, which had approved the union and licensed it under its laws, revoked it, dissolved it, allowing the innocent partner of the union to go free, to make another marriage if he, or she, so desired; be perfectly free to enjoy the rights of every citizen, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
If there were states which went so far as to allow equal privileges to the guilty spouse; which gave to one who had debased one marriage, freedom to contract another, or even others, that was all wrong, of course, but that consideration was uncalled for in this case. Rodney was wronged; he had been made free of the person who had wrecked his happiness, and that was just.
Ah, but what was this, this other side to the divorce question? The teaching of Christ Himself, of His Church, continuing His teaching, practising it, though it bore ever so heavily upon a case peculiarly putting forth pleas for its exception; holding it irrefrangible though it cost a kingdom, and plunged a whole noble and religious nation into heresy?