The crisis of the fever came upon Georgia so suddenly that she had
lapsed into semi-consciousness before the arrival of Father Hervey.
She was able, in making her confession to him, barely to gasp out a few
broken sentences of contrition.
He anointed with holy oil her eyes, ears, nostrils, lips, hands and
feet, absolving her in the name of the Trinity from those sins which
she truly repented.
When at last she came out of the shadow, her mother believed that it
was the priest even more than the doctors who had saved her, for it is
taught that the reception of Extreme Unction may restore health to the
body when the same is beneficial to the soul.
A few days later the priest came again to see her and was amazed at the
rapidity of her convalescence.
"You're out of the woods this time, Georgia," he said, "sure enough.
But I can tell you you had us frightened." He spoke with just the
barest shade of a tip of a brogue, too slight to indicate in print.
His coat was shiny, his trousers slightly frayed at the bottom, and his
shoes had been several times half-soled. A parish priest, throughout
his life he had kept to the vow of personal poverty as faithfully as a
Jesuit.
He stayed for half an hour and made himself charming. He asked the
nurse not to leave the room, saying that he needed an audience. He had
some new stories, he said, and he wanted to test them, which he
couldn't do on Georgia alone, she was so solemn. Besides, she was
almost sure to hash them up in repeating them, and he had a reputation
to preserve. There was a shepherd in County Clare whose wife was from
County Mayo, with the head of the color of a fox, inside and out. And
so forth.
First the women smiled with him, then laughed, then roared. His touch
was sure, his shading delicate, his technique perfected. He had them
and he held them. It was excellent medicine for the sick he gave them.
Then he told them a little parish gossip of wedding banns he thought he
would shortly be requested to publish. His eyes twinkled at Georgia's
astonished "You don't say--well, what she sees in him----" And he
finished his pleasant visit with a couple of little anecdotes, each
with a moral subtly introduced; simple tales of heroism and
self-sacrifice that had lately come under his notice.
When he arose to go Georgia and the nurse bent their heads. He offered
a short little prayer, gave them his blessing and departed.
He had not said a word in a serious way to Georgia of her affairs. But
she knew that he was merely postponing.
Before his decisive interview with her he prayed earnestly for
strength; for strength rather than guidance, for he felt no shade of
doubt that the path which he would urge her to take was the right one.
The Church had pointed it out long ago, and that settled it. He never
questioned the wisdom or the inspiration of the great policies of the
Church. He was none of your modernists, questioners and babblers; he
was a veteran soldier, a fighting private in the army which will make
no peace but a victor's.
"Georgia," he began, "do you feel strong enough for a serious talk?
For if you don't I will come later."
She was sitting up in bed. Her skin had the translucent pallor of one
whose life has hung in the balance. Her hair, braided and coiled about
her head, had lost its peculiar gloss and become dry and brittle.
"Yes, Father; I am strong enough. As well have it over with now as any
time."
There was more of defiance in her words than in her heart, for she
could not help being a little afraid of this gentle, gray old man with
the Roman collar. Since her childhood he had stood in her mind for
strange power and mystery. Even in her most rebellious days before her
sickness she had not been willing to confront him. She had evaded him,
run away from him. Now she could not run away.
"I have seen Jim since I was here last," said he, "and----"
"Father, I know what you're going to say--and a reconciliation is
impossible.
"You know that he has stopped drinking?"
"Yes, I heard so."
"It is true. He looks fine, fine. Brown and strong."
"I didn't think he ever could do it," said she, shaking her head. "He
is fighting a battle he has lost so often."
"There is none who could help him so much in his struggle as you."
"Oh, there," she answered quickly and bitterly, "I think you are
mistaken. He has paid very little attention to me or my wishes for
four or five years past."
"Then," said the priest, "he has learned his lesson, for now he depends
on you more than on any other person."
She did not answer, but closed her eyes and clenched her fists as
tightly as she could, summoning her will to resist. But she realized
that her will, like her body, was not in health. The sick bed is the
priest's harvest time.
"My child," he said gently, "there is a human soul struggling for its
salvation. Will you help or hinder it?"
"I do not think that is quite a fair way to put it."
"Not fair? With all my soul I believe it to be true. And, remember,
in helping him to his salvation you are bringing your own nearer."
"But must we consider everything, everything from the standpoint of
salvation? Of course, I want to go to Heaven when I die, but I want to
be as happy as I can here on earth, too. And that's impossible if I
live with Jim."
"If you had a child," he asked patiently, as if going clear back to the
beginning again with a pupil that could not learn easily, "and he said
to you, 'Mother, I don't want to go to school, for it makes me unhappy
and I want to be as happy as I can,' would you let him have his way?"
He paused, but she did not answer, so he went on to make his point
clearer. "Of course you wouldn't if you loved your child. You would
make him undergo discipline and accept instruction, if you wanted him
to be a fine, strong, brave man. Our life on earth is but our school
days--our preparation for the greater life to come. And we are not
always allowed to seek immediate happiness any more than little
children are."
She felt that she was being overcome in argument by the priest, as
everyone must be who accepts his fundamental premise, namely, that he
is more intimately acquainted with the secrets of life and death than
laymen are.
But far below the reach of argument and theological dialectics, which
are surface things, from the deep springs of her life the increasing
warning flowed up to her consciousness that it was the abomination of a
slave to embrace where she did not love.
"Father," she said, not trying to argue any longer, but just to make
him see, "Oh, don't you understand? Man and wife are so close
together--like that." She placed her two palms together before her in
the attitude of prayer.
He raised his hand solemnly, to pronounce that phrase which perhaps
more than any other has influenced human destinies, "_And they shall be
two in one flesh_."
"But to live so close with a man you don't love or care for, oh, that
is vile, utterly, utterly vile."
He could not entirely sympathize with the intensity of her point of
view. If one's earthly love did not turn out as well as the dreams of
it, in that it merely resembled other phases of mortal existence, to be
submitted to. He knew many married couples that fell out at times, but
if they tried to make the best of things as they were, on the whole
they got along pretty well. He was inclined to deprecate the modern
tendency to invest with too much dignity the varying shades of erotic
emotion. It was one of the things which led to divorce--this
beatification of earthly, fleshly love.
Had not the highest and holiest lives been led in the entire absence of
it, by its ruthless extirpation? Not merely saints, martyrs and great
popes, but ordinary priests like himself, ordinary nuns like the
hospital sisters, had yielded up that side of life freely and been the
better for it, more single-minded in the service of the Lord.
He did not believe that a woman who had met with disappointment in this
regard should make of it such a monument of woe. Let her contemplate
her position with a little more courage and resignation; let her not
exaggerate the importance of her own personal feelings; let her yield
up her pride and stubbornness and essay to do her duty in that
relationship which she had chosen for herself, with the sanction of the
Church.
Father Hervey had sat in a confessional box for nearly fifty years. He
knew a very great deal about marriage from without. He had seen its
glories and its shames reflected in the hearts of thousands. But he
never felt its meanings in his own heart, at first hand.
Perhaps if its priesthood were not celibate, the Roman Church would not
so unyieldingly insist upon the indissolubility of marriage. But if
its priesthood were not celibate, the Roman Church would almost surely
lose much of its grip upon the imagination. The mind of the average
laymen, Catholic or not, cannot but be powerfully moved by the
spectacle of a body of educated men, leaders in their communities,
voluntarily renouncing the most appealing of human relationships for
the sake of a supernatural ideal.
It is because the average man does not and cannot live without women
which causes him to regard a priest with a species of awe. Reason as
you will about it, justify the married clergy with the words of St.
Paul and God's promptings within us, the fact remains that the Roman
priest alone does what we can't do, lives as we couldn't live; he alone
demonstrates that he is of somewhat different clay; he alone mystifies
us; and mystery is the essence of sacerdotalism and authority.
"Georgia," resumed Father Hervey, "if all your pretty dreams have not
come true, remember they never do in this life. You must learn to
compromise."
"I will compromise, Father--that I will do, but I won't surrender
utterly." She drew herself straighter up in bed, leaning forward
without the prop of the pillow. Her excitement seemed to invigorate
her. "There is another man----"
"Another man?" he asked sternly.
"Yes, but I will give him up. I love him, but I will give him up. On
the other side, I will never take Jim back. That is my compromise."
"Is that not something like saying you would not commit murder, but
would compromise on stealing?"
"Father, that is the best I can do."
"If he continued in his former evil ways," and there was an unusual
tone of pleading rather than command in Father Hervey's voice, "I would
not urge you to return to him. It is recognized that there are cases
where living apart is advisable. But here is poor Jim, doing his best
and needing every helping hand, and you won't extend yours. It is not
fair, Georgia, and it is not kind--to him or to yourself."
"I can't go back to him, Father. It is impossible. I hate him when I
think of it. I can't live with him again. It is inconceivable. It is
a horror to imagine." She averted her head and put her hands before
her as if pushing away the image of her husband.
"In the top drawer of the bureau," she said, "you will find some
letters--one for every day I have been here. They are from the other
man. You may take them if you wish--and I will give you my promise to
receive no more from him."
The priest felt as if he were touching unclean things when he took up
Stevens' letters. There were more than twenty of them, and most of
them were very thick.
"You have read them all?" he asked.
"Yes."
Father Hervey wrapped and tied the letters in a newspaper and rang for
an attendant.
"Kindly put this package in the furnace," he directed, "just as it is,
without undoing it."
"You have wandered far," he said quietly, then took up his soft black
hat and departed without prayer or blessing.
She sank back among her pillows, exhausted from the conflict. She had
won, she told herself, she had won, but it was without joy.
She had definitely given up Mason, as she knew she must from the
beginning of her sickness, from the day that she entered the hospital.
Perhaps that had been part of the price of her getting well.
But she had also stuck to her purpose about Jim. She had refused to
violate her natural feelings to the extent of entering into life's
deepest intimacies with the one person in all the world whom she most
disliked. She had put her will against the priest, the holy man, and
she had not given in. She knew that not many women could have done
that so openly and so successfully.
He had left her without prayer or blessing. She was not at peace with
the Church which meant--her eyes fell upon the sacred picture on the
wall opposite--which meant that she was not at peace with The Man whose
mournful sufferings and woe had been for her.
Fear slowly came over her.