THE PAULINE PRIVILEGE.
For a week at the end of July Arthur had been in the city closing up the
Curran episode. On his return every one felt that change of marked and
mysterious kind had touched him. His face shone with joy. The brooding
shadow, acquired in his exile, had disappeared. Light played about his
face, emanated from it, as from moonlit water, a phosphorescence of the
daylight. His mother studied him with anxiety, without which she had not
been since the surprising visit of Curran. The old shadow seemed to have
fled forever.
One night on the lake, as Louis and he floated lazily towards the
island, he told the story. After enjoying a moonlight swim at the foot
of the bluff, they were preparing to row over to Valcour when Honora's
glorious voice rang out from the farmhouse on the hill above, singing to
Mona's accompaniment. The two sat in delight. A full moon stood in the
sky, and radiance silvered the bosom of the lake, the mystic shores, the
far-off horizon. This singer was the voice of the night, whose mystic
beauty and voiceless feeling surged into the woman's song like waters
escaping through a ravine. Dillon was utterly oppressed by happiness.
When the song had ceased, he stretched out his arms towards her.
"Dearest and best of women! By God's grace I shall soon call you mine!"
Louis took up the oars and pulled with energy in the direction of
Valcour. "Is that the meaning of the look on your face since your
return?" said he.
"That's the meaning. I saw you all watching me in surprise. My mother
told me of it in her anxiety. If my face matched my feelings the moon
there would look sickly besides its brightness. I have been in jail for
five years, and to-day I am free."
"And how about that other woman ...?"
"Dead as far as I am concerned, the poor wretch! Yesterday I could curse
her. I pity her to-day. She has gone her way and I go mine. Monsignor
has declared me free. Isn't that enough?"
"That's enough," cried Louis, dropping the oars in his excitement. "But
is it enough to give you Honora? I'm so glad you think of her that way.
Mona told her only yesterday that some lover was pursuing her, not
mentioning your name. I assured her on the contrary that the road to the
convent would have no obstacles. And I rebuked Mona for her
interference."
"You were right, and she was right," said Arthur sadly. "I never dared
to show her my love, because I was not free. But now I shall declare it.
What did she think of Mona's remarks?"
"She took them lightly. I am afraid that your freedom comes at a poor
time, Arthur; that you may be too late. I have had many talks with her.
Her heart is set on the convent, she has fixed the date for September,
and she does not seem to have love in her mind at all."
"Love begets love. How could she think of love when I never gave any
sign, except what sharp-eyed Mona saw. You can conceal nothing from a
woman. Wait until I have wooed her ... but apart from all that you must
hear how I came to be free ... oh, my God, I can hardly believe it even
now after three days ... I have been so happy that the old anguish which
tore my soul years ago seemed easier to bear than this exquisite pain. I
must get used to it. Listen now to the story of my escape, and row
gently while you listen so as to miss not a word."
Arthur did not tell his chum more than half of the tale, chiefly because
Louis was never to know the story of Horace Endicott. He had gone to New
York at the invitation of Livingstone. This surprising incident began a
series of surprises. The Currans had returned from California, and made
their report to Sonia; and to Livingstone of all men the wife of Horace
Endicott had gone for advice in so delicate an affair as forcing Arthur
Dillon to prove and defend his identity. After two or three interviews
with Livingstone Arthur carried his report to Monsignor.
"All this looks to me," said the priest, "as if the time for a return
to your own proper personality had come. You know how I have feared the
consequences of this scheme. The more I look into it, the more terrible
it seems."
"And why should I give up now of all times? when I am a success?" cried
the young fellow. "Do I fear Livingstone and the lawyers? Curran and his
wife have done their best, and failed. Will the lawyers do any better?"
"It is not that," said the priest. "But you will always be annoyed in
this way. The sharks and blackmailers will get after you later...."
"No, no, no, Monsignor. This effort of the Currans and Mrs. Endicott
will be the last. I won't permit it. There will be no result from
Livingstone's interference. He can go as far as interviews with me, but
not one step beyond. And I can guarantee that no one will ever take up
the case after him."
"You are not reasonable," urged the priest. "The very fact that these
people suspect you to be Horace Endicott is enough; it proves that you
have been discovered."
"I am only the twentieth whom they pursued for Horace," he laughed.
"Curran knows I am not Endicott. He has proved to the satisfaction of
Livingstone that I am Arthur Dillon. But the two women are pertinacious,
and urge the men on. Since these are well paid for their trouble, why
should they not keep on?"
"They are not the only pertinacious ones," the priest replied.
"You may claim a little of the virtue yourself," Arthur slyly remarked.
"You have urged me to betray myself into the hands of enemies once a
month for the last five years."
"In this case would it not be better to get an advantage by declaring
yourself, before Livingstone can bring suit against you?"
"There will be no suit," he answered positively. "I hold the winning
cards in this game. There is no advantage in my returning to a life
which for me holds nothing but horror. Do you not see, Monsignor, that
the same reasons which sent me out of it hold good to keep me out of
it?"
"Very true," said Monsignor reluctantly, as he viewed the situation.
"And new reasons, not to be controverted, have sprung up around Arthur
Dillon. For Horace Endicott there is nothing in that old life but public
disgrace. Do you know that I hate that fat fool, that wretched cuckold
who had not sense enough to discover what the uninterested knew about
that woman? I would not wear his name, nor go back to his circle, if the
man and woman were dead, and the secret buried forever."
"He was young and innocent," said the priest with a pitiful glance at
Arthur.
"And selfish and sensual too. I despise him. He would never have been
more than an empty-headed pleasure-seeker. With that wife he could have
become anything you please. The best thing he did was his flight into
everlasting obscurity, and that he owed to the simple, upright,
strong-hearted woman who nourished him in his despair. Monsignor," and
he laid his firm hand on the knee of the priest and looked at him with
terrible eyes, "I would choose death rather than go back to what I was.
I shall never go back. I get hot with shame when I think of the part an
Endicott played as Sonia Westfield's fool."
"And the reason not to be controverted?"
"In what a position my departure would leave my mother. Have you thought
of that? After all her kindness, her real affection, as if I had been
her own son. She thinks now that I am her son, and I feel that she is my
mother. And what would induce me to expose her to the public gaze as the
chief victim, or the chief plotter in a fraud? If it had to be done, I
would wait in any event until my mother was dead. But beyond all these
minor reasons is one that overshadows everything. I am Arthur Dillon.
That other man is not only dead, he is as unreal to me as the hero of
any book I read in my boyhood. It was hard to give up the old
personality; to give up what I am now would be impossible. I am what I
seem. I feel, think, speak, dream Arthur Dillon. The roots would bleed
if I were to transplant myself. I found my career among your people, and
the meaning of life. There is no other career for me. These are the
people I love. I will never raise between them and me so odious a
barrier as the story of my disappearance would be. They could never
take to Horace Endicott. Oh, I have given the matter a moment's thought,
Monsignor. The more I dwell on it, the worse it seems."
He considered the point for a moment, and then whispered with joyous
triumph, "I have succeeded beyond my own expectations. I have
disappeared even from myself. An enemy cannot find me, not even my own
confession would reveal me. The people who love me would swear to a man
that I am Arthur Dillon, and that only insanity could explain my own
confession. At the very least they would raise such a doubt in the mind
of a judge that he would insist on clean proofs from both sides. But
there's the clear fact. I have escaped from myself, disappeared from the
sight of Arthur Dillon. Before long I can safely testify to a dream I
had of having once been a wretch named Horace Endicott. But I have a
doubt even now that I was such a man."
"My God, but it's weird," said Monsignor with emotion, as he rose to
walk the room. "I have the same notion myself at times."
"It's a matter to be left undisturbed, or some one will go crazy over
it," Arthur said seriously.
"And you are happy, really happy? The sight of this woman did not revive
in you any regret...."
"I am happy, Monsignor, beyond belief," with a contented sigh. "It would
be too much to expect perfect happiness. Yet that is within my reach. If
I were only free to marry Honora Ledwith."
"I heard of that too," said the priest meditatively. "Has she any regard
for you?"
"As a brother. How could I have asked any other love? And I am rich in
that. Since there is no divorce for Catholics, I could not let her see
the love which burned in me. I had no hope."
"And she goes into the convent, I believe. You must not stand in God's
way."
"I have not, though I delayed her going because I could not bear to part
from her. Willingly I have resigned her to God, because I know that in
His goodness, had I been free, He would have given her to me."
Monsignor paused as if struck by the thought and looked at him for a
moment.
"It is the right spirit," was his brief comment.
He loved this strange, incomprehensible man, who had stood for five
years between his adopted people and their enemies in many a fight, who
had sought battle in their behalf and heaped them with favors. His eyes
saw the depth of that resignation which gave to God the one jewel that
would have atoned for the horrid sufferings of the past. If he were
free! He thought of old Lear moaning over dead Cordelia.
She lives! If it be so,
It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows
That ever I have felt.
"It is the right spirit," he repeated as he considered the matter. "One
must not stand in the way of a soul, or in the way of God. Yet were you
free, where would be the advantage? She is for the convent, and has
never thought of you in the way of love."
"Love begets love, father dear. I could light the flame in her heart,
for I am dear to her as a brother, as her father's son."
"Then her dream of the convent, which she has cherished so many years,
cannot be more than a dream, if she resigned it for you."
"I cannot argue with you," he said hopelessly, "and it's a sad subject.
There is only the will of God to be done."
"And if you were free," went on Monsignor smiling, "and tried and failed
to light love in her heart, you would suffer still more."
"A little more or less would not matter. I would be happy still to give
her to God."
"I see, I see," shaking his sage head. "To God! As long as it is not to
another and luckier fellow, the resignation is perfect."
Arthur broke into a laugh, and the priest said casually:
"I think that by the law of the Church you are a free man."
Arthur leaped to his feet with a face like death.
"In the name of God!" he cried.
Monsignor pushed him back into his chair.
"That's my opinion. Just listen, will you. Then take your case to a
doctor of the law. There is a kind of divorce in the Church known as the
Pauline Privilege. Let me state the items, and do you examine if you can
claim the privilege. Horatius, an infidel, that is, unbaptized, deserts
his wife legally and properly, because of her crimes; later he becomes a
Catholic; meeting a noble Catholic lady, Honoria, he desires to marry
her; question, is he free to contract this marriage? The answer of the
doctors of the law is in the affirmative, with the following conditions:
that the first wife be an infidel, that is, unbaptized; that to live
with her is impossible; that she has been notified of his intention to
break the marriage. The two latter conditions are fulfilled in your case
the moment the first wife secures the divorce which enables her to marry
her paramour. Horatius is then free to marry Honoria, or any other
Catholic lady, but not a heretic or a pagan. This is called the Pauline
Privilege because it is described in the Epistle of St. Paul to the
Corinthians. My opinion is that you are free."
The man, unable to speak, or move, felt his hope grow strong and violent
out of the priest's words.
"Mind, it's only my opinion," said Monsignor, to moderate his
transports.
"You must go to Dr. Bender, the theologian, to get a purely legal
decision. I fear that I am only adding to your misery. What if he should
decide against you? What if she should decide against you?"
"Neither will happen," with painful effort. Sudden joy overcame him with
that anguish of the past, and this was overwhelming, wonderful.
"The essence of love is sacrifice," said Monsignor, talking to give him
time for composure. "Not your good only, but the happiness of her you
love must control your heart and will; and above all there must be
submission to God. When He calls, the child must leave the parent, the
lover his mistress, all ties must be broken."
"I felt from the beginning that this would come to pass," said Arthur
weakly. "Oh, I made my sacrifice long ago. The facts were all against
me, of course. Easy to make the sacrifice which had to be made. I can
make another sacrifice, but isn't it now her turn? Oh, Monsignor, all my
joy seems to come through you! From that first moment years ago, when we
met, I can date----"
"All your sorrow," the priest interrupted.
"And all my joy. Well, one cannot speak of these great things, only act.
I'm going to the theologian. Before I sleep to-night he must settle that
case. I know from your eyes it will be in my favor. I can bear
disappointment. I can bear anything now. I am free from that creature,
she is without a claim on me in any way, law, fact, religion, sympathy.
Oh, my God!"
Monsignor could not hinder the tears that poured from his eyes silently.
He clasped Arthur's hand and saw him go as he wept. In his varied life
he had never seen so intimately any heart, none so strange and woful in
its sorrow and its history, none so pathetic. The man lived entirely on
the plane of tragedy, in the ecstasy of pain; a mystery, a problem, a
wonder, yet only an average, natural, simple man, that had fought
destiny with strange weapons.
This story Arthur whispered to Louis, floating between the moonlit
shores of Champlain. He lay in the stern watching the rhythmic rise of
the oar-blades, and the flashing of the water-drops falling back like
diamonds into the wave. Happiness lay beside him steering the boat, a
seraph worked the oars, the land ahead must be paradise. His was a
lover's story, clear, yet broken with phrases of love; for was he not
speaking to the heart, half his own, that beat with his in unison? The
tears flowed down the deacon's cheek, tears of dread and of sympathy.
What if Honora refused this gift laid so reverently at her feet? He
spoke his dread.
"One must take the chance," said the lover calmly. "She is free too. I
would not have her bound. The very air up here will conspire with me to
win her. She must learn at once that I want her for my wife. Then let
the leaven work."
The boat came back to the landing. The ladies sat on the veranda
chatting quietly, watching the moon which rose higher and higher, and
threw Valcour into shadow so deep, that it looked like a great serpent
asleep on a crystal rock, nailed by a golden spike through its head to
the crystal rock beneath. The lighthouse lamp burning steadily at the
south point, and its long reflection in the still waters, was the golden
nail. A puffing tug passed by with its procession of lumber boats,
fanciful with colored lights, resounding with the roaring songs of the
boatmen; and the waves recorded their protest against it in long groans
on the shore. Arthur drank in the scene without misgiving, bathed in
love as in moonlight. This moon would see the consummation of his joy.