Part 9

They said afterwards that Georgia could not have taken another small step toward death, without dying. She flickered and guttered like a lamp whose oil has been used up. For a few moments it seemed that her light had been put out altogether, but there must have been a tiny spark hidden somewhere in the charred wick, for the doctors brought her back by artificial stimulation, and you can not stimulate the dead.

If specialists and private rooms and nurses give sick people more chance of getting well, then Stevens and the old man and Mr. Silverman saved Georgia by their care of her, for she could not have had less chance to live and lived.

XVIII

THE PRIEST

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.

XIX

SACRED HEART

The picture which she saw on the wall opposite, across the foot of the bed, was of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

It was the thing which she had seen oftenest and looked at longest since she had been in the hospital. It hung directly before her eyes as she lay in bed with her head on the pillow. She saw it first on waking and last before sleeping. Sometimes when she awoke suddenly in the middle of the night she could feel the picture still there, watching her in the darkness with mournful eyes.

When first she looked at it she realized how crude it was in execution. Its colors were glaring. The Man wore a shining white cloak which he drew back to show underneath a blue garment. On this, placed apparently on the outside of it, was a Sacred Heart of red, girt in thorns. Holy flames proceeded from it, and there was a nimbus of encircling light.

She saw that it would have been better if the Sacred Heart had seemed to glow through His garment, instead of being obviously superposed upon it; that softer blue and grayer white and less scarlet red would have been truer tones for a religious picture. She took not a little pride in her critical perceptiveness.

But as she lay watching the picture day after day, she appreciated the superficiality of her first judgment of it. She had been looking at colored inks and the marks made by copper plates, not at a symbol of eternity.

Does one estimate a put-by baby's slipper, or a lock of someone's hair, or a wedding ring by its intrinsic worth? If the west side print shop which made the picture before her had failed, it could have done nothing else with that subject to portray. All attempts to represent Christ must fail. Rafael had failed. Everyone would fail.

Even the Church had failed. There had been bad popes, had there not? But the Church had tried to represent Him. The Church had come nearer to doing so than any other enginery or person. The saintliest persons had belonged to her and died for her and in her.

One Church, she knew, He had founded, and left behind Him. One and but one. "Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my church." It was unequivocal. Christ did not say "churches," He said "church." There was but one which He had built.

And she had defied it; she had hardened her heart against it; she had sent away its appointed minister in order to exalt herself.

Her eyes were drawn again to the Sacred Heart, bound in the thorns which she and hers had placed there. So it had been, so it would be. Christ was crucified again each day, in the hearts of the people whom He loved. Had she not herself also given Him vinegar upon a sponge?

She felt the tears trickling down her cheeks as she thought of her own supreme selfishness, and she looked through blurred eyes at the representation of the most supremely unselfish face that mankind has been able to conceive.

Then suddenly divine forgiveness seemed to descend upon her and level the bounds and limits of her ego; the barriers of her nature gave way and she found herself at one with all creation; she, and humanity, and nature, and God were together. Her soul seemed to quicken itself within her and ineffable light shone about her.

She fell on her knees at her bedside, her adoring eyes upon the pictured countenance of her Savior. Over and over again she repeated that wonderful word learned at the convent, which expresses all prayer in itself. "Peccavi," she prayed, "peccavi, peccavi."

It seemed to her at last, when she arose from her knees that she had washed all her sins away with the passion of her contrition; that she had been born again in the spirit and become pure. In her ecstasy she thought that the face of her dear Lord regarded her now less mournfully, and that there was joy in His smile where there had been only sorrow.

She knew for the first time in her self-willed life the peace unspeakable of entire self-surrender. Her tears continued, but they were tears of joy, and she sobbed as sometimes prisoners sob when pardoned unexpectedly. The miracle of deliverance rolled over her soul like a flood, washing away the barriers of self-control.

During her weeks in the hospital she had lived in an atmosphere of perfect faith, as intense and vital, almost, as that of the middle ages. Those who had carried and comforted her through her sickness, nurses and gentle nuns, could not doubt that Christ had died to save them and to save her.

She was environed with Catholicism. Sometimes she could see through her partly opened door a black-coated priest passing in the hall to shrive a dying sinner. The chimes and chants from the chapel came faintly to her ears with benediction. The picture of the Sacred Heart hung before her eyes in unceasing reminder of the whole marvelous fabric of the Church.

Because of her lowered vitality and her days of idleness in bed, her receptivity to exterior impressions was greatly increased. The steady stream of suggestions of her ancient religion which had flowed in upon her welled higher and higher in her subconsciousness until they crossed the line of consciousness and took sudden and complete possession of her mind.

XX

SURRENDER

The next morning Georgia sent for Jim.

Before he came she wrote to Stevens:

_Dear Mason--I am going to take my husband back. I have been here now for nearly a month, and I have had plenty of time to think things over, you may be sure. What I am going to do is best for both of us--for all three of us. There is no doubt of that in my mind. I know it._

_Please don't answer or try to see me. That would simply make things harder for us, but not change my plans._

_It is my religion that has done it, Mason. Do you remember that I once told you, when it came to the big things I didn't believe I would dare disobey? I was right in this respect that I can't bring myself to disobey, but it is not so much from fear as I thought it would be. It is a sense of "ought." That is the only way I can put it. I have a feeling, tremendously strong, but hard to define in words, that I ought not, that I must not go on with what we planned._

_This feeling is stronger than I am, Mason. That is all I can say about it._

_So good-bye. May God bless you and make you prosperous and happy in this life and the next one. This is my prayer, my dear._

_Georgia._

The nurse took the letter to the mail box in the office and when she returned, looked at her patient curiously, saying, "Your husband is waiting downstairs to see you."

"Do you mind asking him to come up, nurse?"

Jim, who had now been in the city for a month, had lost some of his open-air tan and regained a portion of his banished poundage, but still he looked far better than Georgia had seen him for years. He made a favorable impression upon her from the instant he crossed the threshold. He was the Jim of the earlier rather than of the later years of their married life. His aspect seemed to confirm the truth of the revelation which she had received concerning him.

"How do you do," she asked formally.

"Very well, thank you," he replied. "How do you do?"

"Much better--won't you be seated?"

Jim, first carefully placing his brown derby hat under the chair, sat where the priest had been the day before.

She felt a certain numbness of emotion as she looked at him, but none of that loathing and disgust without which, as she had come to believe, he could not be in her presence. Doubtless, she reflected, she had exaggerated her dislike for Jim, to justify herself for Stevens.

"Georgia," said Jim slowly, "I didn't act right before. I know it and I'm sorry and ashamed. It was drink that put the devil in me, same as it will for any man that goes against it hard enough........ Some people can drink in moderation--it doesn't seem to hurt them. But I can't. When I got started I tried to drink up all the whiskey in North Clark Street. Well, it can't be done. I'm onto that now. No more moderate drinking for me. From now on I'm going to chop it out altogether."

He paused for a word of encouragement, but she remained silent. A little nodule of memory, which had been lying dormant in her brain, awoke at his words, "from now on I'm going to chop it out altogether." How many times she had heard him say that before--and every time he had thumped his right fist into his left palm, just as he was doing now.

"All I ask from you is another chance," he continued. "You know about the prodigal son. That's me. I've come back repentant. I know I've brought you misery in my time--and plenty of it. So if you stick on your rights and never forgive me, you don't have to. What do you say, Georgia?"

Again he paused, but she did not speak, sitting with her head bent, picking with her fingers at the coverlet.

"It wasn't me that did you the harm," he pleaded, "it was the whiskey in me, and if I keep away from that why the rest of me isn't so bad. You used to think that yourself once, Georgia."

She waited for him to continue, fearing what he would say next, and he said it. "But if you're through with me, I guess the only friend I've got left after all is whiskey. He put me to the bad all right, but he won't go back on me now I'm there. Whatever else you can say about him, he's faithful. He's always got a smile for you when you're blue, and he'll stick to you clear through to the finish."

Yes, that was Jim of old, word for word and motive for motive, who thought the proper remedy for disappointment was drunkenness.

"Oh, Jim," she cried, "why did you say that?"

He misunderstood her completely. He felt that he was making a most effective threat. "I said it because it's true," he answered roughly, "that's why. You've showed me where I stand--you've given me my answer just as loud as if you'd been shouting it. Good-bye. Likely I'll be laying up in a barrel house on the river front pretty soon, and pretty soon after that they'll be taking me out to Dunning and planting me in the ground with just a little stick and a number on it, or else--" a catch came into his voice as the pathetic picture swam vividly before his eyes, for like most drunkards he possessed something of the artistic temperament, "or else maybe they'll cut me up to show the young internes and the trained nurses which side the heart's on."