King John of Jingalo Part 52

"Then you will release the Prince from his bond."

"He does not ask to be released."

"That may be."

Then there was silence.

"My dear child," murmured the Archbishop; there was emotion in his voice, and putting out his hand he laid it upon hers.

She drew herself gently from the contact.

"Only if he wishes it," she said.

"He will not wish it."

"Then he has my word."

"Your life contains other and holier vows than that, my child."

She did not seem to think so. "Father," she said, "this is the man I love!"

"That I realize," he replied gravely. "The question is which do you love best,--him or the Church?"

Jenifer opened her eyes in a limpid and childlike wonderment. How could he ask a question the answer to which was so obvious? "Why, him!" she cried; "there is no possible comparison!"

The Archbishop was deeply shocked as well as nonplussed at such an answer coming from his daughter; and meanwhile with clear sincerity of speech she went on--

"You mean the Church of Jingalo--do you not, papa?"

Of course it was the Church of Jingalo that he meant, but it would not do at this juncture to say so. His daughter might be one of those dreadful people who believed that the Church would get value out of disestablishment.

"I meant the Church of our fathers," said he, "the faith into which you were baptized,--the spiritual health and welfare of the whole nation."

"I do not think that by marrying the Prince I shall do it any harm. I am sure that he means none."

Her idea of the power of Princes struck him as curiously feminine; how little she understood of politics!

"It is rather a case," said he, "of harm that you cannot prevent, except in one way. What have you in your mind? Is it the wish to sit upon a throne?"

"Oh, no!" she said; "I shall never like being queen." Then, after a pause, she added honestly, "All the same, I could do things, then--things which I have longed to do; and I know that he would let me."

Her face glowed at the prospect; and suddenly she turned upon him a full look of self-confidence and courage, and there was challenge in her tone.

"I know far more about the poor than you do, father," she said, "and much more of their needs. If I were queen I would have a house down among the slums; and I would never spend Christmas, or Easter, or Good Friday in any other place." Her voice broke. "I would try--I would try,"

she said, "to set up Christianity in high places. That has been my dream."

"Have you told your dream to the Prince?"

She smiled tenderly, and with confidence. "He is already helping to make it come true. I asked him to be upon the Commission. That is why he is there."

"You?"

The Archbishop was now realizing that he knew very little about his daughter, and she not only amazed him, she frightened him. For the first time he feared that he might lose the great stakes for which he was playing; and one thing was essential--this woman, this domestic p.a.w.n which he held in his hand, must never be allowed to become queen.

And so with great pain he forced himself, and spoke on. How right he had been when he told the Prime Minister that in one way or another sacrifice would be required of him! For now he was going to sacrifice his most sacred conventions, his ideal of how an unmarried woman should be trained.

"My child," he said, "do you think that you know this man?"

"Yes; I know him better than any one else in the world."

"Do you also know his life?"

Jenifer's look turned on him a little curiously.

"I know," she said, "that he is not really a Christian."

"Ah!" he exclaimed, in a sort of joy, decorously flavored with grief, "that I did not know! Of course that explains everything. The rest inevitably follows."

"What follows?"

"No man who is not a Christian leads a life that will stand looking into." And then, avoiding her eyes, he spoke of things which he knew; some of them in certain quarters were almost common property; of others he had only recently become informed.

And as he spoke he felt, with a strange oppression, the heart beside him grow dumb. For this woman, with her clear and gracious understanding of so many human ills and weaknesses, had been kept in one matter, the most important of all, with the mind of an undeveloped child. Evil things she knew of--they had an existence, a place, and a name--but for her no reality except in their awful results. All that she had hitherto seen of "irregular living" bore the stamp of betrayal and disease, a thing more grossly criminal than anything else in the social body. She did not know how that body was permeated, and how no cla.s.s and no ordinary standard of morality was free from the taint.

And now she heard that the man she loved had been keeping that thing called "a mistress"--housing her in luxury, visiting her day after day, not very greatly troubling himself whether the fact remained secret or became known. Then dates were mentioned; and she was given to know how those visits had still gone on while her lover had been offering her the devotion of his heart. It was there, after his recent accident, that he had gone to be nursed.

The Archbishop was extremely well informed, and he told nothing which he did not absolutely believe to be true. And now at last all the advantage was on his side, for ignorance left her almost without defense; with no sense of proportion she stood looking out into a non-dimensional world.

Dimly her mind made a struggle to escape.

"But what, what does it mean?" she asked. "There must be some reason for it. Is it a kind of disease?"

"A corrupt nature," said her father solemnly; "these are what the Church calls in her teaching 'the sins of the flesh.'"

She shuddered, for to her by religious training "flesh" had come to have a dreadful sound. In her spiritual world she pictured it as a shop hung with butcher's meat; yet why it was dreadful she did not know.

"Tell me," she murmured with pained speech, still trying for a way out, "it isn't--natural, is it?"

"That doctrine is preached by some," said her father; "Christianity forbids any such view."

"He said," she went on, "he said this, when he first asked me to marry him: 'I have done some natural things which you would hold to be wrong.

I have loved,' he said, 'for mere comfort, not for honor or life.' He asked me if I understood; I said 'Yes.' 'That is my confession,' he said. 'I have been,' he said, 'no better than others; I hope not worse.'

And that was all. I thought he meant that he had been selfish and worldly. Is that other thing what he really meant?"

"No doubt."

"But he _told_ me," she said, and looked at him with a forlorn hope.