"I see--here's a note in Bernal's hand, on one of these old papers--evidently written much later than the other: 'The old gentleman says Christmas is losing its deeper significance. What is it? That the Babe of Bethlehem was begotten by his Father to be a sacrifice to its Father--that its blood might atone for the sin of his first pair--and so save from eternal torment the offspring of that pair. G.o.d will no longer be appeased by the blood of lambs; nothing but the blood of his son will now atone for the sin of his own creatures. It seems to me the sooner Christmas loses this deeper significance the better. Poor old loving human nature gives it a much more beautiful significance.'"

"My dear," began Aunt Bell, "before I broadened into what I have called the higher unbelief, I should have considered that that young man had a positive genius for blasphemy; now that I have again come into the shadow of the cross, it seems to me that he merely lacks imagination."

"Poor Bernal! Yet he made me believe, though he seemed to believe in nothing himself. He makes me believe _now_. He _calls_ to me, Aunt Bell--or is it myself calling to him that I hear?

"And blasphemy--even the word is ridiculous, Aunt Bell. I was at the day-nursery yesterday when all those babies were brought in to their dinner. They are strictly forbidden to coo or to make any noise, and they really behaved finely for two-and three-year-olds--though I did see one outlaw reach over before the signal was given and lovingly pat the big fat cookie beside its plate--thinking its insubordination would be overlooked--but, Aunt Bell, do you suppose one of those fifty-two babies could blaspheme you?"

"Don't be silly!"

"But can you imagine one of them capable of any disrespect to you that would merit--say, burning or something severe like that?"

"Of course not!"

"Well, don't you really believe that G.o.d is farther beyond you or me or the foolish boy that wrote this, than we are beyond those babies--with a greater, bigger point of view, a fuller love? Imagine the G.o.d that made everything--the worlds and birds and flowers and b.u.t.terflies and babies and mountains--imagine him feeling insulted because one of his wretched little John Smiths or Bernal Linfords babbles little human words about him, or even worries his poor little human heart with doubts of His existence!"

"My child, yours is but a finite mind, unable to limit or define the Infinite. What is it, anyway--is it Christian Science taking hold of you, or that chap who preaches that they have the Messiah re-incarnated and now living in Syria--Babbists, aren't they--or is it theosophy--or are you simply dissatisfied with Allan?" A sudden shrewd glance from Aunt Bell's baby-blue eyes went with this last.

Nancy laughed, then grew serious. "I think the last is it, Aunt Bell. A woman seems to doubt G.o.d and everything else after she begins to doubt the husband she has loved. Really, I find myself questioning everything--every moral standard."

"Nance, you are an ungrateful woman to speak like that of Allan!"

"I never should have done it, dear, if you hadn't made me believe you knew. I should have thought it out all by myself, and then acted, if I found I could with any conscience."

"Eh? Mercy! You couldn't. The _idea!_ And there's Allan, now. Come!"

The Doctor was on the threshold. "So here you are! Well, I've just sent Mrs. Eversley away in tears."

He dropped into an arm-chair with a little half-humorous moan of fatigue.

"It's a relief, sometimes, to know you can relax and let your whole weight absolutely down on to the broad earth!" he declared.

"Mrs. Eversley?" suggested Aunt Bell.

"Well, the short of it is, she told me her woes and begged me to give my sanction to her securing a divorce!"

Nancy sat up from her pillows. "Oh--and you _did?_"

"_Nancy!_" It was low, but clear, quick-spoken, stern, and hurt. "You forget yourself. At least you forget my view and the view of my Church.

Even were I out of the Church, I should still regard marriage as a sacrament--indissoluble except by death. The very words--'Whom G.o.d hath joined'"--he became almost oratorical in his warmth--"Surely you would not expect me to use my influence in this parish to undermine the sanct.i.ty of the home--to attack our emblem of Christ's union with His Church!"

With reproach in his eyes--a reproach that in some way seemed to be bland and mellow, yet with a hurt droop to his handsome head, he went from the room. Nancy looked after him, longingly, wonderingly.

"The maddening thing is, Aunt Bell, that sometimes he actually has the power to make me believe in him. But, oh, doesn't Christ's union with his Church have some ghastly symbols!"

CHAPTER IX

SINFUL PERVERSENESS OF THE NATURAL WOMAN

Two months later a certain tension in the rectory of St. Antipas was temporarily relieved. Like the spring of a watch wound too tightly, it snapped one day at Nancy's declaration that she would go to Edom for a time--would go, moreover, without a reason--without so much as a woman's easy "because." This circ.u.mstance, while it froze in the bud every available objection to her course, quelled none of the displeasure that was felt at her woman's perversity.

Her decision was announced one morning after a sleepless night, and after she had behaved unaccountably for three days.

"You are not pleasing Allan," was Aunt Bell's masterly way of putting the situation. Nancy laughed from out of the puzzling reserve into which she had lately settled.

"So he tells me, Aunt Bell. He utters it with the air of telling me something necessarily to my discredit--yet I wonder whose fault it really is."

"Well, of all things!" Aunt Bell made no effort to conceal her amazement.

"It isn't necessarily mine, you know." Before the mirror she brought the veil nicely about the edge of her hat, with the strained and solemn absorption of a woman in this shriving of her reflection so that it may go out in peace.

"My failure to please Allan, you know, may as easily be due to his defects as to mine. I said so, but he only answered, 'Really, you're not pleasing me.' And, as he often says of his own predicaments--'What could I do?' But I'm glad he persists in it."

"Why, if you resent it so?"

"Because, Aunt Bell, I must be quite--_quite_ certain that Allan is funny. It would be dreadful to make a mistake. If only I could be certain--positive--convinced--sure--that Allan is the funniest thing in all the world--"

"It never occurred to me that Allan is funny." Aunt Bell paused for an instant's retrospect. "Now, he doesn't joke much."

"One doesn't have to joke to be a joke, Aunt Bell."

"But what if he were funny? Why is that so important?"

"Oh, it's important because of the other thing that you know you know when you know that."

"Mercy! Child, you should have a cup of cocoa or something before you start off--really--"

The last long hatpin seemingly pierced the head of Nancy and she turned from the gla.s.s to fumble on her gloves.

"Aunt Bell, if Allan tells me once more in that hurt, gentle tone that I don't please him, I believe I shall be the freest of free women--ready to live."

She paused to look vacantly into the wall. "Sometimes, you know, I seem to wake up with a clear mind--but the day clouds it. We shouldn't believe so many falsities, Aunt Bell, if they didn't pinch our brains into it at a tender age. I should know Allan through and through at a glance to-day, if I met him for the first time; but he kneaded my poor girl's brain this way and that, till I'd have been done for, Aunt Bell, if some one else hadn't kneaded and patted it into other ways, so that little memories come back and stay with me--little bits of sweetness and genuineness--of _realness_, Aunt Bell."

"Nance, you are morbid--and I think you're wrong to go up there to be alone with your sick fancies--why are you going, Nance?"

"Aunt Bell, can I really trust you not to betray me? Will you promise to keep the secret if I actually tell you?"

Aunt Bell looked at once important and trustworthy, yet of an incorruptible propriety.

"I'm sure, my dear, you would not ask me to keep secret anything that your husband would be--"

"Dear, no! You can keep mum with a spotless conscience."

"Of course; I was sure of that!"

"What a fraud you are, Aunt Bell--you weren't sure at all--but I shall disappoint you. Now my reason--" She came close and spoke low--"My reason for going to Edom, whatever it is, is so utterly silly that I haven't even dared to tell myself--so, you see--my _real_ reason for going is simply to find out what my reason really is. I'm dying to know.