"Yet? Oh, then--"

"If there were, would it make a difference?"

"Of course! an infinite difference!"

"You think a man and woman ought to let their child keep them together in any event?"

"Need I say it? What greater bond of union could there be? Is it not G.o.d's own seal and blessing on the wedlock, rendering it, so to speak, even more indissoluble? You blush, my child. Is it true, then, that--"

"A child is expected."

"Ah, my dear girl! How that proves what I have maintained! The birth of the little one will bring the errant father to his senses. The tiny hands will unite its parents as if they were the hands of a priest drawing them together. That child is the divine messenger confirming the sacrament."

"You believe that?"

"Utterly. Oh, I am glad. Motherhood is the crowning triumph; it hallows any woman howsoever lowly or wicked. And you are neither, Charity. I know you to be good and busy in good works. But were you never so evil, this heavenly privilege would make of you a very vessel of sanct.i.ty."

Charity turned pale as she sprung the trap. "The child is expected--not by me, but by the other woman."

Doctor Mosely's beat.i.tude turned to a sick disgust. Red and white streaked his face. His first definite reaction was wrath at the trick that had been played upon him.

"Mrs. Cheever! This is unworthy of you! You distress me! Really!"

"I was a little distressed myself. What am I to do?"

"I will not believe what you say."

"I heard her confess it--boast of it. She agrees with you that the tiny hands will bring her and the father together and confirm the sacrament."

"It can't be. It must not be!"

"You don't advocate that form of birth-control? They are arresting people who preach prevention of conception. You are not so modern as that."

"Hush!"

"What am I to do? You advise me to possess my soul in patience for years. But the child won't wait that long. Doesn't the situation alter your opinion of divorce?"

"No!"

"But if I don't divorce Mr. Cheever and let him marry her the child will have no father--legally."

"The responsibility is his, not yours."

"You don't believe in infant d.a.m.nation, do you? At least not on earth, do you?"

"I cannot control the evil impulses of others. The doctrines of the Church cannot be modified for the convenience of every sinner."

"You advise against divorce, then?"

"I am unalterably opposed to it."

"What is your solution, then, of this situation?"

"I shall have to think it over--and pray. Please go. You have staggered me."

"When you have thought it over will you give me the help of your advice?"

"Certainly."

"Then shall I wait till I hear from you?"

"If you will."

"Good-by, Doctor Mosely."

"Good-by, Mrs.--Charity--my child!"

He pressed her long hand in his old palms. He was trembling. He was like a priest at bay before the altar while the arrows of the infidel rain upon him. These arrows were soft as rain and keen as silk. He was more afraid of them than if they had been tipped with flint or steel.

Charity left the parsonage no wiser than she entered it. She had accomplished nothing further than to ruin Doctor Mosely's excellent start on an optimistic discourse in the prevailing fashion of the enormously popular "Pollyanna" stories: it was to be a "glad" sermon, an inexorably glad sermon. But poor Doctor Mosely could not preach it now in the face of this ugly fact.

Charity went home with her miserable triumph, which only emphasized her defeat.

She found at home a ma.s.s of details pressing for immediate action if the big moving-picture project were not to lapse into inanity. The mere toil of such a task ought to have been welcomed, at least as a diversion. But her heart was as if dead in her.

She wondered how Jim Dyckman was progressing with his portion of the task. He had not reported to her. She wondered why.

She decided to telephone him. She put out her hand, but did not lift the receiver from the hook. She began to muse upon Jim Dyckman. She began to think strange thoughts of him. If she had married him she might not have failed so wretchedly to find happiness. Of course, she might have failed more wretchedly and more speedily, but the wayfarer who chooses one of two crossroads and meets a wolf upon it does not believe that a lion was waiting on the other.

CHAPTER XXIII

Charity pondered her whole history with Jim Dyckman, from their childhood flirtations on. He had had other flings, and she had flung herself into Peter Cheever's arms. Peter Cheever had flung her out again. Jim Dyckman had opened his arms again.

He had told her that she was wasting herself. He had offered her love and devotion. She had struck his hands away and rebuked him fiercely. A little later she had felt a pang of jealousy because he looked at that little Greek dancer so interestedly. She had tried to atone for this appalling thought by interesting herself in the little dancer's welfare and hunting a position for her with the moving-picture company. She had told Jim Dyckman to look for the girl in the studio and find how she was getting along. He had never reported on that, either. Charity smiled bitterly.

Last night it had come over her that her love for Peter Cheever was dead. Was love itself, then, dead for her? or was her heart already busy down there in the dark of her bosom, busy like a seed germinating some new lily or fennel to thrust up into the daylight?

The sublime and the ridiculous are as close together as the opposite sides of a sheet of cloth. The sublime is the obverse of the tapestry with the figures heroic, saintly or sensuous, in battle or temple or bower, in conquest, love, martyrdom, adoration. The reverse of the tapestry is a matter of knots and tufts, broken patterns, ludicrous accidents of contour. The same threads make up both sides.

On one side of Charity's tapestry she saw herself as a pitiful figure, a neglected wife returned from errands of mercy to find her husband enamoured of a wanton. She spurned the proffered heart of a great knight while her own heart bled openly in her breast.

On the other side she saw the same red threads that crimsoned her heart running across the arras to and from the heart of Jim Dyckman. It was the red thread of life and love, blood-color--blood-maker, blood-spiller, heart-quickener, heart-sickener, the red thread of romance, of motherhood and of l.u.s.t, birth and murder, family and bawdry.

In the tapestry her heart was entire, her eyes upon her faithless husband. On the other side her eyes faced the other knight; her heartstrings ran out to his. She laughed harshly at the vision. Her laugh ended in a fierce contempt of herself and of every body and thing else in the world.