King John of Jingalo Part 53

"It was the best thing that he could do for himself; no doubt he guessed that eventually you would come to know."

She stood thinking back into the past.

"After he had told, he kissed me," she said; "he had never done that before." Her lips trembled and the tears ran down her face.

"You know enough now, my dear. That will not happen again."

"I still love him," she said, as though confessing to shame.

The Archbishop had sufficient wisdom to accept the statement without protest. "It would be hard for you to do otherwise," he said. "The heart cannot change all at once."

"I believed that with him I could do good."

"Can you believe that now?"

"I don't know."

"That sort of life enters the blood," said her father, "taints it, makes evil that which would otherwise be holy."

"You mean----?"

"I speak of marriage; the drawing together of two into one."

"It still is marriage."

"Its mystery has been profaned. Marriage then, coming after, may be only a reminiscence of sin."

She stood looking at him, her face very pale.

"I shall still have to ask him if it is true."

The Archbishop resigned himself to what he could not avoid. "If you must," he said. And then, thinking forward to what might possibly happen, he added: "It was my duty to tell you everything."

"Yes," she replied, "but you did not mean to tell me at first."

"I hoped that I might spare you," he explained. "These are not things that one speaks of willingly; if they can be avoided it is better that they should not be known."

She gave a gesture of impatience, pressing her hands against her eyes.

"Do not say anything more to me," she said, and her voice sounded hopeless and dead. "Not now."

And then, very slowly, she turned and went out of the room.

The Archbishop told himself that he had done his duty. Personal aggrandizement, great opportunities of power and social position he had put away, he had done a true and holy thing. And so he sat down and wrote to the Prime Minister.

CHAPTER XX

THE THORN AND THE FLESH

I

The next day Prince Max received a letter written by the hand which had become for him the dearest in the world. It was very simple and straightforward and methodical: it began with the word "Beloved" and asked whether certain things were true. It seemed, then, that for the first time his confession was understood. Not a single one of the questions put to him contained anything that was untrue, but they did not go much into detail, and no commentary was made upon the facts indicated.

Max sat down and wrote a very beautiful letter in reply, and got no answer.

For three days he put up with this rebuff to his honesty of character and his literary ability; then not finding his lady where he expected her to be, he went and called upon her father.

The Archbishop was out; but Max, not to be denied, sat down and waited for his return. He waited for over two hours. It was getting towards dusk when his Grace entered, a reverend, high-shouldered figure, showing a stoop and beginning now to look old.

The Archbishop's very formal greeting told Max that here was the enemy.

This did not at all dismay him; at that time, indeed, he was full of confidence. The temporary separation between himself and his beloved, brought about in a conventional way which he thoroughly despised, was for the moment a hindrance; but it had not yet taken to itself the colors of doom. He knew that Jenifer's heart was entirely his, and that they, with their common honesty, had only to meet again to be made one.

What he wanted to know, therefore, was not so much the opinion of Jenifer's father about himself and the engagement, as to find out her present whereabouts. From the first moment of their meeting he knew that he did not stand in the Archbishop's good graces; but that hardly concerned him; and so it was almost without circ.u.mlocution that he asked for Jenifer's address.

The Archbishop, by a simultaneous depression of the head and raising of the eyebrows, managed to convey his just sense of the honor which was being done him and the liberty that was being taken.

"I wrote the other day," explained Max, "asking her to arrange a time when I might come and see you. In strict etiquette I believe that your Grace ought first to call upon me; but we have so few precedents to go by. She has, I trust, done me the honor to tell you that we are engaged?"

"I have been informed of the circ.u.mstance," replied the Archbishop with stately formality.

The Prince took the matter boldly in hand. "From your manner I have to presume that we have not the happiness of your consent?"

"My consent was not asked."

"Had it been?"

"I could not have given it."

"That I think," said the Prince, "would have been the perfectly correct att.i.tude until such time as the King gave his. It is for that we have been waiting; had it not been so I should have come to you earlier."

"Early or late, my answer to your Highness would always be the same."

"May I ask upon what grounds?"

"I would ask, sir, in return, upon what grounds is it suitable that you should marry my daughter?"

"It so happens," replied Max, "that I am in love with her."

"What precisely, sir, to your mind does the phrase 'being in love'

convey?"

The Prince saw that the tussle was coming; he gathered his thoughts together, then said, "An intense personal desire to endow a certain woman with motherhood."

The Archbishop flushed: sharp enmity showed itself in his eyes; he made a gesture of repulsion.