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Page 24
"Everything," went on the Russian, mildly, "you, I believe, are a
priest, and therefore should be better able to expound your
Deity's meaning than I, a layman--but you have evidently not the
same point of view--mine is always to look at the facts of a case
denuded of prejudice--because the truth is the thing to aim at--"
"You would suggest that I am not aiming at the truth," the
clergyman interrupted, trembling now with anger, so that he
fiercely grasped the back of a high chair, "your words are
preposterous, sir."
"Not at all," Count Roumovski continued. "Look frankly at things;
you have just announced that you would constitute yourself judge
of what is for Miss Rawson's salvation."
"Leave her name out, I insist," the other put in hotly.
"To be concrete, unfortunately, I cannot do so," the Russian said.
"I must speak of this lady we are both interested in--pray, try to
listen to me calmly, sir, for we are here for the settling of a
matter which concerns the happiness of our three lives."
"I do not admit for a moment that you have the right to speak at
all," Mr. Medlicott returned, but his adversary went on quietly.
"You must have remarked that Miss Rawson possesses beauty of form,
sweet and tender flesh, soft coloring, and a look of health and
warmth and life. All these charms tend to create in man a
passionate physical love. That is cause and effect. For the sake
of the present argument we will, for the moment, leave out all
more important questions of the soul and things mental and
spiritual. Well, who gave her these attributes? Did you or I--or
even her parents, consciously? Or did the Supreme Being, whom you
call God, endow her so? Admitted that He did--have you, then, or
anyone else, the right to crush out the result of His endowment in
a woman; crush her joy of them, force her into a life where their
possession is looked upon as a temptation? Seek to marry her--
remember that marriage physically means being certainly actuated
to do so by their attraction--and yet believing that you sin each
time you allow them to influence you." Count Roumovski's level
voice took on a note of deep emotion and his blue eyes gleamed.
"Why, the degradation is horrible to think of, sir, if you will
face the truth--and this is the fate to which you would condemn
this young and tender girl for your own selfishness, knowing she
does not love you."
Eustace Medlicott walked up and down rapidly for a moment; he then
picked up a book and threw it aside again in agitation. He was
very pale now.
"I refuse to have the woman I have decided to marry snatched from
me by any of your sophistries," he said breathlessly. "I am better
able than you to save her soul, and she owes me honor and
obedience--it is most unseemly to even mention the aspects you
have done in a bond which is a sacrament of holy church and should
be only approached in a spiritual frame of mind, not a carnal
one."
"You are talking pure nonsense, sir," returned Count Roumovski
sternly. "If that were the case the wording of your English
marriage service would be different. First and foremost, marriage
is a contract between two people to live together in union of body
and to procreate children, which is the law of God and nature. Men
added arrangement and endowment of property, and the church added
spiritual sacrament. But God and nature invented the vital thing.
If it were not so, it would have been possible for the spiritually
minded, of which company you infer yourself to be, to live with a
woman on terms of brother and sister, and never let the senses
speak at all. There would then have been no necessity for the
ceremony of marriage for priests with your views."
Eustace Medlicott shook with passion and emotion as he answered
furiously: "You would turn the question into one of whether a
priest should marry or not. It is a question which has agitated me
all my life, and which I have only lately been able to come to a
conclusion upon. I refuse to let you disturb me in it."
"I had not thought of doing so," Count Roumovski returned
tranquilly. "You and your views and your destiny do not interest
me, I must own, except in so far as they interfere with myself and
the woman I love. You have proved yourself to be just a warped
atom of the great creation, incapable of anything but ignoble
narrowness. You cannot even examine your own emotions honestly and
probe their meaning or you would realize no man should marry, be
he priest or layman, if he looks upon the joys of physical love as
base and his succumbing to them a proof of the power of the beast
in himself. Because he then lives under continual degradation of
soul by acting against his conscience."
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