Chapter VI

MAX was quite recovering from the horror with which he had first received the news of Marion's little operation. He was beginning to see that really he was not responsible in any land of way; that the collapse of the voice would have come in any case; and in order to keep himself quite comfortable in his mind he wrote to Marion about twice a week.

So far he had not seen her since her operation, except for five minutes just before she left London: and that was not a satisfactory interview, as she was allowed hardly to speak at all, and Miss Brent had been present throughout. However, it had been something to see her; she had looked a little pulled down and fragile, but was entirely herself, except for the hoarseness that discoloured the few words she spoke.

A week later he conceived the idea of going to see her in the country; and it was here that his friend Guy proved useful: for Guy was the possessor of a car which would cover the distance very easily in the morning, and again back to town between tea and dinner. A few notes passed to and fro; and three days later, Miss Brent looked out of the window just before lunch and saw that the visitors had come.

Max was very happy as he came out through the house with Maggie and saw Marion coming to meet them.

It was a perfect day, and really the sight he saw was a picture. The roses formed a blaze of colour, bright as a tapestry over the green of the grass and of the yew-hedge, and, set right aginst it was the white figure of the girl he loved. Her whole face smiled, and her eyes were kind and steady. She carried Maximilian on her shoulder.

" This is too delightful, Mr. Merival," she said; and he noticed with delight that the hoarseness seemed sensibly diminished. " But there is nothing whatever to do here.... How do you do, Mr. Markheim? Mr. Merival hasn't introduced us: but I know who you are. And this is Maximilian, please. Mr. Merival gave him me on my first night: he's my mascot."

" We only want to sit still," said Max. " You are really better, Miss Tenterden? "

" I am absolutely well — except for my voice. Yes: sit there, please." (She lifted a heavy book from the grass by her chair.) "Look here! I've been going through Lohengrin — it's dreadfully professional of me; but I love it."

She turned the pages tenderly.

" My dear," said Maggie; " you mustn't talk too much. She will talk too much, Mr. Markheim. These gentlemen must talk instead."

" She's a dragon," said Marion. " Indeed, I may talk: but I mustn't talk loud; and I mustn't attempt to sing. That's the verdict."

" You'll be all right for the next winter season, I suppose? " said Guy.

" Why, of course. And I mean to begin my exercises again in October, at the latest."

They began to talk shop. Guy knew quite enough to make a decent show of conversation on musical matters, and Max was interested enough in the talkers to listen. They talked shop the whole of lunch, and were beginning to run dry when they came out again for coffee. It was not till coffee was drunk and Max was finishing his second cigarette that Guy was able to execute the design of leaving the two together that had been formulated almost without words on the way down.

" Miss Brent," he said quite frankly: " I am sure these two want to talk. I wish you'd show me that church next door. I'm interested in Catholic churches. I suppose that's one? "

The bribe was too great. Maggie's eyes darted round the faces; but the expression on both Marion's and Max's was so utterly void of guile that she could not resist.

" Why: I shall be delighted, Mr. Markheim."

" Be away quite a long time," said Marion tranquilly. " I want to talk deer-stalking and Scotland to Mr. Merival; and that's worse even than musical shop."

She looked with serene laughing eyes, and Maggie was reassured.

" Come along, Mr. Markheim," she said. " You shall see all over it. Don't let her talk too loud, will you, Mr. Merival?"

" I'll call for you if she does," he said.

" How extremely clever both you and Mr. Markheim must be," said Marion softly as Guy disappeared after Maggie. " You did that beautifully. Poor dear! But you haven't told him, I suppose? "

" Good Lord, no! But he understood quickly enough that I wanted to talk to you. That was all."

" Won't he suspect anything? " smiled the girl, scratching Maximilian under the chin, as he sprawled on her lap with his claws out.

" It doesn't matter a straw if he does. That's enough of that. Don't let's waste time. How are you, really? "

" That's enough of that too, then. I'm perfectly well, as I said, except for my throat; and that just wants time. But I'm glad you've come. There's something else I want to tell you, and I didn't like to write it."

"Yes?"

She pulled her chair a shade nearer to him.

" It's lucky I mustn't talk loud, isn't it? Well: you remember that I told you there was a bother connected with my religion? And that I wouldn't tell you? Well, I want to tell you, now. Do you mind? "

" My darling; tell me exactly what you like, and no more."

He comfortably lit his third cigarette.

" You're smoking too much. Well; that's not the point. (Well, my dear, if you must go, you must.) " She set the kitten down. " The fact is that I've been to see two priests to find out if there wasn't some way round. Well, there isn't. And I think it's only fair to tell you."

Max looked faintly perturbed at this introduction.

" It's nothing that can possibly make any difference " he began.

" Good gracious, no, you ridiculous person! I'm not going to let it make any difference: that's the whole point. Well: in one sentence it is this: My Church makes certain demands about my marriage which I don't mean to comply with."

" And what's the consequence of that? "

" The consequence of that is although the marriage will be perfectly legal and valid in the eyes of everybody else, it won't be in the eyes of Catholics."

Her hoarse voice trembled a little.

" You mean? " began Max.

" I mean that I shan't be able to live as a Catholic — or go to the sacraments: and that Catholics will believe — or pretend to believe " — (her voice shook a lit$le, but with indignation) — " will pretend to believe that you and I aren't married when we are."

" But, Good Lord '*

" Yes, I know. Have you ever heard anything so absurd? It's all this hateful system. I went to two priests — two priests, not just a casual one — one of them was quite well educated: and they both said the most awful things."

Max's eyes gleamed a little.

"Did they?"

" No: there's nothing to be angry about. They had to say it. They couldn't, as priests, say anything else. It's just part of the system. But isn't it abominable? "

" You mean," said Max, slowly assimilating these things, " that Catholics won't recognise our marriage as a real marriage at all — that Miss Brent, for instance "

" I know. She's just the single one I do mind about."

" You poor dear! " said Max, with sudden tenderness. " What a time you must have had! "

" Well," confessed Marion, " I have about her. But I don't care the slightest about any one else. They can believe what they like. But, you know, Maggie will have to be told sometime."

" But are you sure Miss Brent will take the same view? "

" Oh, my dear: you don't understand," whispered the girl almost sharply. " Catholics are all the same. They just believe what's told them, like so many sheep."

" But, my darling, you don't believe it? " said the bewildered Max.

" Of course I don't," said the girl passionately. " I know it's all a lot of narrow-minded rubbish. Buij then, you see, I'm not a good Catholic."

" Perhaps Miss Brent isn't, either," suggested Max hopefully. He really could not quite take in the acuteness of the crisis, even now. (He had had an idea that Papal decrees were abolished at the Reformation.)

Marian laughed, noiselessly, and a little bitterly.

" Oh! but she is. She's a convert: and a devote too."

There was a pause.

All this kind of thing was so completely remote from Max's experience that, although he saw that the affair was a real strain on Marion's mind, he honestly could not quite see why. Religion, to him, was not a practical thing at all: it was a particular kind of emotion which certain kinds of people had, and others had not. It was a matter of choice, or perhaps of temperament: and the amount of intellectual ideas that you held along with the emotion depended again on temperament, or perhaps education. Religion was like clear soup: you might like it, or you might not: it might be hot or cold or tepid: and its dogmas were like those little dough alphabets that float about in clear soup. If you were very much interested, and had a good many letters, you might even think they formed words. Catholics, as a class, he knew, had a great many dogmas and rules; he could not conceive how it was possible that they should really hold them, but some of them certainly appeared to do so. Very well, then, it was no affair of his. Live and let live. He had no objection.

" Tell me what these things are," he said presently; " I mean the things that your Church wants you to do."

Marion moved a little in her chair, and took up a paper umbrella to shade her face. The sun had moved from behind the tree-tops, and the shadow had shifted.

" Well," she said. " First there's one about being married in a Catholic church, only. They have the impertinence to say that a priest mustn't conduct the ceremony at all, if any other clergyman has anything to do with it."

" That sounds pretty average bigoted," remarked Max.

" Then there are what are called the * promises.' The Catholic, so far as I understand, has to promise to do his or her utmost to convert the other — this is in a mixed marriage, of course — and the Non-Catholic has to promise to leave the other entirely free in every way to practise her religion."

" A trifle one-sided," observed Max judicially, watching Maximilian, who, in the edge of a garden-bed, lay, flattened and swaying, in preparation for an assault on a feathery head of grass.

" But that's not all," continued the girl steadily. " If there are any children, both sides have to promise that they shall all be brought up Catholics. Even if the Catholic parent dies, the other would have to keep his promise."

" Oh, dear me! " said Max. " That really is beyond anything."

" Isn't it incredible? And if you won't promise all these things, they won't give a dispensation, and the marriage isn't valid! Have you ever heard anything like it? "

" Do you mean to say that they think it isn't valid, if it's conducted even in a Protestant church — by a clergyman? "

" I do indeed."

He threw away the end of his cigarette. Maximilian skipped away, as on springs.

" And educated people believe all that? "

She jerked her umbrella towards the apse of the little church.

"Father Denny does. Not that he's educated, though. But all Catholics believe it. The Jesuit Fathers believe it."

" Jesuit Fathers, eh? And can't even they find a way round it, somehow? "

(He spoke from the simplest conviction.)

" No; not even the Jesuit Fathers," said the girl bitterly.

Again there was silence. Max was vaguely contemplating the inexplicable fact that there really were educated people who believed what was obviously nonsense. He stared at the roses, chewing a stalk of grass he had just picked out of the lawn beside his low deck-chair. Then a further thought occurred to him.

" But look here," he said. " What's going to become of you after we're married, if you mayn't go to your church any more? Have you thought about that? "

(Had she thought about that!)

" It's only the sacraments I mayn't go to," she said. " No one can stop me going to mass if I want to."

" But why should you want to? " he asked innocently. " If you don't believe in your Church, why need you go? Why can't you just join the Church of England? I belong to that," he added as an afterthought.

She suddenly laughed gently.

" Oh! Max: you are a dear! I wish I was like you. But it isn't as simple as all that, you know. I really don't think I could quite do that. I suppose it's associations and so on. I don't know."

" But it seems to me very illogical," pursued Max, rather proud of himself as a theological controversialist. " I don't see how you can be both a Catholic and not a Catholic at the same time."

He was honestly trying to see the point.

Marion flushed a little.

*' But I am a Catholic," she said. " At least — good gracious! what a bother it all is! "

" Think about it," he continued. " Do you know Sir Robert Mainwaring was talking about you the other day after dinner, and said almost that very thing. He said — what was it exactly?... Oh! I know. He said you were ' too large-minded to be denominational.'

I thought he was rather talking through his hat, at the time. But I see what he means."

Marion sat upright.

" Max, don't let's talk about it any more at all. I've told you what was on my mind. I thought I'd better. And now it's not going to be on my mind any more. Except about Maggie," she added. " Let's leave it."

Max wondered a little, when the other two came back, that the thought of Maggie was so great a burden as it evidently was, on Marion's mind. Of course, she had been very kind and all that; but her personality did not impress him. He could not understand how any very tender associations could entwine themselves round the idea of Miss Brent.

Maggie was in high spirits when she returned.

" We've been all round it," she said: " and we looked at all the Stations, particularly, as they were painted by Father Denny's sister before she died. Mr. Markheim thought them so devotional; didn't you, Mr. Markheim? Father Denny came in in the middle. I think he thought we were suffragettes. And we looked at the Lady chapel, which always reminds me of the catacombs, because it's so dark and damp. I like that. It was a dishonest builder, I am afraid, who put in bad material, poor thing! He died soon after, too, just as one might have expected. And I've brought a bit of convolvulus root that I pulled out by the west door. I thought we might plant it by the roses and let it run all over them."

" That's bind-weed," said Marion hoarsely. " If you let it run all over them, as you say, there won't be any roses."

"Dear! Is that so? Why, of course it is 1 But you'll put it in water, my dearest, won't you? So sad, growing by the church like that, and then being pulled up suddenly. You're looking rather tired, my dear. I hope Mr. Merival hasn't let you talk too much. We heard your voices quite plainly once or twice."

" Ah! we were talking about religion," said Marion serenely.

" Why that's just what Mr. Markheim and I were doing," said Maggie delightedly. " I was telling him all about Catholicism, and how I was once a Protestant myself. Wasn't I, Mr. Markheim? "

" Yes," said Mr. Markheim.

" That's why we were so long," went on Maggie; " it takes such a long time to explain properly. Why, where's Rhadamanthus all this time? I quite thought I had brought him out. He's missing all the sun: and Maximilian's getting it all, instead."

She hurried in.

" I hope you were properly interested, Mr. Markheim," whispered Marion.

He smiled delightfully.

" Miss Brent was really absorbing," he said. " I haven't met such a whole-hearted devotee for a long time. It's always so with converts, I understand. You're not a convert, Miss Tenterden, are you? "

" No," said Marion.

" Here he is, and so cross at being forgotten," cried a cheerful voice from the cottage door.

She tripped a little over a croquet hoop as she came towards them, and the cage swayed dangerously.

" Damn you! " said Rhadamanthus, with an extraordinary clearness of enunciation.

The two women stood at the cottage door, just within the garden gate, to see the motor start, an hour later.

" Sorry we've got to get back so early," said Guy genially as he slipped on his driving-gloves. " We're both dining early."

" Going to the Opera? " whispered Marion; who, as before, held Maximilian on her shoulder.

" I should think not," said Guy emphatically. " I'm not going near it till — when is it? — next winter season."

Marion smiled. It was pleasant to hear such things.

She let her eyes rest on Max, as Guy was winding up the handle. He was buttoning up his coat. How sane and wholesome he looked: and how sane and wholesome had been his conversation this afternoon!

" Come again," she said suddenly.

He nodded.

" If we may," he said.

" Why can't they invent something that'll save all that trouble? " demanded Maggie. " Look at poor Mr. Markheim — how hot he's getting. Marion, my darling, are you sure you oughtn't to have something over your head? The sun's right on it, you know. Ah! it's off now. That's right."

She nodded and smiled again with the most friendly feelings as Guy, with his hands on the wheel, saluted for the last time. Max lifted his cap. Then the car slid off.

" What a charming man Mr. Markheim is," said Maggie as they lingered, watching. " We had such a long talk; and he said at the end that I had given him some quite new light on Catholicism. And I saw him put his finger into the holy-water stoup as we came out. Perhaps it was only to see what was in it; because he didn't make the sign of the cross or anything. But I thought it so nice of him. He did it so reverently."