Adventure, February 1917 — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

him. Her face, in the rising moon, was the color of her white silk dress. “Didn’t you know,” she said, with a lit- tle stop for breath at almost every word, “that the Cardillions are Catholics?” “I did not,” said Slade. ‘What does that matter?” “Mother of God! Mother of God!” cried Edith Cardillion, and broke away from the deck, down toward her cabin. Slade stood frozen for a minute, and then, biting his mustache, walked aft to the promenade deck and the saloons. _ “Vhere’s a priest on board,” he said to himself. ‘This has got to be settled now.” Ci @ THE priest was sitting in a deck- paaee, chair by himself, under the electric — light, reading a detective novel by Mrs. Henry Wood, He was a youngish- looking man, with a sensible plain face. Slade remembered that he had been genial and pleasant throughout the voyage, join- ing in deck games and making himself gen- erally liked. ‘He won’t mind my butting in on him, I think, and if he does, it’s no particular mat- ter,” thought Slade, dropping into the next chair, which was unoccupied. “TI can’t face the night with this hanging over me.” The priest looked up from his novel. “Ever read this?”’ he asked. “It’s capi- tal. I would defy any one to guess who killed him, till the proper time comes.” “‘No, I haven’t read it,”’ said Slade, look- ing down at the deck, his hands dropped between his knees, his thoughts busy with what he was going to say. “I want to ask you a question if you don’t mind.” Something like a veil dropped across the commonplace bearing of the priest. It was the professional manner, evoked by Slade’s speech and tone. “Not in the least,” he replied in the im- personal voice that invites confidence. “What,” said Slade,-and now he raised tortured eyes to the patient eyes of the priest, that had seen many of such looks before; that knew them but too well— “what is the attitude of the Roman Catho- lic Church toward marriage with a divorced person?” “T think you must know,” was the reply, very gently given. “Tell me.” “She forbids—absolutely.” “Even if the divorced person is Protestant Adventure —if he or she was not the person in the wrong?” “She has nothing to do with him. She forbids her own child.” “Tf the Roman Catholic married all the same?” “The Catholic would, in such a case, be excommunicated; deprived of the sacra- ments, and, in the eye of the Church, would be considered to be living in sin and not matried at all.” “‘There are no exceptions?” “None.” 3 *Well,” said Slade with a kind of cold violence, getting up, “in that case, I shall do my best to make a Protestant of her.” “You will never do that with a Cardil- lion,” said the priest. **You seem to know a lot.” “Only what I have seen. I do not know these Cardillions. I know the family gen- erally. There has never been one, man or woman, who deserted the faith. They are all Lion- Hearts in the cause of Holy Church.” “T wish them a better cause,” was the bitter comment of Slade, as he walked away again. “Slade did not despair, but the world looked very black. If the legend of his special providence had been true, now was assuredly the time for it to get to work. It did not. Edith Cardillion, through floods of tears, stood fast. They parted at Colombo, shaking hands in an ordinary way on the deck before all the passengers. She went North, and he, in a week, went South again, and there was all the globe - between the bodies of these two who had met and loved, and more than all the world —all eternity—between their souls. Agee, ized exactly what people meant when they talked about broken hearts: a sort of talk that, previously, he had taken to be based on mere metaphor and pose. He was just beginning to get over it, and to take something of an interest in a money- making scheme he was working in New Guinea, when two more blows fell on him eS FOR some months after, Slade real- that left him wondering if any sort of Provi-. dence, or every sort of devil, were in truth the ruler of the world. The first blow was the news of Edith’s marriage to Godfrey Campbell, the Cocoa King. This he could CORMICGLOOOKS CO) (C