Title: The Puritans
Author: Bates, Arlo, 1850-1918
Language: English
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                  The Puritans


                      By


                   Arlo Bates


 The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.
                                    _All's Well That Ends Well_, iv. 3.



"Abandoning my heart, and rapt in ecstasy, I ran after her till I came
to a place in which religion and reason forsook me."
                                  _Persian Religious Hymn.



                  CONTENTS


      I. AFTER SUCH A PAGAN CUT
     II. THERE BEGINS CONFUSION
    III. AS FALSE AS STAIRS OF SAND
     IV. SOME SPEECH OF MARRIAGE
      V. VOLUBLE AND SHARP DISCOURSE
     VI. HEART-BURNING HEAT OF DUTY
    VII. THE SHOT OF ACCIDENT
   VIII. LIKE COVERED FIRE
     IX. HIS PURE HEART'S TRUTH
      X. A SYMPATHY OF WOE
     XI. IN PLACE AND IN ACCOUNT NOTHING
    XII. THE INLY TOUCH OF LOVE
   XIII. A NECESSARY EVIL
    XIV. HE SPEAKS THE MERE CONTRARY
     XV. HEARTSICK WITH THOUGHT
    XVI. THE GREAT ASSAY OF ART
   XVII. A BOND OF AIR
  XVIII. CRUEL PROOF OF THIS MAN'S STRENGTH
    XIX. 'TWAS WONDROUS PITIFUL
     XX. IN WAY OF TASTE
    XXI. THIS "WOULD" CHANGES
   XXII. THE BITTER PAST
  XXIII. THIS DEED UNSHAPES ME
   XXIV. FAREWELL AT ONCE, FOR ONCE, FOR ALL, AND EVER
    XXV. WHOM THE FATES HAVE MARKED
   XXVI. O WICKED WIT AND GIFT
  XXVII. UPON A CHURCH BENCH
 XXVIII. BEDECKING ORNAMENTS OF PRAISE
   XXIX. WEIGHING DELIGHT AND DOLE
    XXX. PARTED OUR FELLOWSHIP
   XXXI. HOW CHANCES MOCK
  XXXII. NOW HE IS FOR THE NUMBERS
 XXXIII. A MINT OF PHRASES IN HIS BRAIN
  XXXIV. WHAT TIME SHE CHANTED
   XXXV. THE WORLD IS STILL DECEIVED
  XXXVI. THE HEAVY MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
 XXXVII. THIS IS NOT A BOON



                   THE PURITANS



                       I


             AFTER SUCH A PAGAN CUT
                         Henry VIII., i. 3.


"We are all the children of the Puritans," Mrs. Herman said smiling.
"Of course there is an ethical strain in all of us."

Her cousin, Philip Ashe, who wore the dress of a novice from the Clergy
House of St. Mark, regarded her with a serious and doubtful glance.

"But there is so much difference between you and me," he began. Then he
hesitated as if not knowing exactly how to finish his sentence.

"The difference," she responded, "is chiefly a matter of the difference
between action and reaction. You and I come of much the same stock
ethically. My childhood was oppressed by the weight of the Puritan
creed, and the reaction from it has made me what you feel obliged to
call heretic; while you, with a saint for a mother, found even
Puritanism hardly strict enough for you, and have taken to
semi-monasticism. We are both pushed on by the same original impulse:
the stress of Puritanism."

She had been putting on her gloves as she spoke, and now rose and stood
ready to go out. Philip looked at her with a troubled glance, rising
also.

"I hardly know," said he slowly, "if it's right for me to go with you.
It would have been more in keeping if I adhered to the rules of the
Clergy House while I am away from it."

Mrs. Herman smiled with what seemed to him something of the tolerance
one has for the whim of a child.

"And what would you be doing at the Clergy House at this time of day?"
she asked. "Wouldn't it be recreation hour or something of the sort?"

He looked down. He never found himself able to be entirely at ease in
answering her questions about the routine of the Clergy House.

"No," he answered. "The half hour of recreation which follows Nones
would just be ended."

His cousin laughed confusingly.

"Well, then," she rejoined, "begin it over again. Tell your confessor
that the woman tempted you, and you did sin. You are not in the Clergy
House just now; and as I have taken the trouble to ask leave to carry
you to Mrs. Gore's this afternoon, more because you wanted to see this
Persian than because I cared about it, it is rather late for
objections."

Philip raised his eyes to her face only to meet a glance so quizzical
that he hastened to avoid it by going to the hall to don his cloak; and
a few moments later they were walking up Beacon Hill.

It was one of those gloriously brilliant winter days by which Boston
weather atones in an hour for a week of sullenness. Snow lay in a thin
sheet over the Common, and here and there a bit of ice among the
tree-branches caught the light like a glittering jewel. The streets
were dotted with briskly gliding sleighs, the jingle of whose bells
rang out joyously. The air was full of a vigor which made the blood
stir briskly in the veins.

Philip had not for years found himself in the street with a woman.
Seldom, indeed, was he abroad with a companion, except as he took the
walk prescribed in the monastic regime with his friend, Maurice Wynne.
For the most part he went his way alone, occupied in pious
contemplation, shutting himself stubbornly in from outward sights and
sounds. Now he was confused and unsettled. Since a fire had a week
earlier scattered the dwellers in the Clergy House, and sent him to the
home of his cousin, he had gone about like one bewildered. The world
into which he was now cast was as unknown to him as if he had passed
the two years spent at St. Mark's in some far island of the sea. To be
in the street with a lady; to be on his way to hear he knew not what
from the lips of a Persian mystic; to have in his mind memory of light
talk and pleasant story; all these things made him feel as if he were
drifting into a strange unknown sea of worldliness.

Yet his feeling was not entirely one of fear or of reluctance.
Sensitive to the tips of his fingers, he felt the influences of the
day, the sweetness of his cousin's laughter, the beauty of her face. He
was exhilarated by a strange intoxication. He was conscious that more
than one passer looked curiously at them as, he in his cassock and she
in her furs, they walked up Beacon Street. He felt as in boyhood he had
felt when about to embark in some adventure to childhood strange and
daring.

"It is a beautiful day," he said involuntarily.

"Yes," Mrs. Herman answered. "It is almost a pity to spend it indoors.
But here we are."

They had come into Mt. Vernon Street, and now turned in at a fine old
house of gray stone.

"Is there any discussion at these meetings?" he asked, as they waited
for the door to be opened.

"Oh, yes; often there is a good deal. You'll have ample opportunity to
protest against the heresies of the heathen."

"I do not come here to speak," he replied, rather stiffly. "I only come
to get some idea of how the oriental mind works."

He felt her smile to be that of one amused at him, but he could not see
why she should be.

"I must give you one caution," she went on, as they entered the house.
"It's the same that the magicians give to those who are present at
their incantations. Be careful not to pronounce sacred words."

"But don't they use them?"

"Oh, abundantly; but they know how to use them in a fashion understood
only by the initiated, so that they are harmless."

They passed up the wide staircase of Mrs. Gore's handsome, if
over-furnished house. They were shown into the drawing-room, where they
were met by the hostess, a tall, superb woman of commanding presence,
her head crowned with masses of snow-white hair. Coming in from the
brilliant winter sunlight, Philip could not at first distinguish
anything clearly. He went mechanically through his presentation to the
hostess and to the Persian who was to address the meeting, and then
sank into a seat. He looked curiously at the Persian, struck by the
picturesque appearance of the long snow-white beard, fine as silk,
which flowed down over the rich robe of the seer. The face was to
Philip an enigma. To understand a foreign face it is necessary to have
learned the physiognomy of the people to which it belongs, as to
comprehend their speech it is necessary to have mastered their
language. As he knew not whether the countenance of the old man
attracted or repelled him more, and could only decide that at least it
had a strange fascination.

Suddenly Ashe felt his glance called up by a familiar presence, and to
his surprise saw his friend, Maurice Wynne, come into the room,
accompanied by a stately, bright-eyed woman who was warmly greeted by
Mrs. Gore. He wondered at the chance which had brought Maurice here as
well as himself; but the calling of the meeting to order attracted his
thoughts back to the business of the moment.

The Persian was the latest ethical caprice of Boston. He had come by
the invitation of Mrs. Gore to bring across the ocean the knowledge of
the mystic truths contained in the sacred writings of his country; and
his ministrations were being received with that beautiful seriousness
which is so characteristic of the town. In Boston there are many
persons whose chief object in life seems to be the discovery of novel
forms of spiritual dissipation. The cycle of mystic hymns which the
Persian was expounding to the select circle of devotees assembled at
Mrs. Gore's was full of the most sensual images, under which the
inspired Persian psalmists had concealed the highest truth. Indeed,
Ashe had been told that on one occasion the hostess had been obliged to
stop the reading on the ground that an occidental audience not
accustomed to anything more outspoken than the Song of Solomon, and
unused to the amazing grossness of oriental symbolism, could not listen
to the hymn which he was pouring forth. Fortunately Philip had chanced
upon a day when the text was harmless, and he could hear without
blushing, whether he were spiritually edified or not.

The Persian had a voice of exquisite softness and flexibility. His
every word was like a caress. There are voices which so move and stir
the hearer that they arouse an emotion which for the moment may
override reason; voices which appeal to the senses like beguiling
music, and which conquer by a persuasive sweetness as irresistible as
it is intangible. The tones of the Persian swayed Ashe so deeply that
the young man felt as if swimming on a billow of melody. Philip
regarded as if fascinated the slender, dusky fingers of the reader as
they handled the splendidly illuminated parchment on which glowed
strange characters of gold, marvelously intertwined with leaf and
flower, and cunning devices in gleaming hues. He looked into the deep,
liquid eyes of the old man, and saw the light in them kindle as the
reading proceeded. He felt the dignity of the presence of the seer, and
the richness of his flowing garment; but all these things were only the
fitting accompaniments to that beautiful voice, flowing on like a topaz
brook in a meadow of daffodils.

The Persian spoke admirable English, only now and then by a slight
accent betraying his nationality. He made a short address upon the
antiquity of the hymn which he was that day to expound, its authorship,
and its evident inspiration. Then in his wonderful voice he read:--



                THE HYMN OF ISMAT.


Yesterday, half inebriated, I passed by the quarters where the vintners
dwell, to seek the daughter of an infidel who sells wine.

At the end of the street, there advanced before me a damsel, with a
fairy's cheeks, who in the manner of a pagan wore her tresses
dishevelled over her shoulders like a sacerdotal thread. I said: "O
thou, to the arch of whose eyebrow the new moon is a slave, what
quarter is this, and where is thy mansion?"

She answered: "Cast thy rosary to the ground; bind on thy shoulder the
thread of paganism; throw stones at the glass of piety; and quaff from
a full goblet."

"After that come before me that I may whisper a word in thine
ear;--thou wilt accomplish thy journey if thou listen to my discourse."

Abandoning my heart, and rapt in ecstasy, I ran after her until I came
to a place in which religion and reason forsook me.

At a distance I beheld a company all insane and inebriated, who came
boiling and roaring with ardor from the wine of love.

Without cymbals or lutes or viols, yet all filled with mirth and
melody; without wine or goblet or flagon, yet all incessantly drinking.

When the cord of restraint slipped from my hand, I desired to ask her
one question, but she said: "Silence!"

"This is no square temple to the gate of which thou canst arrive
precipitately; this is no mosque to which thou canst come with tumult,
but without knowledge. This is the banquet-house of infidels, and
within it all are intoxicated; all from the dawn of eternity to the day
of resurrection lost in astonishment."

"Depart thou from the cloister and take thy way to the tavern; cast off
the cloak of a dervish, and wear the robe of a libertine."

I obeyed; and if thou desirest the same strain and color as Ismat,
imitate him, and sell this world and the next for one drop of pure wine!

The company sat in absorbed silence while the reading went on. Nothing
could be more perfect than the listening of a well-bred Boston
audience, whether it is interested or not. The exquisitely modulated
voice of the Persian flowed on like the tones of a magic flute, and the
women sat as if fascinated by its spell.

When the reading was finished, and the Persian began to comment upon
the spiritual doctrine embodied in it, Ashe sat so completely absorbed
in reverie that he gave no heed to what was being said. In his ascetic
life at the Clergy House he had been so far removed from the sensuous,
save for that to which the services of the church appealed, that this
enervating and luxurious atmosphere, this gathering to which its
quasi-religious character seemed to lend an excuse, bred in him a
species of intoxication. He sat like a lotus-eater, hearing not so much
the words of the speaker as his musical voice, and half-drowned in the
pleasure of the perfumed air, the rich colors of the room, the
Persian's dress, the illuminated scroll, in the subtile delight of the
presence of women, and all those seductive charms of the sense from
which the church defended him.

The Persian, Mirza Gholân Rezâh, repeated in his flute-like voice: "'O
thou, to the arch of whose eyebrow the new moon is a slave;'" and,
hearing the words as in a dream, Philip Ashe looked across the little
circle to see a woman whose beauty smote him so strongly that he drew a
quick breath. To his excited mood it seemed as if the phrase were
intended to describe that beautifully curved brow, brown against the
fair skin, and in his heart he said over the words with a thrill: "'O
thou, to the arch of whose eyebrow the new moon is a slave!'" Half
unconsciously, and as if he were taken possession of by a will stronger
than his own, he found himself noting the soft curve and flush of a
woman's cheek, the shell-texture of her ear, and the snowy whiteness of
her throat. She sat in the full light of the window behind him, leaning
as she listened against a pedestal of ebony which upheld the bronze
bust of a satyr peering down at her with wrinkled eyes; her throat was
displayed by the backward bend of her head, and showed the whiter by
contrast with the black gown she wore. Philip's breath came more
quickly, and his head seemed to swim. Sensitive to beauty, and starved
by asceticism, he was in a moment completely overcome.

Suddenly he felt the regard of his friend Maurice resting upon him with
a questioning glance, and it was as if the thought of his heart were
laid bare. Philip made a strong effort, and fixed his look and his
attention upon the speaker, who was deep in oriental mysticism.

"It is written in the Desâtir," Mirza Gholân Rezâh was saying, "that
purity is of two kinds, the real and the formal. 'The real consists in
not binding the heart to evil: the formal in cleansing away what
appears evil to the view.' The ultimate spirit, that inner flame from
the treasure-house of flames, is not affected by the outward, by the
apparent. What though the outer man fall into sin? What though he throw
stones at the glass of piety and quaff the wine of sensuality from a
full goblet? The flame within the tabernacle is still pure and
undefined because it is undefilable."

Ashe looked around the circle in astonishment, wondering if it were
possible that in a Christian civilization these doctrines could be
proclaimed without rebuke. His neighbors sat in attitudes of close
attention; they were evidently listening, but their faces showed no
indignation. On the lips of Wynne Philip fancied he detected a faint
curl of derisive amusement, but nowhere else could he perceive any
display of emotion, unless--He had avoided looking at the lady in
black, feeling that to do so were to play with temptation; but the
attraction was too strong for him, and he glanced at her with a look of
which the swiftness showed how strongly she affected him. It seemed to
him that there was a faint flush of indignation upon her face; and he
cast down his eyes, smitten by the conviction that there was an
intimate sympathy between his feeling and hers.

"This is the word of enlightenment which the damsel, the
personification of wisdom, whispered into the ear of the seeker,"
continued the persuasive voice of the Persian. "It is the heart-truth
of all religion. It is the word which initiates man into the divine
mysteries. 'Thou wilt accomplish thy journey if thou listen to my
discourse.' Life is affected by many accidents; but none of them
reaches the godhead within. The divine inebriation of spiritual truth
comes with the realization of this fact. The flame within man, which is
above his consciousness, is not to be touched by the acts of the body.
These things which men call sin are not of the slightest feather-weight
to the soul in the innermost tabernacle. It is of no real consequence,"
the speaker went on, warming with his theme until his velvety eyes
shone, "what the outer man may do. We waste our efforts in this
childish care about apparent righteousness. The real purity is above
our acts. Let the man do what he pleases; the soul is not thereby
touched or altered."

Ashe sat upright in his chair, hardly conscious where he was. It seemed
to him monstrous to remain acquiescent and to hear without protest this
juggling with the souls of men. The instinct to save his fellows which
underlies all genuine impulse toward the priesthood was too strong in
him not to respond to the challenge which every word of the Persian
offered. Almost without knowing it, he found himself interrupting the
speaker.

"If that is the teaching of the Persian scriptures," he said, "it is
impious and wicked. Even were it true that there were a flame from the
Supreme dwelling within us, unmanifested and undeniable, it is
evidently not with this that we have to do in our earthly life. It is
with the soul of which we are conscious, the being which we do know.
This may be lost by defilement. To this the sin of the body is death.
I, I myself, I, the being that is aware of itself, am no less the one
that is morally responsible for what is done in the world by me."

Led away by his strong feeling, Philip began vehemently; but the
consciousness of the attention of all the company, and of the searching
look of Mirza, made the ardent young man falter. He was a stranger,
unaccustomed to the ways of these folk who had come together to play
with the highest truths as they might play with tennis-balls. He felt a
sudden chill, as if upon his hot enthusiasm had blown an icy blast.

Yet when he cast a glance around as if in appeal, he saw nothing of
disapproval or of scorn. He had evidently offended nobody by his
outburst. He ventured to look at the unknown in black, and she rewarded
him with a glance so full of sympathy that for an instant he lost the
thread of what the Persian, in tones as soft and unruffled as ever, was
saying in reply to his words. He gathered himself up to hear and to
answer, and there followed a discussion in which a number of those
present joined; a discussion full of cleverness and the adroit handling
of words, yet which left Philip in the confusion of being made to
realize that what to him were vital truths were to those about him
merely so many hypotheses upon which to found argument. There were more
women than men present, and Ashe was amazed at their cleverness and
their shallow reasoning; at the ease and naturalness with which they
played this game of intellectual gymnastics, and at the apparent
failure to pierce to anything like depth. It was evident that while
everything was uttered with an air of the most profound seriousness, it
would not do to be really in earnest. He began to understand what Helen
had meant when she warned him not to pronounce sacred words in this
strange assembly.

When the meeting broke up, the ladies rose to exchange greetings, to
chat together of engagements in society and such trifles of life. Ashe,
still full of the excitement of what he had done, followed his cousin
out of the drawing-room in silence. As they were descending the wide
staircase, some one behind said:--

"Are you going away without speaking to me, Helen?"

Ashe and Mrs. Herman both turned, and found themselves face to face
with the lady in black, who stood on the broad landing.

"My dear Edith," Mrs. Herman answered, "I am so little used to this
sort of thing that I didn't know whether it was proper to stop to speak
with one's friends. I thought that we might be expected to go out as if
we'd been in church. I came only to bring my cousin. May I present Mr.
Ashe; Mrs. Fenton."

"I was so glad that you said what you did this afternoon, Mr. Ashe,"
Mrs. Fenton said, extending her hand. "I felt just as you did, and I
was rejoiced that somebody had the courage to protest against that
dreadful paganism."

Philip was too shy and too enraptured to be able to reply intelligibly,
but as they were borne forward by the tide of departing guests he was
spared the need of answer. At the foot of the stairway he was stopped
again by Maurice Wynne, and presented to Mrs. Staggchase, his friend's
cousin and hostess for the time being; but his whole mind was taken up
by the image of Mrs. Fenton, and in his ears like a refrain rang the
words of the Persian hymn: "O thou, to the arch of whose eyebrow the
new moon is a slave!"



                         II


                THERE BEGINS CONFUSION
                          Henry VI., iv. 1.


That afternoon at Mrs. Gore's had been no less significant to Maurice
Wynne than to Philip Ashe. His was a less spiritual, less highly
wrought nature, but in the effect which the change from the atmosphere
of the Clergy House to the Persian's lecture had upon him, the
experience of Maurice was much the same. He too was attracted by a
woman. He gave his thoughts up to the woman much more frankly than
would have been possible for his friend. She was young, perhaps twenty,
and exquisite with clear skin and soft, warm coloring. Her wide-open
eyes were as dark and velvety as the broad petals of a pansy with the
dew still on them; her cheeks were tinged with a hue like that which
spreads in a glass of pure water into which has fallen a drop of red
wine; her forehead was low and white, and from it her hair sprang up in
two little arches before it fell waving away over her temples; her lips
were pouting and provokingly suggestive of kisses. The whole face was
of the type which comes so near to the ideal that the least
sentimentality of expression would have spoiled it. Happily the big
eyes and the ripe, red mouth were both suggestive of demure humor.
There was a mirthful air about the dimple which came and went in the
left cheek like Cupid peeping mischievously from the folds of his
mother's robe. A boa of long-haired black fur lay carelessly about her
neck, pushed back so that a touch of red and gold brocade showed where
she had loosened her coat. Maurice noted that she seemed to care as
little for the lecture as he did, and he gave himself up to the delight
of watching her.

When the company broke up Mrs. Staggchase spoke almost immediately to
the beautiful creature who so charmed him.

"How do you do, Miss Morison," Mrs. Staggchase said; "I must say that I
am surprised that cousin Anna brought you to a place where the doctrine
is so far removed from mind-cure. My dear Anna," she continued, turning
to a lady whom Wynne knew by name as Mrs. Frostwinch and as an
attendant at the Church of the Nativity, "you are a living miracle. You
know you are dead, and you have no business consorting with the living
in this way."

"It is those whom you call dead that are really living," Mrs.
Frostwinch retorted smiling. "I brought Berenice so that she might see
the vanity of it all."

Mrs. Staggchase presented Maurice to the ladies, and after they had
spoken on the stairs with one and another acquaintance, and Maurice had
exchanged a word with his friend Ashe, it chanced that the four left
the house together. Wynne found himself behind with Miss Morison, while
his cousin and Mrs. Frostwinch walked on in advance. He was seized with
a delightful sense of elation at his position, yet so little was he
accustomed to society that he knew not what to say to her. He was
keenly aware that she was glancing askance at his garb, and after a
moment of silence he broke out abruptly in the most naively unconscious
fashion:--

"I am a novice at the Clergy House of St. Mark."

A beautiful color flushed up in Miss Morison's dark cheek; and Wynne
realized how unconventional he had been in replying to a question which
had not been spoken.

"Is it a Catholic order?" she asked, with an evident effort not to look
confused.

"It is not Roman," he responded. "We believe that it is catholic."

"Oh," said she vaguely; and the conversation lapsed.

They walked a moment in silence, and then Maurice made another effort.

"Has Mrs. Frostwinch been ill?" he asked. "Mrs. Staggchase spoke of her
as a miracle."

"Ill!" echoed Miss Morison; "she has been wholly given up by the
physicians. She has some horrible internal trouble; and a consultation
of the best doctors in town decided that she could not live a week.
That was two months ago."

"But I don't understand," he said in surprise. "What happened?"

"A miracle," the other replied smiling. "You believe in miracles, of
course."

"But what sort of a miracle?"

"Faith-cure."

"Faith-cure!" repeated he in astonishment. "Do you mean that Mrs.
Frostwinch has been raised from a death-bed by that sort of jugglery?"

His companion shrugged her shoulders.

"I don't think it would raise you in her estimation if she heard you.
The facts are as I tell you. She dismissed her doctors when they said
they could do nothing for her, and took into her house a mind-cure
woman, a Mrs. Crapps. Some power has put her on her feet. Wouldn't you
do the same thing in her place?"

Wynne looked bewildered at Mrs. Frostwinch walking before him in a
shimmer of Boston respectability. He had an uneasy feeling that he was
passing from one pitfall to another. He was keenly conscious of the
richness of the voice of the girl by his side, so that he felt that it
was not easy for him to disagree with anything which she said. He let
her remark pass without reply.

"For my part," she went on frankly, "I don't in the least believe in
the thing as a matter of theory; but practically I have a superstition
about it, because I've seen Cousin Anna. She was helpless, in agony,
dying; and now she is as well as I am. If I were ill"--

She broke off with a pretty little gesture as they came within hearing
of the others, who had halted at Mrs. Frostwinch's gate. Wynne said
good-by absently, and went on his way down the hill like a man in a
dream.

"Well," Mrs. Staggchase said, "you have seen one of Boston's ethical
debauches; what do you think of it?"

"It was confusing," he returned. "I couldn't make out what it was for."

"For? To amuse us. We are the children of the Puritans, you know, and
have inherited a twist toward the ethical and the supernatural so
strong that we have to have these things served up even in our
amusements."

"Then I think that it is wicked," Maurice said.

"Oh, no; we must not be narrow. It isn't wrong to amuse one's self; and
if we play with the religion of the Persians, why is it worse than to
play with the mythologies of the Greeks or Romans? You wouldn't think
it any harm to jest about classical theology."

Wynne turned toward her with a smile on his strong, handsome face.

"Why do you try to tangle me up in words?" he asked.

Mrs. Staggchase did not turn toward him, but looked before with face
entirely unchanged as she replied:--

"I am not trying to entangle you in words, but if I were it would be
all part of the play. You are undergoing your period of temptation. I
am the tempter in default of a better. In the old fashion of
temptations it wouldn't do to have the tempter old and plain. Then you
were expected to fall in love; now we deal in snares more subtle."

Maurice laughed, but somewhat unmirthfully. There was to him something
bewildering and worldly about his cousin; and he had come to feel that
he could never be at all sure where in the end the most harmless
beginning of talk might lead him.

"What then is the modern way of temptation?" he inquired.

"It shows how much faith we have in its power," she replied, as they
waited on the corner of Charles Street for a carriage to pass, "that I
don't in the least mind giving you full warning. Did you know the lady
in that carriage, by the way?"

"It was Mrs. Wilson, wasn't it?"

"Yes; Mrs. Chauncy Wilson. You have seen her at the Church of the
Nativity, I suppose. She is one phase of the temptation."

"I don't in the least understand."

"I didn't in the least suppose that you would. You will in time. My
part of the temptation is to show you all sorts of ethical jugglery,
the spiritual and intellectual gymnastics such as the Bostonians love;
to persuade you that all religion is only a sort of pastime, and that
the particular high-church sort which you especially affect is but one
of a great many entertaining ways of killing time."

"Cousin Diana!" he exclaimed, genuinely shocked.

"I hope that you understand," she continued unmoved. "I shall exhibit a
very pretty collection of fads to you if we see them all."

"But suppose," he said slowly, "that I refused to go with you?"

"But you won't," returned she, with that curious smile which always
teased him with its suggestion of irony. "In the first place you
couldn't be so impolite as to refuse me. A woman may always lead a man
into questionable paths if she puts it to his sense of chivalry not to
desert her. In the second, the spirit of the age is a good deal
stronger in you than you realize, and the truth is that you wouldn't be
left behind for anything. In the third, you could hardly be so cowardly
as to run away from the temptation that is to prove whether you were
really born to be a priest."

"That was decided when I entered the Clergy House."

"Nonsense; nothing of the sort, my dear boy. The only thing that was
decided then was that you thought you were. Wait and see our ethical
and religious raree-shows. We had the Persian to-day; to-morrow I'm to
take you to a spiritualist sitting at Mrs. Rangely's. She hates to have
me come, so I mustn't miss that. Then there are the mind-cure,
Theosophy, and a dozen other things; not to mention the
semi-irreligions, like Nationalism. You will be as the gods, knowing
good and evil, by the time we are half way round the circle,--though it
is perhaps somewhat doubtful if you know them apart."

She spoke in her light, railing way, as if the matter were one of the
smallest possible consequence, and yet Wynne grew every moment more and
more uncomfortable. He had never seen his cousin in just this mood, and
could not tell whether she were mocking him or warning him. He seized
upon the first pretext which presented itself to his mind, and
endeavored to change the subject.

"Who is Mrs. Rangely?" he asked. "A medium?"

"Oh, bless you, no. She is not so bad as a medium; she is only a New
Yorker. Do you think we'd go to real mediums? Although," she added,
"there are plenty who do go. I think that it is shocking bad form."

"But you speak as if"--

"As if spiritualism were one of the recognized ethical games, that's
all. It is played pretty well at Mrs. Rangely's, I'm told. They say
that the little Mrs. Singleton she's got hold of is very clever."

"Mrs. Singleton," Maurice repeated, "why, it can't be Alice, brother
John's widow, can it? She married a Singleton for a second husband, and
she claimed to be a medium."

"Did she really? It will be amusing if you find your relatives in the
business."

"She wasn't a very close relative. John was only my half-brother, you
know, and he lived but six months after he married her. She is clever
enough and tricky enough to be capable of anything."

"Well," Mrs. Staggchase said, as they turned in at her door, "if it is
she it will give you an excellent chance to do missionary work."

They entered the wide, handsome hall, and with an abrupt movement the
hostess turned toward her cousin.

"I assure you," she said, "that I am in earnest about your temptation.
I want to see what sort of stuff you are made of, and I give you fair
warning. Now go and read your breviary, or whatever it is that you sham
monks read, while I have tea and then rest before I dress."

Maurice had no reply to offer. He watched in silence as she passed up
the broad stairway, smiling to herself as she went. He followed slowly
a moment later, and seeking his room remained plunged in a reverie at
which the severe walls of the Clergy House might have been startled; a
reverie disquieted, changing, half-fearful; and yet through which with
strange fascination came a longing to see more of the surprising world
into which chance had introduced him, and above all to meet again the
dark, glowing girl with whom he had that afternoon walked.



                         III


             AS FALSE AS STAIRS OF SAND
                          Merchant of Venice, v. 2.


It was cold and gray next morning when Maurice took his way toward a
Catholic church in the North End. He had been there before for
confession, and had been not a little elated in his secret heart that
he had been able to go through the act of confession and to receive
absolution without betraying the fact that he was not a Romanist. He
had studied the forms of confession, the acts of contrition, and
whatever was necessary to the part, and for some months had gone on in
this singular course. To his Superior at the Clergy House he confessed
the same sins, but Maurice had a feeling that the absolution of the
Roman priest was more effective than that of his own church. He was not
conscious of any intention of becoming a Catholic, but there was a
fascination in playing at being one; and Wynne, who could not
understand how the folk of Boston could play with ethical truths, was
yet able thus to juggle with religion with no misgiving.

This morning he enjoyed the spiritual intoxication of the confessional
as never before. He half consciously allowed himself to dwell upon the
image of the beautiful Miss Morison to the end that he might the more
effectively pour out his contrition for that sin. He was so eloquent in
the confessional that he admired himself both for his penitence and for
the words in which he set it forth. He floated as it were in a sea of
mingled sensuousness and repentance, and he hoped that the penance
imposed would be heavy enough to show that the priest had been
impressed with the magnitude of the sin of which he had been guilty in
allowing his thoughts, consecrated to the holy life of the priesthood,
to dwell upon a woman.

It was one of those absurd anomalies of which life is full that while
Maurice sometimes slighted a little the penances imposed by his own
Superior, he had never in the least abated the rigor of any laid upon
him by the Catholic priest. It was perhaps that he felt his honor
concerned in the latter case. This morning the penance was
satisfactorily heavy, and he came out of the church with a buoyant
step, full of a certain boyish elation. He had a fresh and delightful
sense of the reality of religion now that he had actually sinned and
been forgiven.

Next to being forgiven for a sin there is perhaps nothing more
satisfactory than to repeat the transgression, and if Maurice had not
formulated this fact in theory he was to be acquainted with it in
practice. As he walked along in the now bright forenoon, filled with
the enjoyment of moral cleanness, he suddenly started with the thrill
of delicious temptation. Just before him a lady had come around a
corner, and was walking quietly along, in whom at a glance he
recognized Miss Morison. There came into his cheek, which even his
double penances had not made thin, a flush of pleasure. He quickened
his steps, and in a moment had overtaken her.

"Good morning," he said, raising his ecclesiastical hat with an air
which savored somewhat of worldliness. "Isn't it a beautiful day?"

She started at his salutation, but instantly recognized him.

"Good morning," she responded. "I didn't expect to find anybody I knew
in this part of the town."

"It isn't one where young ladies as a rule walk for pleasure, I
suppose," Maurice said, falling into step, and walking beside her.

"I am very sure that I don't," Miss Morison replied with a toss of her
head. "I do it because I was bullied into being a visitor for the
Associated Charities, and I go once a week to tell some poor folk down
here that I am no better than they are. They know that I don't believe
it, and I have my doubts if they even believe it themselves, only they
wouldn't be foolish enough to prevaricate about it. Oh, it's a great
and noble work that I'm engaged in!"

There was something exhilarating about her as she tossed her pretty
head. Wynne laughed without knowing just why, except that she
intoxicated him with delight.

"You don't speak of your work with much enthusiasm," said he.

"Enthusiasm!" she retorted. "Why should I? It's abominable. I hate it,
the people I visit hate it, and there's nobody pleased but the
managers, who can set down so many more visits paid to the worthy poor,
and make a better showing in their annual report. For my part I am
tired of the worthy poor; and if I must keep on slumming, I'd like to
try the unworthy poor a while. I'm sure they'd be more interesting."

She spoke with a pretty air of recklessness, as if she were conscious
that this was not the strain in which to address one of his cloth.
There was not a little vexation under her lightness of manner, however,
and Wynne was not so dull as not to perceive that something had gone
amiss.

"But philanthropy," he began, "is surely"--

"Your cousin," she interrupted, "declares that only the eye of
Omniscience can possibly distinguish between what passes for
philanthropy and what is sheer egotism."

He laughed in spite of himself, feeling that he ought to be shocked.

"But what," he asked, "has impressed this view of things upon you this
morning in particular?"

His companion made a droll little gesture with both her hands.

"Of course I show it," she said; "though you needn't have reminded me
that I have lost my temper."

"I beg your pardon," began Maurice in confusion, "I"--

"Oh, you haven't done anything wrong," she interrupted, "the trouble is
entirely with me. I've been making a fool of myself at the instigation
of the powers that rule over my charitable career, and I don't like the
feeling."

They walked on a moment without further speech. Maurice said to himself
with a thrill of contrition that he would double the penance laid upon
him, and he endeavored not to be conscious of the thought which
followed that the delight of this companionship was worth the price
which he should thus pay for it.

"This is what happened," Miss Morison said at length. "I don't quite
know whether to laugh or to cry with vexation. There's a poor widow who
has had all sorts of trials and tribulations. Indeed, she's been a
miracle of ill luck ever since I began to have the honor to assure her
weekly that I'm no better than she is. It may be that the fib isn't
lucky."

She turned to flash a bright glance into the face of her companion as
she spoke, and he tried to clear away the look of gravity so quickly
that she might not perceive it.

"Oh," she cried; "now I have shocked you! I'm sorry, but I couldn't
help it."

"No," he replied, "you didn't really shock me. It only seemed to me a
pity that you should be working with so little heart and under
direction that doesn't seem entirely wise."

"Wise!" she echoed scornfully. "There's a benevolent gentleman who
insisted upon giving this old woman five dollars. It was all against
the rules of the Associated Charities, for which he said he didn't care
a fig. That's the advantage of being a man! And what do you think the
old thing did? She took the whole of it to buy a bonnet with a red
feather in it! The committee heard of it, though I can't for my life
see how. There are a lot of them that seem to think that benevolence
consists chiefly in prying into the affairs of the poor wretches they
help! And they posted me off to scold her."

"But why did you go?"

"They said they would send Miss Spare if I didn't, and in common
humanity I couldn't leave that old creature to the tender mercies of
Miss Spare."

"What did you say?"

The face of Miss Morison lighted with mocking amusement.

"That's the beauty of it," she cried, bursting into a low laugh which
was full of the keenest fun. "I began with the things I'd been told to
say; but the old woman said that all her life long she had wanted a
bonnet with red feathers, but that she had never expected to have one.
When she got this money, she went out to buy clothing, and in a window
she saw this bonnet marked five dollars. She piously remarked that it
seemed providential. She's like the rest of the world in finding what
she likes to be providential."

"Yes," murmured Maurice, half under his breath; "like my meeting you."

Miss Morison looked surprised, but she ignored the words, and went on
with her story.

"She said she concluded she'd rather go without the clothes, and have
the bonnet; and by the time we were through I had weakly gone back on
all the instructions I'd received, and told her she was right. She knew
what she wanted, and I don't blame her for getting it when she could.
I'm sick of seeing the poor treated as if they were semi-idiots that
couldn't think without leave from the Associated Charities."

The whole tone of the conversation was so much more frank than anything
to which Wynne was accustomed that he felt bewildered. This freedom of
criticism of the powers, this want of reverence for conventionalities,
gave him a strange feeling of lawlessness. He felt as if he had himself
been wonderfully and almost culpably daring in listening. He wondered
that he was not more shocked, being sure that it was his duty to be.
There was about the young man's mental condition a sort of infantile
unsophistication. The New England mind often seems to inherit from
bygone Puritanism a certain repellent quality through which it takes
long for anything savoring of worldliness or worldly wisdom to
penetrate. When once this covering is broken, it may be added, the
result is much the same as in the case of the cracking of other glazes.

After he had parted from Miss Morison, Maurice walked on in a blissful
state of conscious sinfulness. He understood himself well enough to
know that before him lay repentance, but this did not dampen his
present enjoyment. He had not so far outgrown his New England
conscience as to escape remorse for sin, but he had become so
accustomed to the belief that absolution removed guilt that there was
in his cup of self-reproach little abiding bitterness.

That afternoon he accompanied Mrs. Staggchase to the house of Mrs.
Rangely with a confused feeling as if he were some one else. His cousin
wore the same delicately satirical air which marked all her intercourse
with him. She carried her head with her accustomed good-humored
haughtiness, and her straight lips were curled into the ghost of a
smile.

"This is the most stupid humbug of them all," she remarked, as they
neared Mrs. Rangely's house on Marlborough Street. "You'll think the
deception too transparent to be even amusing,--if you don't become a
convert, that is."

"A convert to spiritualism?" Wynne returned with youthful indignation.
"I'm not likely to fall so low as that. That is one of the things which
are too ridiculous."

She laughed, with that air of superiority which always nettled him a
little.

"Don't allow yourself to be one of those narrow persons to whom a thing
is always ridiculous if they don't happen to believe it. You believe in
so many impossible things yourself that you can't afford to take on
airs."

The tantalizing good nature with which she spoke humiliated Wynne. She
seemed to be playing with him, and he resented her reflection upon his
creed. He was, however, too much under the spell of his cousin to be
really angry, and he was silenced rather than offended. They entered
the house to find several of the persons whom he had seen at Mrs.
Gore's on the day previous; and Wynne was at once charmed and
disquieted by the entrance a moment later of Miss Morison, who came in
looking more beautiful than ever. It gave him a feeling of exultation
to be sharing her life, even in this chance way.

The preliminaries of the sitting were not elaborate. Mrs. Rangely, the
hostess, impressed it upon her guests that Mrs. Singleton, the medium,
was not a professional, but that she was with them only in the capacity
of one who wished to use her peculiar gifts in the search for truth.

"She does not understand her powers herself," Mrs. Rangely said; "but
she feels that it is not right to conceal her light."

Maurice was too unsophisticated to understand why Mrs. Rangely's talk
struck him as not entirely genuine, but he was to some extent
enlightened when his cousin said to him afterward: "Frances Rangely has
the imitation Boston patter at her tongue's end now, but she is too
thoroughly a New Yorker ever to get the spirit of it. She rattles off
the words in a way that is intensely amusing."

The shutters of the small parlor in which the company was assembled had
been closed and the gas lighted. There were about a dozen guests, and
all had the air of being of some position. While the hostess went to
summon the medium, Maurice asked in a whisper if the master of the
house was present, and was answered that Fred Rangely was too clever to
be mixed up in this sort of thing. Wynne caught a satirical glance
between his cousin and Miss Morison, and more than ever he felt that
the meeting was a farce in which he, vowed to a nobler life, should
have had no part.

His musings were cut short by the entrance of Mrs. Rangely with the
medium. He recognized Mrs. Singleton at a glance, and was struck as he
had been before by the appealing look of innocence. She was a slender,
almost beautiful woman, with exquisite shell-like complexion, and
delicate features. An entire lack of moral sense frequently gives to a
woman an air of complete candor and purity, and Alice Singleton stood
before the company as the incarnation of sincerity and truth. Her face
was of the rounded, full-lipped, wistful type; the sensuous, selfish
face moulded into the likeness of childlike guilelessness which of all
the multitudinous varieties of the "ever womanly" is the one most
likely to be destructive.

Had it not been that Maurice was acquainted with her history, he could
hardly have resisted the fascination of this creature, as tender and as
innocent in appearance as a dewy rose; but he was thoroughly aware of
her moral worthlessness. Yet as she stood shrinking on the threshold as
if she were too timid to advance, he could not but feel her
attractiveness and the sweetness of her presence. He watched curiously
as in response to a word from Mrs. Rangely she came hesitatingly
forward, bowed in acknowledgment to a general introduction, and sank
into the chair placed for her in the centre of the circle. She was clad
in black, but a little of her creamy neck was visible between the folds
of lace which set off its fairness. Her arms were bare half way to the
elbows, and her hands were ungloved. Maurice wondered if she would
recognize him; then he reflected that he sat in the shadow, out of the
direct line of her vision, and that it was years since she had seen him.

"We will have the gas turned down," Mrs. Rangely said; and at once
turned it, not down, but completely out, leaving the room in absolute
darkness.

There followed an interval of silence, and Maurice, whose wits were
sharpened by his knowledge of the medium, and who was on the lookout
for trickery, reflected how inevitable it was that this breathless
silence, coupled with the darkness and the expectation of something
mysterious, should bring about the frame of mind which the medium would
desire. The silence lasted so long that he, not wrapt in expectation,
began to grow impatient. He put out his hand timidly in the darkness
and touched the chair in which Miss Morison was sitting, getting
foolish comfort from even such remote communion. He fell into a reverie
in which he felt dimly what life might have been with her always at his
side, had he not been vowed to the stern refusal of all earthly
companionship.

His reflections were broken by a loud, quivering sigh seeming to come
from the medium, and echoed in different parts of the room. There was
another brief interval of silence, and then the medium began to speak.
Her tone was strained and unnatural, and at first she murmured to
herself. Then her words came more clearly and distinctly.

"Oh, how beautiful!" she whispered. Then in a voice growing clearer she
went on: "Bright forms! There are three,--no, there are five; oh, the
room is full of them. Oh, how bright they are growing! They shine so
that they almost blind me. Don't you see them?"

The room rustled like a field of wheat under a breeze.

"There is one that is clearer than the others," went on the voice of
the medium in the electrical darkness. "She is all shining, but I can
see that her hair is white as snow. She must have been old before she
went into the spirit world. She smiles and leans over the lady in the
armchair. Oh, she is touching you! Don't you feel her dear hands on
your head?"

Maurice felt the chair against which his fingers rested shaken by a
movement of awe or of impatience. He flushed with indignation. It was
Miss Morison to whom the medium was directing this childish
impertinence. He longed to interfere, and even made so brusque a
movement that Mrs. Staggchase leaned over and whispered to him to
remain quiet.

"There are many spirits here," the medium went on with increasing
fervor, "but none of them are so clear. She is speaking to you, but you
cannot hear her. She is grieved that you do not understand her. Oh, try
to listen so that you may hear her message with the spiritual ear. She
is so anxious."

The audience seemed to quiver with excitement. Simply because a woman
whom Maurice knew to be capable of any falsehood sat here in the
darkness and pretended to see visions, these men and women were
apparently carried out of themselves. It seemed to him at once
monstrous and pitifully ridiculous.

"It must be your grandmother," spoke again the voice of Mrs. Singleton,
now thick with emotion. "Yes, she nods her head. She is so anxious to
reach through your unconsciousness. Wait! she is going to do something.
I think she is going to give you some token. Let me rest a moment, so
that I can help her. She wants to materialize something."

Heavy silence, but a silence which seemed alive with excitement, once
more prevailed. Maurice began himself to feel something of the
influence pervading the gathering, and was angry with himself for it.
Suddenly a cry from the medium, earnest and full of feeling, broke out
shrilly.

"Oh, she has something in her hand. Try to assist her. She will succeed
in materializing it fully if we can help her with our wills. I can see
it becoming clearer--clearer--clearer! Now she is smiling. She is
happy. She knows she will succeed. Yes; it is--Oh, what beautiful
roses! They are changing from white to red in her hands. She holds them
up for me to see; she is lifting them up over your head. Now, now she
is going to drop them! Quick! The light!"

The voice of Mrs. Singleton had risen almost to a scream, and bit the
nerves of the hearers. As she ended Maurice heard the soft sound of
something falling, and felt Miss Morison start violently. The gas was
at once lighted, and there in the lap and at the feet of Berenice, who
regarded them with an expression of mingled disgust and annoyance, lay
scattered a handful of crimson roses.

The company broke into expressions of admiration, of belief, of awe.
Mrs. Singleton had played to her audience with evident success. Miss
Morison gathered up the flowers without a word, and held them out to
the medium, who lay back wearied in her chair.

"Don't give them to me," Mrs. Singleton said in a faint voice. "They
were brought for you."

"How can you bear to give them up?" a woman said. "It must be your
grandmother that brought them."

"My grandmother was in very good health in Brookfield yesterday,"
Berenice responded. "I hardly think that they come from her."

The tone was so cold that Mrs. Singleton was visibly disconcerted.

"Of course I don't know the spirit," she said. "But are both your
grandmothers living?"

"She nodded her head, you know," put in another.

To this Miss Morison did not even reply; but the awkwardness of the
situation was relieved by Mrs. Rangely, who broke into conventional
phrases of admiration and wonder.

"Yes, Frances," Mrs. Staggchase observed dryly, "as you say, it
couldn't be believed if one hadn't seen it."

Her manner was unheeded in the flood of praise and congratulation with
which Mrs. Singleton was being overwhelmed.

"It is what I've longed for all my life," one lady declared, wiping her
eyes. "I never could have confidence in professional mediums, but this
is so perfectly satisfactory. Oh, I _do_ feel that I owe you so much,
Mrs. Singleton!"

"Yes, this we have seen with our own eyes," another added. "It is
impossible for the most skeptical to doubt this."

To this and more Maurice listened in amazement, until he rather thought
aloud than consciously spoke:--

"But it all depends upon the unsupported testimony of the medium."

Mrs. Rangely drew herself up with much dignity.

"That," she said, "I will be responsible for."

"It isn't unsupported," chimed in one of the ladies. "Here are the
roses."

At the sound of Maurice's voice Mrs. Singleton had turned toward him,
and he saw that she recognized him. She looked around with a glance
half terrified, half appealing.

"It is so kind in you to believe in me," she murmured pathetically. "I
don't ask you to. I only tell you what I see, and"--

Maurice rose abruptly and strode forward.

"Alice," he exclaimed, "what do you mean by this humbug? Don't you see
that they take it seriously? Tell them it's a joke."

Again Mrs. Singleton looked around as if to see whether she had support.

"It is manly of you to attack me," she answered, evidently satisfied
with the result of her survey. "I cannot defend myself."

"Do you mean to insist?" he demanded, with growing anger.

"If the roses do not justify what I said," responded she, sinking back
as if exhausted, "it may be that I saw only imaginary shapes."

A sharp murmur ran around the room. The believers were evidently
rallying indignantly to the support of their sibyl, and cast upon Wynne
glances of bitter reproach. He looked at Mrs. Staggchase, but it was
impossible to judge from her expression whether she approved or
disapproved of what he had done. He was suddenly abashed, and stood
speechless before the rising tide of outraged remonstrance. Then
unexpectedly came from behind him the clear voice of Miss Morison.

"It is unfortunate that the roses should have been given to me," she
said, "for by an odd chance I saw them bought a couple of hours ago on
Tremont Street."

There was an instant of hushed amazement, and then the medium fled from
the parlor in hysterics.



                         IV


              SOME SPEECH OF MARRIAGE
                          Measure for Measure, v. 1.


"O thou to the arch of whose eyebrow the new moon is a slave!"

Philip Ashe colored with self-consciousness as the words came into his
mind. He felt that he had no right to think them, and yet as he looked
across the table at his hostess it seemed almost as if the phrase had
been spoken in his ear by the seductive voice of Mirza Gholân Rezâh. He
sighed with contrition, and looked resolutely away, letting his glance
wander about the room in which he was sitting at dinner. He noted the
panels of antique stamped leather, and although he had had little
artistic training, he was pleased by the exquisite combination of rich
colors and dull gold. Some Spanish palace had once known the glories
which now adorned the walls of Mrs. Fenton's dining-room, and even his
uneducated eye could see that care and taste had gone to the decoration
of the apartment. Jars of Moorish pottery, few but choice, and pieces
of fine Algerian armor inlaid with gold were placed skillfully, each
displayed in its full worth and yet all harmonizing and combining in
the general effect. Ashe knew that the husband of Mrs. Fenton had been
an artist of some note, and so strongly was the skill of a master-hand
visible here that suddenly the painter seemed to the sensitive young
deacon alive and real. It was as if for the first time he realized that
the beautiful woman before him might belong to another. By a quick,
unreasonable jealousy of the dead he became conscious of how keenly
dear to him had become the living.

Ashe had met Mrs. Fenton a number of times during the week which had
intervened since the Persian's lecture at Mrs. Gore's. He had seen her
once or twice at the house of his cousin, with whom Mrs. Fenton was
intimate, and chance had brought about one or two encounters elsewhere.
He had until this moment tried to persuade himself that his admiration
for her was that which he might have for any beautiful woman; but
looking about this room and realizing so completely the husband dead
half a dozen years, he felt his self-deception shrivel and fall to
ashes. With a desperate effort he put the thought from him, and gave
his whole attention to the talk of his companions.

"Yes, Mr. Herman is in New York," Mrs. Herman was saying. "He has gone
on to see about a commission. They want him to go there to execute it,
but I don't think he will."

"Doesn't he like New York?" asked Mr. Candish, the rector of the Church
of the Nativity, who was the fourth member of the little company.

Mrs. Herman and Mrs. Fenton both laughed.

"You know how Grant feels about New York, Edith," the former said. "If
anything could spoil his temper, it is a day in what he calls the
metropolis of Philistinism."

"I never heard Mr. Herman say anything so harsh as that about
anything," Candish responded. "Do you feel in that way about it?"

"The thing which I dislike about the place is its provincialism," she
answered. "It is the most provincial city in America, in the sense that
nothing really exists for it outside of itself. If I think of New York
for ten minutes I have no longer any faith in America."

"Then I shouldn't think of it, Helen," put in Mrs. Fenton.

"Then you wouldn't go with your husband if he went there to do this
work, I suppose," Mr. Candish observed.

"I should go with him anywhere that, he thought it best to go. I fear
that you haven't an exalted idea of the devotion of the modern wife,
Mr. Candish."

Ashe watched with interest the rector, who flushed a little. He knew of
him well, having more than once heard the awkwardness and social
inadaptability of the man urged as reasons of his unfitness to be
placed at the head of the most fashionable church in the city. Philip
saw him glance at the hostess and then cast down his eyes; and wondered
if this were simple diffidence.

"That is hardly fair," Mr. Candish said, somewhat awkwardly. "The
clergy, not having wives, are poor judges in such a matter."

"That might be taken as an argument for the marriage of the clergy,"
she responded with a smile.

"How so?"

"If they had wives they would be better able to sympathize with the
trials and joys of their parishioners."

"I never thought of that," murmured Mrs. Fenton.

Mr. Candish flushed all over his homely, freckled face.

"By the same reasoning you might hold that a clergyman should have
committed all the sins in the decalogue, so that he should have ready
sympathy with all sorts of sinners."

"I'm not sure that he wouldn't be more useful if he had," Mrs. Herman
answered with a smile; "at least a man who hasn't wanted to commit a
sin must find it hard to sympathize with the wretch that hasn't been
strong enough to resist temptation. Still, I hope that sin and marriage
are not put into the same category."

"Oh, of course not," Mrs. Fenton interpolated. "Marriage is a
sacrament."

"It has always seemed to me inconsistent," Mrs. Herman went on, "that
the church should exclude her priests from one of the sacraments."

Ashe saw a faint cloud pass over the face of the hostess. He was
himself a little shocked; and Candish frowned slightly.

"The church admits her priests to this sacrament in a higher sense," he
said with some stiffness.

Helen smiled.

"Now I have shocked you," was her comment. "I beg your pardon."

"I can never accustom myself to a familiar way of handling sacred
things," he returned. "It is to me too vital a matter."

"I am afraid that that is because you are still so young," she
retorted. "It is, if you'll pardon me, the prerogative of youth to find
all views but its own intolerable."

The manner in which this was said deprived the words of their sting,
but Mrs. Fenton evidently felt that they were getting upon dangerous
ground, and she interposed.

"We shall ask you to define youth next, Helen," she threw in.

"Oh, that is easy. Young people are always those of our own age."

In the laugh that followed this the question of the marriage of the
clergy was allowed to drop; but to all that had been said Philip had
listened with a beating heart. He felt the air about him to be charged
with meanings which he could not divine. He had somehow a suspicion
that the hostess was more interested in this talk than she was willing
to show; and with what in a moment he recognized as consummate and
fatuous egotism, he felt in his heart the shadow of a hope that there
might be some connection between this and her interest in him. Then a
fear followed lest there might be things here hidden which would make
him miserable did he understand.

"Mrs. Herman insists that she is a Puritan," Mrs. Fenton said a moment
later. "You see how she proves it by the position she takes on all
these questions."

"Of course I am a Puritan," was the answer. "I was born so. There is
nothing which I believe that wouldn't have seemed to my forefathers
good ground for having me whipped at the cart's tail, but I am Puritan
to the bone."

"I don't see what you mean," Candish said.

"I mean that I inherit, like all of us children of the Puritans, the
way of looking at things without regard to consequences, of feeling
devoutly about whatever seems to us true, and of realizing that
individual preferences do not alter the laws of the universe; isn't
that the essence of Puritanism?"

"Perhaps," he answered; "but are the unbelievers of to-day devout?"

Ashe looked at his cousin as she paused before answering. He felt that
the question must baffle her. He did not comprehend what was behind her
faint smile.

"Certainly not all of them," was her reply. "The age isn't greatly
given to reverence. I am a Puritan, however, and I must say what I
think. I believe that there is a hundredfold more devoutness in the
infidelity of New England to-day than in its belief."

Ashe leaned forward in amazement, half overturning his glass in his
eagerness.

"Why, that is a contradiction of terms," he exclaimed.

Mrs. Herman's smile deepened.

"Not necessarily, Cousin Philip," returned she.

"It is possible for belief to degenerate into mere conventionality,
while sincere doubters at least must have a realization of the mystery
and the awe which overshadow life."

Mrs. Fenton put up her hand in a pretty gesture of deprecation.

"Come," she said, "I don't wish to be despotic, but I can't let Mrs.
Herman lead you into a discussion of that sort. We'll talk of something
else."

"Am I to bear the blame of it all?" demanded Helen. "That I call
genuinely theological."

"Worse and worse," the hostess responded. "Now you attack the cloth."

"It seems to me," observed Mr. Candish, coming out of a brief study in
which he had apparently not heard Mrs. Fenton's last words, "that you
leave out of account the matter of desire. The believer at least longs
to believe, and surely deserves well for that."

"I don't see why. Certainly he hasn't learned the first word of the
philosophy of life who still confounds what he desires and what he
deserves."

"Come, Helen," put in Mrs. Fenton; "I wouldn't have suspected you of
trying to pose as a belated remnant of the Concord School."

Ashe easily perceived that the hostess was becoming more and more
uneasy at the course of the discussion. He could see too that Mr.
Candish was growing graver, and his sallow face beginning to flush
through its thin skin. It was evident that Mrs. Fenton saw and
appreciated these signs, and wished to change the subject of
conversation. Philip wondered that she took the matter so gravely, but
cast about in his own mind for the means of helping her. Before he
could think of anything to say his cousin had started a fresh topic.

"By the way," she asked, "who is to be bishop?"

Candish shook his head with a grave smile.

"We should be relieved if we knew," was his answer.

"There's a great deal being done to defeat Father Frontford," Ashe
added; "but the lay delegates haven't been chosen."

"The friends of Mr. Strathmore are working very hard," observed Mrs.
Fenton. "It would be a great misfortune if they were to succeed."

"But I suppose the friends of Father Frontford are at work too?"
returned Helen.

Ashe thought that he detected a faint trace of satire in her voice, and
he turned toward her with earnest gravity.

"It is not to be supposed," he answered, "that the friends of the
church are idle at a time of so much importance. Mr. Strathmore is
really little better than a Unitarian; or at least he is so lax that he
gives the world that opinion."

He felt that this was a reply which must end all inclination to
raillery on her part. He began to feel fresh sympathy with the
disturbance of Mr. Candish earlier in the dinner. The matter now was to
him so vital that he could not talk of it except with the greatest
gravity. He watched Helen closely to discover if she were disposed to
smile at his reply. He could detect no ridicule in her expression,
although she did not seem much impressed with the weight of the charge
he had brought against Mr. Strathmore, the popular candidate for the
bishopric of the diocese, then vacant.

"Mrs. Chauncy Wilson is doing a good deal," Mrs. Fenton remarked,
glancing smilingly at Helen.

"Oh, yes," responded the other. "I remember now that she declined to be
on a committee for the picture-show because, as she said, she had to
run the campaign for the bishop."

"The expression," Candish began, rather stiffly, "is somewhat"--

"It is hers, not mine," Helen replied. "I should not have chosen the
phrase myself."

"It is singular," Mrs. Fenton said thoughtfully, "how little general
interest there is in this matter of the choice of a bishop."

"And what there is," Mrs. Herman put in with a faint suspicion of
raillery in her tone, "comes from the fact that Mr. Strathmore is
popular as a radical."

"It is natural enough that the general public should look at it in that
way," Mr. Candish commented. "Mr. Strathmore has all the elements of
popularity. He is emotional and sympathetic; and religious laxity
presented by such a man is always attractive."

"The infidelity of the age finds such a man a living excuse," Ashe
said, feeling to the full all that the words implied.

Mrs. Fenton smiled upon him, but shook her head.

"That is a somewhat extreme view to take of it, Mr. Ashe. I think it is
rather the personal attraction of the man than anything else."

The talk drifted away into more secular channels, and Ashe in time
forgot for the moment that he was already almost a priest. Youth was
strong in his blood, and even when a man has vowed to serve heaven by
celibacy the must of desire may ferment still in his veins. A youthful
ascetic has in him equally the making of a saint and a monster; and
until it is decided which he is to be there will be turmoil in his
soul. His newly realized love for Mrs. Fenton threw Ashe into a tumult
of mingled bliss and anguish. The heart of the most simple mortal soars
and exults in the sense that it loves. It may be timid, sad,
despairing, but even the smart of love's denial cannot destroy the joy
of love's existence. Philip felt the sting of his conscience; he looked
upon his passion as no less hopeless than it was opposed to his vows;
he was overshadowed by a half-conscious foresight of the pain which
must arise from it; yet he swam on waves of delight such as even in his
moments of religious ecstasy he had never before known. He felt his
cheeks flush, and when his cousin glanced at him he dropped his eyes in
the fear that they would betray his secret. He dared not look openly at
Mrs. Fenton, yet from time to time he stole glances so slyly that he
seemed almost to deceive himself and to conceal from his conscience the
transgression.

Yet, too, he struggled. He realized at moments what he was doing, and
his cheek grew pale at the idea that he was juggling with his
conscience and his soul. He tried to attend to the talk, and could only
succeed in listening for the sound of her voice. He kept no more hold
on the conversation than was sufficient to allow him to put in a word
now and then to cover his preoccupation. The instinct of simulation
asserted itself as it springs in a bird which flies away to decoy the
hunter from its nest. He feigned to be interested, to be as usual, but
all his blood was trembling and tumbling with this new delirium; and
all struggles to forget his passion only increased its intensity.

At moments he was astonished at himself. He could not understand what
had taken possession of him. He even whispered a desperate question to
himself whether it might not be that he had been singled out for a
special temptation of the devil,--a distinction too flattering to be
wholly disagreeable. Then he glanced again at his hostess, fair, sweet,
and to his mind sacred before him, and felt that he had wronged her by
supposing that the arch fiend could make of her a temptation. He had
for a moment a humiliating fear that he might have eaten something that
after the spare diet of the Clergy House had exhilarated him unduly. He
felt that at best he was a poor thing; and he seemed to stand outside
of his bare, empty life, pitying and scorning the futility of an
existence unblessed by the love of this peerless woman.

The evening went on, and Ashe struggled to conceal the wild commotion
of his mind, feeling it almost a relief to get away, so fearful had he
been of losing control of his tumultuous emotions. It would be bliss to
be alone with his dream.

As he and Mrs. Herman were going home, Helen said:--

"I do wonder"--

"What do you wonder?" he asked.

"Did I say that out loud?" she responded. "I didn't mean to. I was
thinking that I couldn't help wondering whether Edith Fenton will ever
marry Mr. Candish."

The first thought of Ashe was terror lest his secret had been
discovered; his second was a memory of the way in which he had seen
Mrs. Fenton look at the rector at dinner. He was overwhelmed by a rush
of hot anger against his rival.

"Mr. Candish!" he echoed. "Why, he is an ordained priest!"

His own words cut him like a sword. He had himself pronounced the death
sentence of his own hope. It was with difficulty that he suppressed a
groan, and what reply or comment Mrs. Herman made was lost in the
tumult of an inner voice crying in his heart: "O thou, to the arch of
whose eyebrow the new moon is a slave!"



                         V


             VOLUBLE AND SHARP DISCOURSE
                         Comedy of Errors, ii. 1.


On the morning after the dinner at Mrs. Fenton's, Philip Ashe and
Maurice Wynne met on the steps of Mrs. Chauncy Wilson's. The house was
on the proper side of the Avenue, with a regal front of marble and with
balconies of wrought iron before the wide windows above, one of
especially elaborate workmanship, having once adorned the front of the
palace of the Tuileries. Pillars of verd antique stood on either side
of the doorway, as if it were the portal of a temple.

"Good morning, Phil," Maurice called out as they met. "Are you bound
for Mrs. Wilson's too?"

"Yes," was the answer. "I had a note last night."

"Well," Wynne said gayly, as they mounted the steps, "if the inside of
the house is as splendid as the outside, we two poor duffers will be
out of place enough in it."

Ashe smiled.

"You may be a duffer if you like," he retorted, "but I'm not."

"Here comes somebody," was the reply. "For my part I'm half afraid of
Mrs. Wilson. They say"--

But the door began to move on its hinges, and cut short his words.

Wynne might have concluded his remark in almost any fashion, for there
were few things which had not been said about Mrs. Wilson. Although she
had been born and bred in Boston, one of the most common comments upon
her was that she was "so un-Bostonian." Exactly what the epithet
"Bostonian" might mean would probably have been hard to explain, but it
is seldom difficult to defend a negation; it was at least easy to show
that the lady did not regard the traditions in which she had been
nourished, and that she had a boldness which was as far as possible
from the decorous conventionality to be expected of one in whose veins
ran the blood of the most correctly exclusive old Puritan families.

There was a general feeling that Mrs. Wilson's marriage was to be held
accountable for many of her eccentricities; although, as Mrs.
Staggchase remarked, if Elsie Dimmont had not been what she was she
would not have chosen Chauncy Wilson. Well-born, wealthy, pretty, and
not without a certain cleverness, Miss Dimmont had had choice of
suitors enough who were all that the most exacting of her relatives
could desire; yet she had disregarded the conviction of the family that
it was her duty to marry to please them, and had chosen to please
herself by selecting a handsome young doctor whom she met at the house
of a cousin in the country. He was of some local eminence in his
profession, it is true, although as time went on he gave less attention
to it; he was handsome, and astute, and amusing; but he was a man
without ancestors or traditions. He seemed born to justify the saying
that nothing subdues the feminine imagination like force; and although
the stormy times which were liberally predicted at the marriage of two
creatures so strong-willed had undoubtedly marked their marital career,
it was in the end impossible not to see that Dr. Wilson had secured and
held command of his household.

It is impossible for two to live together, however, without mutual
reaction, and Elsie had unquestionably lost something of the fineness
of the breeding which was hers by right of birth. For a time after her
marriage she had been excessively given up to gayety. She had figured
as a leader in the fastest of the "smart set," as society journals
called it. She rode well, owned a stud which could not be matched in
town, and raced for stakes which startled the conservative old city. It
was even affirmed by the more credulous or more scandalous of the
gossips that it was only the stand taken by the managers of the County
Club which prevented her on one occasion from riding as her own jockey;
and short of this there was little she did not do.

All this, however, was in the early days of the marriage, before Dr.
Wilson had become accustomed to his position as husband of the richest
woman in town and a member of what was to him the sacred aristocracy.
When the time came that he had found his place and entered his veto
upon these wild doings, there was an instant and determined revolt on
the part of his wife. Elsie fought desperately to maintain her position
as head of the family. By way of humiliating her husband she flirted
with an openness which won for her a reputation by no means to be
envied, and she wantonly trampled on his wishes. Given a husband,
however, with an iron will and a fibre not too fine, with a good temper
and yet with a certain ruthlessness in asserting his sway, and there is
little doubt that in the end he will triumph. If a clever, handsome,
good-humored man does not subdue a wild, headstrong wife, it is almost
surely owing to over-delicacy; and Chauncy Wilson was never hampered by
this. Elsie plunged and reared when she felt the curb,--to use a figure
which in those days might have been her own,--but she was by a
judicious application of whip and spur taught that she had found her
master. The result was that she became not only manageable, but
devotedly fond of her husband. No woman was ever mastered and treated
with kindness who did not thereupon love. Dr. Wilson was too
good-natured to be unkind, and for the most part he allowed his wife to
have her way, fully aware that he had but to speak to restrain her; and
thus it came about that the household was on a most peaceful and
satisfactory basis.

Mrs. Wilson, however, craved excitement, and ethical amusements she
laughed to scorn. She did, it is true, take up high-church piety, which
she treated, as Mrs. Staggchase did not hesitate to say, as a
plaything; but her interest in church matters was chiefly in the line
of politics. She took charge of the affairs of the Church of the
Nativity with a high hand which abashed and disquieted the devout
rector. She liked Mr. Candish, although she did not hesitate to jest at
his unpolished manners and rather unprepossessing person, and it was
inevitable that she should be unable to appreciate his self-denying
devotion. On one or two occasions she had found him to have a will not
inferior to her own; and although she resented whatever balked her
pleasure, she was yet a woman and respected power in a man.

Mr. Candish was of all men the one least resembling the traditional
pastor of a fashionable church, and had nothing of the caressing manner
dear to the souls of self-pampered penitents. Fashionable women found
little to admire in this man with the air of a bourgeois and the
simplicity of a babe. He had, however, a strong will, and a sure faith
which was not without its effect upon his parishioners. Ladies whose
religion was largely an affair of nerves found comfort in relying upon
his simple and untroubled devotion. They were piqued by being treated
as souls rather than bodies, but this was perhaps one of the secrets of
his influence. Every woman of his flock had unconsciously some secret
conviction that to her was reserved the triumph of subduing this
intractable nature, hitherto unconquered by the fascinations of the
sex. An ugly man may generally be successful with women if he remains
sufficiently indifferent to them. His unattractiveness, suggesting, as
it must, the idea of his having cause to be especially solicitous and
humble, imparts to his attitude in such a case an all-subduing flavor
of mystery. The instinctive belief of the other sex is that he is but
protecting his sensitiveness, and each longs to tear aside the veil of
dissimulation. The rector, it may be added, was an eloquent preacher,
and he intoned the service wonderfully. His voice in speaking was
somewhat harsh, but when he intoned, it melted into a beautiful
baritone, rich, full, and sweet, which, informed by his deep and
earnest feeling, thrilled his hearers with profound emotion. Mrs.
Wilson was proud of the effect which the service at the Nativity always
had, and she took in it the double pleasure of one who claimed a share
in religious enthusiasms and who had something of the glory of a
manager whose tenor succeeds in opera.

Into the contest over the election of a bishop to fill the place
recently left vacant Mrs. Wilson had thrown herself with characteristic
vigor. There were but two candidates now seriously considered, the Rev.
Rutherford Strathmore and Father Frontford. The former, a popular
preacher of liberal views, was regarded as the more likely to receive
the appointment, but the High Church party contested the point warmly,
supporting the claims of the Father Superior of the Clergy House which
was the home of Maurice Wynne and Philip Ashe. The political side of
the matter was exactly to Mrs. Wilson's taste. A woman has but to be
rich enough and determined enough to be allowed to amuse herself with
the highest concerns of both church and state; and Mrs. Wilson lacked
neither money nor determination. Her vigor at first disconcerted and in
the end outwardly subdued the clergy. If she actually had less
influence than she supposed, she was at least thoroughly entertained,
and that after all was her object. She interviewed influential persons,
she wrote letters, some of them sufficiently ill-judged, she sought
information in regard to the character and circumstances of the clergy
in the diocese, and did everything with the zeal and dash which
characterized whatever she undertook.

"Have you any idea what Mrs. Wilson wants of us?" Wynne asked of
Philip, as they waited in the luxurious reception-room.

"I only know that Father Frontford said that we were to put ourselves
under her orders," was the reply. "Of course it is something about the
election."

Maurice looked at him keenly.

"Old fellow," he said, "you look pale. What's the matter with you?"

"I didn't sleep well," Ashe answered with a flush. "I went to Mrs.
Fenton's to dine, and the indulgence wasn't good for me. It's really
nothing."

Maurice did not reply, but sank into an easy-chair and looked about
him. The room was a charming fancy of the decorator, who claimed to
have taken his inspiration from the American mullein. The ceiling was
of a pale, almost transparent blue, a tint just strong enough to
suggest a sky and yet leave it half doubtful if such a meaning were
intended; the walls were hung with a rough paper matching in hue the
velvety leaves of the plant, here and there touched with
conventionalized figures of the yellow blossoms. This contrast of green
and yellow was softened and united by a clever use of the clear red of
the mullein stamens sparingly used in the figures on the walls, in the
cords of the draperies, and in the trimmings of the velvet furniture.
The decorator had used the same simple tone for walls, furniture, and
curtains; and the effect was delightfully soothing and distinguished.

Wynne felt somehow out of place in this room which bore the stamp of
wealth and taste so markedly. He smiled to himself a little bitterly,
recalling how alien he was to these things. Descended from a family for
generations established in a New England town, he had in his veins too
good blood to feel abashed at the sight of splendors; but he had in his
life seen little of the world outside of lecture-rooms or the Clergy
House. Born with the appreciation of sensuous delight, with the
instinctive desire for the beautiful and refined, he felt awake within
him at contact with the richness and luxury of the life which he was
now leading tastes which he had before hardly been aware of possessing.
He was being influenced by the joy of worldly life, so subtly presented
that he did not even appreciate the need of guarding against the danger.

His reflections were cut short by the entrance of a servant who
conducted the young men to a private sitting-room up-stairs. The halls
through which they passed were hung with superb old tapestry,
interspersed with magnificent pictures. On the broad landing it was
almost as if the visitors came into the presence of a beautiful woman,
lying naked amid bright cushions in an oriental interior. As he dropped
his eyes from the alluring vision, Maurice saw in the corner the name
of the artist.

"Fenton," he said aloud. "Did he paint that?"

His companion started, regarding the picture with widening eyes. The
English footman, whom Wynne addressed, turned back to say over his
shoulder:--

"Yes, sir; they say it's his best picture, and some says he painted his
best friend's wife that way, with nothing on, sir."

"It is a wicked picture!" Ashe said with what seemed to Maurice
unnecessary emphasis.

The footman regarded the speaker over his shoulder with a smile.

"Oh, that's owin' to your bein' of the cloth, sir," was his comment.
"They don't generally feel to own to likin' it; but they mostly notices
it."

A superb screen of carved and gilded wood stood before an open door
above. When this was reached, the footman slipped noiselessly behind
it, and they heard their names announced.

"Show them in," Mrs. Wilson's voice said.

The lady met them in a wonderful morning gown which seemed to be
chiefly cascades of lace, with bows of carmine ribbon here and there
which brought out the color of the dark eyes and hair of the wearer.
Maurice could hardly have told why he flushed, yet he was conscious of
the feeling that there was something intimate in the costume. To be met
by this beautiful woman, her hand outstretched in greeting, her eyes
shining, her white neck rising out of the foam of laces; to breathe the
air, soft and perfumed, of this room; to be surrounded by this luxury,
these tokens of a life which stinted nothing in the pursuit of
enjoyment; more than all to appreciate by some subtle inner sense the
appealing charm of femininity, the suggestions of domestic intimacies;
all this was to the young deacon to be exposed to influences far more
formidable to the ascetic life than those grosser temptations with
which a stupid fiend assailed St. Anthony. Wynne drew a deep breath,
wondering why he felt so strangely moved and confused; yet
unconsciously steeling himself against owning to his conscience what
was the truth.

"It is so good of you to come early," Mrs. Wilson said brightly. "I
hope you don't mind coming upstairs. I wanted to talk to you
confidentially, and we might be interrupted. Besides, you see, I am not
dressed to go down."

The young men murmured something to the effect that they did not in the
least mind coming up.

"Didn't mind coming up!" she echoed. "Is that the way you answer a lady
who gives you the privilege of her private sitting-room? Come, you must
do better than that. If you can't compliment me on my frock, you might
at least say that you are proud to be here."

The two deacons stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, abashed at
her raillery. Maurice saw the lips of Ashe harden, and he hastened to
speak lest his companion should say something stern.

"You should remember, Mrs. Wilson," he said a little timidly, yet not
without a gleam of humor, "that our curriculum at the Clergy House does
not include a course in compliment."

"It should then," she responded gayly. "How in the world is a clergyman
to get on with the women of his congregation if he can't compliment?
Why, the salvation or the damnation of most women is determined by
compliments."

The visitors stood speechless. Mrs. Wilson broke into a gleeful laugh.

"Come," cried she; "now I have shocked you! Pardon me; I should have
remembered--_virginibus puerisque!_ Sit down, and we will come to
business."

Both the young men flushed at her half-contemptuous, half-jesting
phrase, but they sat down as directed. Mrs. Wilson took her seat
directly in front of them, and proceeded to inspect them with cool
deliberation.

"I am looking you over," she observed calmly. "I must decide what work
you are fitted for before I can assign anything to you."

Two young men do not live together so intimately, and care for each
other so tenderly as did the two deacons without coming to know each
other well; and Maurice was so fully aware of the extreme sensitiveness
of Ashe that he involuntarily glanced at his friend to see how he bore
this inspection. He resented the impertinence of the scrutiny far more
on Philip's account than his own. Ashe's pale face had on it the
faintest possible flush, and his always grave manner had become really
solemn; but otherwise he made no sign. Wynne had a certain sense of
humor which helped him through the ordeal, and there was a faint gleam
of a smile in his eye as he confronted the brilliant woman before him;
but he was ill-pleased that his friend should be made uncomfortable.

"Do you judge by outward appearances," he asked, "or have you power to
read the heart?"

"Men so seldom have hearts," she retorted, "that it is not worth while
to bother with that branch." Then she added, as if thinking aloud, and
looking Ashe in the face: "You are an enthusiast, and take things with
frightful seriousness. You must see Mrs. Frostwinch. You'll just suit
her."

Maurice could see his companion shrink under this cool directness, and
he hastened to interpose.

"But Mrs. Frostwinch," he said, "is absorbed in Christian Science or
something, isn't she?"

"Oh, dear, yes," Mrs. Wilson answered, toying with the broad crimson
ribbon which served her as a girdle. "There is a horrid woman named
Trapps, or Grapps, or Crapps, or something, that has fastened herself
upon cousin Anna, and is mind-curing her, or Christian-sciencing her,
or fooling her in some way; but Mrs. Frostwinch is too well-bred really
to have any sympathy with anything so vulgar. She takes to it in
desperation; but she really detests the whole thing."

"But," Ashe began hesitatingly, "does her conscience"--

Mrs. Wilson laughed, making a gesture as if sweeping all that sort of
thing aside.

"I dare say her conscience pricks her, if that's what you mean; but
it's so much easier to endure the sting of conscience than of cancer
that I'm not surprised at her choice."

"Besides," Maurice put in, "this is all done nowadays under the name of
religion. It isn't as if it were called by the old names of mesmerism
or Indian doctoring."

"That's true enough," assented she. "At any rate Anna is mixed up with
this woman, who gets a lot of money out of her, and earns it by making
her think that she's better. However, Cousin Anna must be made to see
that it's her duty in this case to use her influence to prevent the
election of a man who would subvert the church if he could."

"But if you are her cousin," Ashe began, "would it not"--

"Be better if I went to see her myself? Not in the least. She entirely
disapproves of my having anything to do with the election. Besides,
nobody can successfully talk religion to a woman but a man."

Maurice smiled in spite of himself at the air with which this was said,
but he none the less felt that Mrs. Wilson was flippant.

"What influence has Mrs. Frostwinch?" he asked.

"Well," Mrs. Wilson answered, leaning back to consider, "I don't know
whether to say that she controls three votes in the upper house of the
Convention, or four."

The two young men regarded her in puzzled silence.

"There are at least three clergymen in the diocese that are dependent
upon her," Mrs. Wilson explained. "There is Mr. Bobbins: he married her
cousin,--not a near cousin, but near enough so that Anna has half
supported the family, and the family is always increasing. I tell Anna
that they have babies just to work on her compassion. I think it's
wrong to encourage it, myself. Then there is Mr. Maloon; he depends on
Mrs. Frostwinch to support his mission. Then there's Brother
Pewtap,--did you ever know such a lovely name for a country parson?--he
just lives on her with a family bigger than Mr. Robbins's. He's really
a Strathmore man, but he wouldn't dare to vote against her wishes. She
might manage all those votes. Besides, there's a Mr. Jewett somewhere
near Lenox that she's helped a good deal; but I haven't found out about
him yet."

She rose as she spoke, and went to a writing-table fitted out with all
the inventions known to man for the decoration of the desk and the
encumbrance of the writer.

"I have here a list of all the clergy of the diocese," she said, taking
up a book bound in red morocco and silver. "I've marked them down as
far as I've found out about them. It's necessary to be systematic. I've
done just as they do in canvassing a city ward."

Maurice regarded Mrs. Wilson with ever-increasing amazement, but, too,
not without increasing amusement. He was somewhat shocked by the
business way in which she treated the subject, but his heart was set on
the election of Father Frontford; he was honest in feeling that the
church would be injured by the election of Mr. Strathmore, and he was
too completely a man not to be half-unconsciously willing that for the
accomplishment of an end he desired a woman should do many things which
he would not do himself. The three went over the list together, the
young men giving such information as they possessed, Maurice all the
time strangely divided in his mind between disapprobation of Mrs.
Wilson and admiration. Her breath was on his cheek as she bent over the
book, the perfume of her laces filled faintly the air, now and then her
hand touched his. He was not conscious of the potency of this feminine
atmosphere which enveloped him; he did not so much think personally of
Mrs. Wilson, beautiful and near though she was, as he felt her presence
as a sort of impersonation of woman. He thought of Miss Morison, and
warmed with a nameless thrill, of longing. Then he recalled the remark
of Mrs. Staggchase that he was undergoing his temptation, and his heart
sank.

"You see," Mrs. Wilson was saying, when he forced his wandering
attention to heed her words, "men are really elected before the
convention. The work must be done now. You two can, of course, do a lot
of things that it wouldn't be good form for a regular clergyman to do.
Of course you wouldn't be able to manage the directing, but there is a
good deal of work that is in your line."

"Of course we are glad to do what we can," Maurice responded, smiling.

He glanced at Ashe and saw that his friend's face was stern.

"I knew you would be," the lady went on. "Mr. Ashe is to see Mrs.
Frostwinch. You can't be too eloquent in telling her the consequences
of Mr. Strathmore's election. If you can get her to write to the men
I've named, she can secure them. It won't be amiss to flatter her a
little; and above all don't abuse the faith-cure business."

"But if she speaks of it," Ashe returned hesitatingly, "what am I to
do?"

"Oh, she'll be sure to speak of it; but you must manage to evade. Let
her say, and don't you contradict. She'll say enough, I've no doubt.
Very likely she'll abuse it herself; but don't for goodness' sake make
the mistake of falling in with her. If you do, it'll be fatal."

"But I know Mrs. Frostwinch so slightly," Philip objected, "that I do
not see"--

"Come!" she interrupted; "there is to be none of this. You are under my
orders. I'll give you a letter to Cousin Anna now."

"But"--

"But! But what?" she cried, laughing. "Do you mean that you distrust
your leader so soon? Do I look like a woman to fail?"

She spread out her arms in a gesture half imploring, half jocose, her
laces fluttering, her ribbons waving, the ringlets about her face
dancing. Her eyes were brimming with mocking light, and however poorly
she might seem to represent ideas theological she certainly did not
personify failure.

Maurice laughed lightly and glanced at his friend. Ashe did not smile,
but he bowed as if in resignation to the command of a leader.

"You are to go to Mrs. Frostwinch's this very afternoon," Mrs. Wilson
declared. "It won't do to lose any time. If once her votes get pledged
to the other party, there's an end to that. That's your work. Now you,"
she continued, turning to Wynne, "are to go to Springfield and the
western part of the State."

"The western part of the State?" Maurice ejaculated in astonishment.
"Do you work there too?"

"Of course we have to cover the whole diocese," she returned
vivaciously. "Did you suppose we left everything but Boston to the
enemy?"

He could only reply by a stare. He had never in his life encountered
anything like this woman, and he was bewildered by her audacity, her
alertness, her beauty, and the dash with which she carried everything
off.

"You will go to-morrow," she went on, "and I will send you the list of
the men you have to see. I'm sorry not to go over it with you, but I
have an engagement this morning, and I shall be late now. You are
staying with Mrs. Staggchase, aren't you?"

"Yes; she is my cousin."

"So much the better for you. It's a liberal education to have a cousin
as clever as that. Good-by. Thank you both for coming."

She rang as she spoke, and handed the young men over to the maid who
appeared; the maid in turn handed them over to the footman, and by him
they were seen safely out of the house. As they turned away from the
door, Ashe sighed deeply, while Wynne was smiling to himself.

"What a--a--what a woman!" Philip said fervently. "She's amazing!"

"Oh, yes," his friend laughed; "but what do you or I know about women
anyway?"



                         VI


             HEART-BURNING HEAT OF DUTY
                          Love's Labour's Lost, i. 1.


As Philip Ashe, his eyes cast down in earnest thought, approached Mrs.
Frostwinch's gate that afternoon, he looked up suddenly to find himself
face to face with Mrs. Fenton. She was dressed in dark, heavy cloth,
set down the waist with small antique buckles of dark silver; and
seemed to him the perfection of elegance and beauty.

"Good morning, Mr. Ashe," she greeted him, smiling. "I did not expect
to find you coming to hear Mrs. Crapps."

"To hear Mrs. Crapps?" he echoed. "Who is Mrs. Crapps?"

Mrs. Fenton turned back as she was entering the iron gate which between
stately stone posts shut off the domain of the Frostwinches from the
world, and marked with dignity the line between the dwellers on Mt.
Vernon Street and the rest of the world.

"Do you mean," asked she, "that you didn't know that Mrs. Crapps, the
mind-cure woman, is to lecture here this afternoon?"

Ashe drew back.

"I certainly did not know it," he answered. "I was coming to speak to
Mrs. Frostwinch about the election."

"It's the last of three lectures," Mrs. Fenton explained. "Mrs. Crapps,
you know, is the woman that has been curing Mrs. Frostwinch."

Ashe stood hesitatingly silent in the gateway a moment.

"I should like to see her," he said thoughtfully. "Not from mere
curiosity, but because I cannot understand what gives these persons a
hold over intelligent men and women."

"The thing that gives her a hold over Mrs. Frostwinch is that she has
raised her up from a bed of sickness. Come in with me, and see her. I
should like to see how she strikes you. You can speak to Mrs.
Frostwinch after the lecture."

He hesitated a moment, and then followed her, saying to himself with
suspicious emphasis that the fact that the invitation came from her had
nothing to do with his acceptance. He soon found himself seated in the
great dusky drawing-room of the Frostwinch house, an apartment whose
very walls were incrusted with conservative traditions. It was
furnished with richness, but both with much greater simplicity and
greater stiffness than he had seen in any of the houses he had thus far
been in. The chief decoration, one felt, was the air of the place's
having been inhabited by generations of socially immaculate Boston
ancestors. There was a savor of lineage amounting almost to godliness
in the dark, self-contained parlors; and if pedigree were not in this
dwelling imputed for righteousness, it was evidently held in becoming
reverence as the first of virtues. There are certain houses where the
atmosphere is so completely impregnated with the idea of the departed
as to give a certain effect as a spiritual morgue; and in the
drawing-room of Mrs. Frostwinch there was a good deal of this flavor of
defunct, but by no means departed, merit. Grim portraits stared coldly
from the walls, Copleys that would have looked upon a Stuart as
parvenu; the Frostwinch and Canton arms hung over the ends of the
mantel; while the very furniture seemed to condescend to visitors. Ashe
could not have told why the place affected him as overpowering, but he
none the less was conscious of the feeling. The company was apparently
nearly all assembled when he came in, and he sank down into a chair in
a corner, glad to escape observation.

The speaker of the afternoon was already in her place when he entered,
and he examined her with curiosity. She was a woman who might have been
forty years of age, with a hard, eager, alert face; her forehead was
narrow, her lips thin and straight, her nostrils cut too high. Her eyes
were bold and sharp, dominating her face, and fixing upon the hearers
the look of a bird of prey. Mrs. Crapps's hair was tinged with gray,
and in her whole appearance there was a sharpness which seemed to speak
of one who had battled with the world. Ashe was struck by the
personality of the woman, yet strongly repelled. She was evidently a
creature of abundant vitality, and exultantly dominant of will. The
bold, black eyes sparkled with determination, and he could at once
understand that Mrs. Crapps was one to establish easily an influence
over any nature naturally weak or debilitated by disease.

Ashe listened with curiosity to the opening of the address. The voice
of the speaker had much of the vivacity of her glance. She spoke with
an air of candor and frankness, and yet Philip found himself
distrusting her from the outset. He said to himself that it was because
he was prejudiced, that he doubted; but he yet felt that her manner
would in any case have begotten repulsion. She had that air of
insistence, of determination to be believed, which belongs to the
speaker who is absorbed rather in the desire to prevail than in the
wish to be true. He felt that her air of conviction was no proof of her
conception of the truth of what she was saying; she protested too much.
He was at first so absorbed in watching the woman that he paid little
heed to her theories; but he soon began to flush with indignation. This
woman, with her bold air and masculine dominance, sat there talking of
herself as a present incarnation of Christ; of Christ as the
incarnation of the human will; of disease as a sin; and of death as a
mere figment of the imagination. The paganism of the Persian as he had
heard it at Mrs. Gore's seemed to him less offensive than this. He
moved uneasily in his seat, his cheeks flushing, and his lips pressed
together. Presently he felt the glance of Mrs. Fenton, who sat near
him, and looking up he encountered her eyes. She seemed to him to show
sympathy with his feeling, but to remind him that this was not the time
or place for protest. He regained instantly his self-control, and
perhaps from that time on thought less of Mrs. Crapps than of his
neighbor.

The talk of Mrs. Crapps was commonplace enough, and hackneyed enough,
could Ashe but have known it. There was the usual patter about
spiritual and physical freedom, about faith and perfection, "the Deific
principle as a rule of health," a jumble of things medical and things
physical, things profane and things holy mingled in a strange and
unintelligible jargon. By the time that the eager-eyed speaker had
talked for an hour Ashe felt his mind to be in confusion, and he could
not but feel that not a few of the hearers must be in a state of utter
mental bewilderment if the address had impressed at all.

"The end of the whole matter is," Mrs. Crapps said in closing, "that
mankind has for ages submitted to this cruel superstition of death. We
have bowed ourselves beneath the wheels of this Juggernaut; we have
sent to the dark tomb our best loved friends; we crouch and cower in
awful fear of the time when we shall follow. We hear ever thrilling in
our ears the quivering minor chord of human woe, voice of the burning
heart-pain of the race, launched rudderless upon a troubled sea of woe,
and undrowned even by the throbbing march-beats of the progression of
man down the vista of the ages. And yet there is no death. This fear is
only the terror of children frightened by ghosts of their own
invention. What we dread has no existence save in the fevered and
fancy-fed fear of blinded men. O my hearers, why can we not seize upon
the hem of this truth which the Messiah came to teach! Death is but
sin; and sin has been removed by atonement; the holiness of the soul is
immortal. There is, there can be no death! Receive the glad tidings,
and cry it aloud! There is no death! Let all the earth hear, until
there is none so base, so low, so poor, so ignorant, so sinful that he
shall not be immortal. It is his birthright, for we are all born to
eternal life."

The voice of Mrs. Crapps took on a more persuasive inflection as she
delivered this peroration; and it was easy to see that she had affected
the nerves if not the minds of her audience. There was a deep hush as
she concluded. She lifted for a moment her sharp black eyes toward
heaven, and then dropped her glance to earth, as if overcome by
feeling, or as if with awe she had caught sight of sacred mysteries
which it was not lawful to look upon. In a moment more she raised her
eyes, and invited any of her hearers to question her about anything
connected with the subject which troubled them. For a breathing time
there was silence, and then a lady asked with a puzzled air:--

"But do you Christian Scientists deny"--

"I beg your pardon," Mrs. Crapps interrupted, leaning forward with a
deprecatory smile, "but I am not a Christian Scientist."

"I mean do you Faith Healers"--

"That is not our title," Mrs. Crapps said with gentle insistence.

"Are you called Mind Curers, then?"

"No," the priestess responded, with an air lofty yet condescending;
"with those forms of error we have no dealing or sympathy. It is true
that those who teach faith-healing, mind-cure, or any sort of religious
rejuvenance, have in part taken our high tenets; but they have in each
case obscured them by errors and follies of their own. We are the
Christian Faith Healed,--not healers, you will observe, because we
believe that all mankind are really healed, and that all that is needed
is that they recognize and acknowledge this precious truth."

The ladies present looked at one another in some confusion, and Ashe
caught in the eyes of Mrs. Staggchase, who sat half facing him, a gleam
of amusement. This emboldened him to repeat the question which had been
abandoned by its first asker, who had evidently been overwhelmed by the
delicacy of the distinction of sects made by Mrs. Crapps.

"Do you then," he asked, "deny the existence of death?"

"Utterly," the seeress returned, bending upon him a bold look as if to
challenge him to differ from what she asserted. "It is as amazing as it
is melancholy that mankind should have submitted to the indignity of
death so long."

"How can they submit to that which does not exist?"

"It exists in seeming, but not in reality."

A murmur ran through the company, and Philip met the eyes of Mrs.
Fenton, who shook her head slightly, as who would say that discussion
was futile.

"But--but how"--one hearer began falteringly, and then stopped,
evidently too overwhelmed by the astounding nature of the proposition
laid down to be able even to frame a question.

"Indeed," Mrs. Crapps said, taking up the word, "we may well ask how.
It transcends the incredible that the monstrous delusion of death
should ever have been entertained for an instant. The explanation lies
in sin. Death is but the projection of a sin-burdened conscience upon
the mists of the unknown. Thank God that it has been given to our
generation to tear away the veil from this falsehood, and to recognize
the absolute unreality of the phantom which the ignorance and
superstition of guilty humanity have conjured up." The smooth,
deliberate voice of Mrs. Staggchase broke the silence which this
declaration produced.

"It is then your idea that death comes entirely from the belief of
mankind?"

"What we call death undoubtedly has that origin," Mrs. Crapps answered.

"How then could so extraordinary a delusion have had a beginning?"

A faint shade crossed the face of the seeress, but it merged instantly
into a smile of patient superiority.

"That is the question unbelief always asks," she said. "It seems so
difficult to answer, and yet it is really so simple. The idea of death
of course arose from a distorted projection of the condition of sleep
upon the diseased imagination. With sin came the bewilderment of human
reason, and the delusion followed as an inevitable morbid growth."

"Then the earlier generations of mankind were immortal?"

"Undoubtedly. We have traces of the fact in all the old mythologies."

"But what became of them?"

"Once the idea of death had entered the world," Mrs. Crapps said
impressively, "it spread like the plague until it had infected all
mankind. Even those who had lived for ages to prove it false were not
able to resist the prevalence of the thing they knew to be untrue,--any
more," she added, dropping her eyes, and speaking in a tone sad and
patient, "than we who to-day understand that there is no such thing as
death can resist the overwhelming power of the belief of the masses of
the race. The might of the will of the majority, directed by an
appalling delusion, compels us to submit to that which we yet know to
be an unreality."

Again there was a hush. The woman was appealing to the most fundamental
facts of human experience and the most poignant emotions of human life,
and boldly denying or confounding both. It seemed to Ashe that the only
possible answer to such talk was an accusation either of madness or
blasphemy. The silence was once more broken by Mrs. Staggchase.

"But if there is no such thing as death," she observed, with the
faintest touch of irony perceptible in her well-bred voice, "of course
you do not really die; and since you do not share the general delusion
in thinking yourselves to be dead, it would seem to follow that
although you may be dead for the world in general, you are still
immortal for yourselves and each other."

The black eyes of Mrs. Crapps sparkled, but she controlled herself, and
shook her head with an air of gentle remonstrance.

"It proves how strong is the hold upon mankind of this delusion," she
said, "that what I tell you appears incredible. The truth is always
incredible, because the blind eyes of humanity can see only half-truths
except by great effort. I have tried to enlighten you, and I can do no
more. It is for you and not for myself that I speak."

She rose from her chair, which seemed to be the signal for the breaking
up of the assembly, and that her cleverness in securing the last word
was not without its effect was apparent by the murmurs of the company.
In another moment, however, Ashe heard as at Mrs. Gore's the exchange
of greetings and bits of news, the making of appointments for shopping
or theatre-going, and all the trivial chat of daily life. He stood
aside until the crowd should thin, and in the mean time had the
felicity of being near Mrs. Fenton. He began to feel himself almost
overcome by the delight of being so near her, of meeting her clear
glance, frank and sympathetic, of hearing her voice, of noting the
ripples of her hair, the curve of nostril and neck. He was like a boy
in the first budding of passion before reason has softened the
extravagance of his feeling. The talk of the afternoon, his indignation
at the words of Mrs. Crapps, his feeling that he had been assisting at
a sacrament of impiety, were all forgotten as he stood talking to his
neighbor.

"Come," she said at length, "I must speak to Mrs. Frostwinch before I
go."

He bent forward to remove a chair which was in her way, and her gloved
hand brushed against his. He covered the spot with his other hand as if
he would preserve the precious touch.

"I found Mr. Ashe at the door," Mrs. Fenton said to the hostess, "and I
would not let him turn back. I was too much interested in his errand."

"I am sorry if he needed urging to come in," Mrs. Frostwinch responded
with graceful courtesy; "but what was the errand?"

"Mrs. Wilson asked me to see you in relation to the election," Ashe
answered.

"Elsie is having a beautiful time managing this election," commented
Mrs. Frostwinch. "She hasn't been so amused for a long time. She thinks
Father Frontford is a puppet in her hands, while he knows that she is
one in his."

"I hope," Mrs. Fenton put in, "that you may be able to help Mr. Ashe. I
can answer for it that he is not making the matter one of amusement."

Ashe could not help flushing. He thanked her with a glance, and turned
again to Mrs. Frostwinch.

"I do not know or like the electioneering of such affairs," he said
gravely; "but since there is a strong effort being made on the other
side it certainly seems necessary to do whatever can be done fairly."

A few last visitors who had been chatting among themselves now came
forward to say good-by. Mrs. Fenton also took leave, and Ashe found
himself alone with his hostess and Mrs. Crapps.

"Mrs. Crapps, Mr. Ashe," Mrs. Frostwinch said.

It seemed to him that there was in the manner of Mrs. Frostwinch
something of condescension, as if the Faith Healed was a sort of upper
servant. He had himself not outlived the ingenuous period wherein a
youth feels that the preservation of truth in the world depends upon
his not covering his impressions, and he was accordingly extremely cold
in his manner.

"Ah, a new disciple to our faith, I trust," Mrs. Crapps said, fixing
upon him her keen, bold eyes.

"I have never even heard of your doctrine until to-day," he answered.

"But surely it must strike you at once," she responded, with a manner
evidently meant to be insinuating.

He hesitated. He remembered that he had been expressly warned not to
say anything against the vagaries with which Mrs. Frostwinch was
concerned; but his conscience would not allow him to evade this direct
challenge.

"It struck me as being blasphemous," he responded with unnecessary
fervor.

Mrs. Crapps raised her eyes to the ceiling, and uttered a theatrical
sigh.

"Oh, sacred truth!" she exclaimed.

"Come, Mrs. Crapps," Mrs. Frostwinch interposed almost sharply, "you
know that Mr. Ashe is right. It is blasphemous, and I feel as if I'd
allowed my house to be used for a sacrifice to false gods. If you will
excuse us, I wish to speak with Mr. Ashe on business. Will you kindly
come to the library, Mr. Ashe."

As he followed, Philip caught sight in a mirror of the face of Mrs.
Crapps. It wore a singular smile, but whether of anger or contempt he
could not tell.

"I dare say, Mr. Ashe," Mrs. Frostwinch remarked, as soon as they were
seated in the library, "that it seems strange to you that I have that
woman speak in my parlors. Of course I don't mean to apologize, but I
am sorry that you should hear things that shocked you."

"Dear madam," he answered, leaning forward in his eagerness, "what I
heard does not matter; but it does seem to me a pity that such things
should be said, and said under your protection."

He was too much in earnest to be self-conscious, even when she regarded
him in silence a moment before replying.

"You are perhaps right," she said at length, "although you exaggerate
the influence of such things."

"I do not pretend to know whether they are influential or not," he
returned simply. "It is only that they do not seem to me to be right.
If they are wrong, they are wrong."

She smiled and sighed.

"Life is not so simple as that," was her reply. "The woman has saved my
life. I should have been in my grave months ago but for her. My
physician insists now that I haven't any real right to be out of it. I
cannot refuse to allow her to say the thing that she believes, since
that thing has a certain proof in my very life."

Philip shook his head.

"It is not for me to judge," said he, "but the way in which all sorts
of heresies and strange doctrines are taught and played with in Boston
seems to me monstrous. The persons of influence who lend their names
and aid"--

He broke off suddenly, recalled by the half-smile in her eyes to the
fact that he was condemning her.

"There is much in what you say," Mrs. Frostwinch assented. "I suppose
that the difficulty is that we have ceased to recognize any authority
in matters of belief."

"But the church!"

"Yes, there is the church," she said doubtfully, "but to many it has
ceased to be an authority, and modern thought allows so much individual
freedom. Our church has never claimed to be infallible like the
Catholic; and individual freedom of conscience has come pretty
generally to mean freedom from conscience."

"Then it is a pity that the authority which is exercised in the Roman
church is not exercised in ours."

"Ah, Mr. Ashe, you reckon without the spirit of the age in which we
live. But tell me what I can do for you in the matter of the election."

Mrs. Frostwinch was a devout churchwoman in her way, although she was
now in appearance following after strange gods. She readily promised
her aid in favor of Father Frontford.

"I agree with you, Mr. Ashe," she said, "that everything possible
should be done to stem the tide of laxness which seems advancing
everywhere. The mental reservations of Mr. Strathmore are certainly so
broad that they may cover anything. I know women who go to his church
and simply say the beginning of the creed: 'I believe in God;' and who
do not hesitate in private to explain that by the name God they mean
whatever force it is that moves the universe, whether it is intelligent
or not."

"How dreadful!" Philip exclaimed. "How can the church endure if this
goes on?"

They talked for some time longer, and Mrs. Frostwinch assured him that
she would do her best to secure the votes of the clergymen who were her
pensioners. Ashe left her with a pleasant feeling in his heart that he
had accomplished his mission without sacrificing his convictions. Yet
perhaps more potent still in warming his heart was the remembrance of
the pleasant words which Mrs. Fenton had spoken in his behalf. The
memory colored all his thoughts of elections, of bishops, and of
creeds, as a gleam of rosy light tinges all upon which it falls.



                         VII


                 THE SHOT OF ACCIDENT
                          Othello, iv. 1.


"I knew that she was to send me tickets," Maurice Wynne said, standing
with an open note in his hand. "She insisted upon that; but why should
she send parlor-car checks too?"

"It is all part of your temptation," Mrs. Staggchase responded,
smiling. "Of course if you go as the representative of Mrs. Wilson it
is fitting that you go in state. If you were to represent the church
now"--

"If I don't go as a representative of the church," he responded, as she
paused with a significant smile, "I go as nothing."

"Oh, I thought that it was Elsie that was sending you. However, it's no
matter. The point is that you are becoming acquainted with the luxuries
of life. You are being tried by the insidious softness of the world."

He regarded her with some inward irritation. He had a half-defined
conviction that she was mocking him, and that her words were more than
mere badinage. He was not without a suspicion that his cousin was
sometimes histrionic, and that many things which she said were to be
regarded as stage talk. He did not know how far to take her seriously,
and this gave him a feeling at once confused and uncomfortable. To be
played with as if he were not of discernment ripe enough to perceive
her raillery or as if he were not of consequence sufficient to be taken
seriously, offended his vanity; and the man whom the devil cannot
conquer through his vanity is invulnerable. Wynne had no answer now for
the words of Mrs. Staggchase. He contented himself with a glance not
entirely free from resentment, at which she laughed.

"I wonder, Cousin Maurice," she said, "if you realize how completely
you have changed in the ten days you have been here. It is like
bringing into light a plant that has been sprouting in the dark."

He did not answer for a moment, trying to find it possible to deny the
charge.

"The fact that you know me better makes me seem different," he answered
evasively.

"How much has the fact that you don't know yourself so well to do with
it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, anything you like. I merely suspect that you are not so sure of
your vocation as you were in the Clergy House. Even a deacon is human,
I suppose; and if life is alluring, he can't help feeling it. Are you
still sure that the clergy should be celibate, for instance?"

He felt her eyes piercing him as if his secret thoughts were open to
her, and he knew that he was flushing to his very hair. He hastened to
answer, not only that he might not think, but that she might not
perceive that he had admitted any doubt to his heart.

"More than ever," he responded. "It is impossible not to see that a
clergyman who is married must have his thoughts distracted from his
sacred calling."

Mrs. Staggchase leaned back in her chair and regarded him with the
smile which he found always so puzzling and so disconcerting.

"You did that very well," she said, "only you shouldn't have put in the
word 'sacred.' That made it all sound conventional. However, you
probably meant it. She is distracting."

The hot blood leaped into his face so that he knew that it was utterly
impossible to conceal his confusion.

"I don't know what you mean," he stammered.

Instantly his conscience reproached him with not speaking the truth. He
responded to his conscience that it was impossible in circumstances
like these to say the whole, and that what he had said was not untrue.
He could not know what his cousin meant by her pronoun, and if the
thought of Miss Morison had come instantly into his mind, it by no
means followed that it was she of whom Mrs. Staggchase was thinking.
Life seemed suddenly more complex than he had ever dreamed it possible;
and before this remark the unsophisticated deacon became so completely
confused that for the instant it was his instinctive wish to be once
more safely within the sheltering walls of the Clergy House, protected
from the temptations and vexations of the world. He was after all of a
nature which did not yield readily, however, and the next thought was
one of defiance. He would not yield up his secret, and he defied the
world to drag it from him. His companion smiled upon him with the
baffling look which her husband called her Mona Lisa expression, and
then she laughed outright.

"My dear boy," she said, "you are no more a priest than I am; and you
are as transparent as a piece of crystal. Well, I am fond of you, and
I'm glad to have a hand in proving to you that you are not meant for
the priesthood before it's too late."

"But it hasn't been proved to me," he cried, not without some sternness.

"Oh, bless you, it's in train, and that's the same thing. 'Not poppy,
nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of the east' could put you to
sleep again in the dream you had in the Clergy House. It will take you
a little longer to find yourself out, but the thing is done
nevertheless."

As she spoke, a servant came to the door to announce the carriage. Mrs.
Staggchase held out her hand.

"Good-by," she said, as Maurice rose, and came forward to take it. "I
hope that we shall see you again in a couple of days. I have still a
good deal to show you."

He had recovered his self-possession a little, and answered her with a
smile:--

"You make it so delightful for me here that I am not sure you are not
right in saying that you are my temptation."

"Oh, I've already given up the office of tempter," she responded
quickly. "I found a rival, and that I never could endure. You'll have
your temptation with you."

It seemed to Maurice when he came to take his seat in the parlor car
that his cousin was little short of a witch. In the chair next to his
own sat Berenice Morison. She greeted him with a friendly nod and smile.

"Mrs. Wilson told me that you were going on this train," she said, "and
she got a chair for you next to mine so that you should take care of
me."

He bowed rather confusedly, but with his heart full of delight.

"I shall be glad to do anything I can for you," he answered, vexed that
he had not a better reply at command.

He saw the dapper young man across the aisle regard him curiously, and
a feeling of dissatisfaction came over him as he reflected upon the
singularity of his garb, and the incongruity between the clerical dress
and the squiring of dames. Religious fervor is nourished by martyrdom,
but it is seldom proof against ridicule. It is not impossible that the
faint shade of amusement which Maurice fancied he detected in the eyes
of the stranger opposite was a more effective cause for discontent with
his calling than any of the influences to which he had been exposed
under the auspices of Mrs. Staggchase.

He could not help feeling, moreover, that there was a gleam of fun in
the clear dark eyes of Miss Morison. She was so completely at ease, so
entirely mistress of the situation, that Wynne, little accustomed to
the society of women, and secretly a little disconcerted by the
surprise, felt himself at a disadvantage. It touched his vanity that he
should be smiled at by the trimly appointed dandy opposite, and that he
should be in experience and self-possession inferior to the girl beside
him. He began vaguely to wonder what he had been doing all his life; he
reflected that he had not in his old college days been so ill at ease,
and it annoyed him to think that two years in the Clergy House should
have put him so out of touch with the simplest matters of life. He said
to himself scornfully that he was a monk already; and the thought,
which would once have given him satisfaction, was now fraught with
nothing but vexation and self-contempt. He had a subtile inclination to
give himself up to the impulse of the moment. He felt the intoxication
of the presence of Miss Morison, and he yielded to it with frank
unscrupulousness. He resolved that he would repent afterward; yet
instantly demanded of himself if this were really a sin. He was after
all a man, if he had chosen the ecclesiastic calling. If indeed he were
transgressing he told himself half contemptuously that as he did
penance doubly, once that imposed by his own spiritual director and
again that set by the Catholic at the North End, he might be held to
expiate amply the pleasure of this hour. He at least was determined to
forget for the once that he was a priest, and to remember only that he
was a man, and that he loved this beautiful creature beside him. He
noted the curve of her clear cheek and shell-like ear; the sweep of her
eyelashes and the liquid deeps of her dark eyes. He let his glance
follow the line of her neck below the rounded chin, and became suddenly
conscious that he was fascinated by the soft swell of her bosom. The
blood came into his cheeks, and he looked hastily out of the window.

The train was already clear of the city, and was speeding through the
suburbs, rattling gayly and noisily past the ostentatious stations and
the scattered houses. Maurice felt that his companion was secretly
observing him, although she was apparently looking at the landscape
which slid precipitately past. He wished to say something, and desired
that it should not be clerical in tone. He would fain have spoken, not
as a deacon, but as a man of the world.

"Are you going to New York?" he asked.

"I shall not have the pleasure of your company so far," she returned
with a smile.

"No," he responded naively. "I am going only to Springfield."

"Ah," she said, smiling again; and too late he realized that she had
meant that she was not going through.

He was the more vexed with himself because he was sure that his
confusion was so plain that she could not but see it, and that it was
with a kind intention of relieving his embarrassment that she spoke
again.

"I am going to visit my grandmother in Brookfield."

He replied by some sort of an unintelligible murmur, and was doubly
angry with himself for being so shy and awkward. He glanced furtively
at the trim young man opposite, and was relieved to find that that
individual was reading and giving no heed. He wondered why he should be
so completely thrown out of his usual self-possession by this girl, so
that when he talked to her, and was most anxious to appear at his best,
he was most surely at his worst. There came whimsically into his head a
thought of the wisdom of training the clergy to the social gifts and
graces, and he remembered the flippant speech of Mrs. Wilson about the
need of their being able to pay compliments.

"I seem to be specially stupid when I try to talk to you," he said with
boyish frankness.

Miss Morison looked at him curiously.

"Am I to take that as a compliment or the reverse?" she asked.

"It must be a compliment, I suppose, for it shows how much power you
have over me."

He was reassured by her smile, and felt that this was not so badly said.

"The power to make you stupid, I think you intimated."

"Oh, no," he responded, with more eagerness than the occasion called
for; "I didn't mean that."

She smiled again, a smile which seemed to him nothing less than
adorable, and yet which teased him a little, although he could not tell
why. She took up the novel which lay in her lap.

"Have you read this?" she inquired.

He shook his head.

"You forget," he answered, "that I am a deacon. At the Clergy House we
do not read novels."

"How little you must know of life," returned she.

There was a silence of some moments. The train rushed on, past fields
desolate under patches of snow, and stark, leafless trees; over rivers
dotted with cakes of grimy ice; between banks of frost-gnawed rock. The
landscape in the dim January afternoon was gray and gloomy; and as day
declined everything became more lorn and forbidding. Maurice turned
away from the window, and sighed.

"How disconsolate the country looks!" said he. "I am country bred, and
I don't know that I ever thought of the sadness of it; but now if I see
the country in winter it makes me sigh for the people who have to live
there all the year round."

"But they don't notice it any more than you did when you lived in it."

"Perhaps not; but it seems to me as if they must. At any rate they must
feel the effects of it, whether they are conscious of it or not."

Miss Morison looked out at the dull, sodden fields and stark trees.

"I am afraid that you were never a true lover of the country," said she
thoughtfully. "You should know my grandmother. She is almost ninety,
but she is as young as a girl in her teens. She has lived in the finest
cities in the world,--London, Paris, St. Petersburg, and of course our
American cities. Now she is happiest in the country, and can hardly be
persuaded to stay in town. She says that she loves the sound of the
wind and the rain better than the noise of the street-cars."

"That I can understand," he answered; "but I am interested in men. I
don't like to be away from them. There is something intoxicating in the
presence of masses of human beings, in the mere sense that so many
people are alive about you."

She looked at him with more interest than he had ever seen in her eyes.

"But I don't understand," she began hesitatingly, "why"--

"Why what?" he asked as she paused.

"I don't know that I ought to say it, but having begun I may as well
finish. I was going to say that I could not understand how one so
interested in men and so sensitive to humanity could be content to
choose a profession which cuts him off from so much of active life."

"It was from interest in men, I suppose, that I chose it. I wanted to
reach them, to do something for them. Although," Maurice concluded,
flushing, "I don't think that I realized at that time the feeling of
being carried away by the mere presence of crowds of living beings."

There was another interval of silence, during which they both looked
out at the cold landscape, blotted and marred by patches of snow tawny
from a recent thaw.

"I doubt if you have got the whole of it," Miss Morison said
thoughtfully, turning toward him. "Dear old grandmother is as deeply
interested in the human as anybody can be. She always makes me feel
that my life in the midst of folk is very thin and poor as compared to
hers. She has known almost everybody worth knowing. Grandfather was
minister to England and Russia, and she of course was with him. Yet
she's content and happy off here in Brookfield."

"Perhaps," Wynne returned hesitatingly, "there's something the matter
with the age. I don't suppose that at her time of life she has anything
of this generation's restless"--

He broke off abruptly.

"Well?" his companion said curiously.

He smiled and sighed.

"I don't know why I am talking to you so frankly," replied he. "As a
matter of fact I find that I'm more frank with you than I am with
myself. I've always refused to own to myself that there was anything
restless in my feeling toward life; yet here I am saying it to you."

"One often thinks things out in that way. Hasn't that been your
experience?"

"Yes," he responded thoughtfully; "although I don't know that I ever
realized it before. I see now that I've often reasoned out things that
bothered me simply by trying to tell them to my friend, Mr. Ashe."

"Is he your bosom friend and confidant? It is usually supposed to be a
woman in such a case."

"Oh, no," was his somewhat too eager rejoinder; "I never talked like
this to a woman. I never wanted to before."

A look which passed over her face seemed to tell him that the talk was
taking a tone more confidential than she liked. He was keyed up to a
pitch of excitement and of sensitiveness; and a thrill of
disappointment pierced him. He became at once silent; and then he
fancied that she glanced at him as if in question why his mood had
changed so suddenly. The train rolled into the station at Worcester,
and he went out to walk a moment on the platform, and to try to collect
his thoughts. He had forgotten now to question his right to be enjoying
the companionship of Miss Morison; he gloated over her friendly looks
and words, thinking of how he might have said this and that, and thus
have appeared to better advantage, and resolving to be more
self-controlled for the remainder of the ride. The open air was
refreshing; and a great sense of joyousness filled him to overflowing.
When again he took his seat in the car he could have laughed from
simple pleasure.

The chat of the latter part of the journey was more easy and
unconstrained than at the beginning. It was not clear to Wynne what the
change was, but he was aware that he was somehow talking less
self-consciously than before. They spoke of one thing and another, and
it teased the young man somewhat that when now and then his companion
mentioned a book he had seldom seen it. The things which he had read of
late years he knew without asking that she would not have seen. Even
the names of current writers of fiction were hardly known to him, and
an allusion to what they had written was beyond him. In spite of a word
which now and again brought out the difference between his world and
hers, however, Maurice thoroughly enjoyed the talk. Now and then he
would reflect in a sort of sub-consciousness that the delight of this
hour was to be dearly paid for with penance and repentance, but this
provoked in him rather the determination at least to enjoy it to the
full while it lasted, than any inclination to deny himself the present
gratification.

It has been remarked that the ecclesiastical temper is histrionic; and
Wynne was not without a share of this spirit. He would have gone to the
stake for a conviction, and made a beautifully effective death-scene
for the edification of men and angels, not for a moment aware that
there was anything artificial in what he was doing. Now he was not
without a consciousness that he was playing the role of a lover and a
prodigal, sincere in his love and devotion; yet none the less subtly
aware how much more interesting is repentance when there is genuine
human passion to repent, is renunciation when there is real love to
sacrifice; of how much more effective is saintliness set off against a
background of transgression. It was a real if somewhat childish joy to
be able to sin actually yet without going beyond hope; of being
dramatically false to his vows without crossing the line of possible
pardon.

"We shall be in Brookfield in ten minutes," Miss Morison said,
beginning to look about for her belongings. "We pass the New York
express just here."

Hardly had she spoken when suddenly and without warning there was an
outburst of shrieks from the whistle of the engine, answered and
blended with that of another. Before Maurice could realize what the
outburst meant, there followed a horrible shock which seemed to
dislocate every joint in his body. Berenice was thrown violently into
his arms, flung as a dead weight, and shrieking as she fell against his
breast. Instinctively he clasped her, and in the terror of the moment
it was for a brief instant no more to him that his embrace enfolded her
than if she had been the veriest stranger. A hideous din of yells, of
crashing wood and rending iron, of shivering glass, of escaping steam,
of indescribable sounds which had no resemblance to anything which he
had ever heard or dreamed of, and which seemed to beat upon his ears
and his brain like blows of bludgeons wielded by the hands of infuriate
giants. The end of the car before him was beaten in; splinters of wood
and fragments of glass flew about him like hail; it was like being
without warning exposed to the fiercest fire of batteries of an
implacable enemy. A woman was dashed at his very feet torn and
bleeding, her face mangled so that he grew sick and faint at the sight;
pinned against the seat opposite, transfixed by a long splinter as with
a javelin, was the dapper young man, horribly writhing and mowing, and
then stark dead in an instant, staring with wide open eyes and
distorted face like a ghastly mask. Moans and shrieks, grindings and
roarings, howlings and babbling cries that were human yet were
piercingly inarticulate filled the air with an inhuman din which drove
him to a frenzy. It seemed as if the world had been torn into fragments.

Yet all this was within the space of a second. Indeed, although all
these things happened and he saw and heard them clearly, there was no
pause between the first alarming whistle and the overturning of the car
which now came. He was lifted up; he saw the whole car sway with a
dizzying, sickening motion, and then plunge violently over. Fortunately
it so turned that he and Miss Morison were on the upper side. He fell
across the aisle, striking the chair opposite, but somehow
instinctively managing to protect Berenice from the force of the
concussion. She no longer cried out, but she clung convulsively about
his neck, and as they swayed for the fall he saw in her eyes a look of
wild and desperate appeal. He forgot then everything but her. The
desire to protect and save her, the feeling that he belonged absolutely
to her and that even to the death he would serve her, swallowed up
every other feeling. As they went over a vise-like grip caught his arm,
and amid all the infernal confusion he somehow connected that
despairing clutch with a succession of shrill and piercing shrieks
which rang in his ear, seeming to be close to him. He remembered that
in the chair behind his had been a young girl, and he felt a pity for
her that choked him like a hand at his throat. Then as they went down
he instinctively but vainly tried to shake off the hold, which was as
that of a trap. It was like being in the actual grip of death.

All sorts of loose articles fell with them from the upturned side of
the car to the other; they were part of a cataract of falling bodies,
involved as in a crushing avalanche. Wynne found himself in this
falling shower crumpled up between two chairs, one of his feet
evidently thrust through a broken window and the other still held by
that convulsive clasp. Miss Morison was half above him, partly
supported by a chair which still held by its fastenings to the floor.
He could not see her face, and his body was so twisted that he could
not move his head with freedom. Berenice was evidently insensible, but
whether stunned from the shock or more seriously hurt he could not
tell. He struggled fiercely to free himself, straining her to his
breast. There were still movements in the car after it had overturned.
It rocked and settled; for some time small articles continued to fall.
He drew the face of the unconscious girl more closely into his bosom to
protect it. As he did so he was aware that his arm was hurt. A burning,
biting pain singled itself out from all the aches of blows and
contusions. He seemed to remember that a long time ago, some hours
nearer the beginning of this catastrophe which had lasted but a moment,
he had felt something rip and tear the flesh; but he had been so
absorbed in the attempt to shield Berenice that he had not heeded. Now
the anguish was so great that it seemed impossible to endure it. He set
his teeth together, determined not to cry out lest she should hear him
and think that he lacked courage. Then it seemed to him that he was
swooning. He struggled against the feeling; and for what seemed to him
an interminable time he wavered between consciousness and
insensibility. It was either growing darker or he was losing the power
to see. He could not distinguish clearly any longer that human hand,
smeared with blood, sticking ludicrously in the air from amid a pile of
bags, coats, and all sorts of things thrown together just where the
position of his head constrained him to look. He had been seeing that
hand for a long time, it seemed to him, and only now that the darkness
had so increased as to cut it off from his sight did he realize what it
was and what it must mean.

He still retained a consciousness of the face of Berenice, warm against
his bosom, and with each wave of faintness he struggled to keep his
senses that he might protect her. The din of noises seemed far away,
the cries somewhere at a distance ever increasing. The moans that had
seemed to him those of the girl who clutched his arm grew fainter,
until they were lost in the buzz and whirr of a hundred other sounds.
Then the clasp which held him relaxed as suddenly as if a rope had been
cut away. It came into his mind with a wave of horror that the girl who
had held him was dead. The thought that Berenice might be dead also
followed like a flash, and aroused his benumbed senses. He spoke to
her; he tried to move; to release her from her position. He seemed
buried under a mound of debris, and she gave no sign of life. He
exhausted himself in frantic attempts to escape; to get his arms free;
to turn his head far enough to see her face; to thrust back the rubbish
which had fallen against them. The anguish to his arm was so great that
he could not continue; he could do nothing but suffer whatever fate had
in store for him. He tried to pray; but his prayers were broken and
confused ejaculations.

All at once he distinguished amid the chaos of noises roaring and
singing in his ears something which made his heart stand still; which
pierced to his dulled consciousness like a stab. It was the cry of
"Fire!" He had once seen a servant with her hair in flames, and
instantly arose before him the picture of her shriveling locks and the
terror of her face. He seemed to see the dear head on his bosom--The
thought was more than he could bear, and for the first time he cried
out, shouting for help in a transport of frenzied fear. He was so
absorbed in his thought of Berenice that he had forgotten himself; but
the realization of his own peril revived as a waft of smoke came over
him, choking and bewildering. He was then to die here, stifled or
wrapped in the torture of flame. Then the wild and desperate thought
sprang up that at least if he must die he should die with her on his
bosom, clasped in his arms. He might give himself up to the delirium of
that joy, since there was no more of earth to contaminate it. But the
horror of it! The anguish for her as well as for him! Not by fire! His
thoughts whirled in his brain like sparks caught in a hurricane. He
scarcely knew where he was or what had happened to him. Only he was
acutely aware of the acrid smoke, of how it increased, constantly more
dense and stifling.

However the mind may for a moment be turned aside from its usual way by
circumstances, habit is quick to reassert itself. The habitual
constrains men even in the midst of events the most startling. The mind
of Wynne had been too long bred in priestly forms not to turn to the
religious view here in the face of death. His conscience cried out that
he might be responsible for the peril and disaster which had come upon
them. With the unconscious egotism of the devotee, he felt that heaven
had been avenging the impiousness of his sin. He had dared to trifle
with his sacred calling, to look back to the loves of the world and of
the flesh, and swift destruction had overtaken him. And Berenice had
been crushed by the divine vengeance which had so deservedly fallen on
him. He groaned in anguish, seeming to see how she had perished through
the blight of his passion. Not by fire, O God! Not by fire! How long
would it be possible to breathe in this stifling reek, heavy with
unspeakable odors? It was his crime that had brought her to this death.
He, a man set apart and consecrated to the work of God, had turned from
heaven to earth, and heaven had smitten with one blow him and the woman
who had been unwittingly his temptation. And she so innocent, so pure,
so sacred! Through his distraught mind rushed a pang of hatred against
the power that could do this. He was willing to suffer for his sin, but
where was the justice of involving her in his ruin? It was because this
was what would hurt him most! It was the work of a devil! Then this
thought seemed to him a new transgression which might lessen the
chances of his being able to save her, and he tried to forget it in
prayer, to atone by penitence. He offered his own life amid whatever
tortures would propitiate the offended deity, but he prayed that she
might be spared.

All this time--and whether the time were long or short he could not
tell--he had heard continued cries and groans. He had now and then been
dully aware of a change in the noises. Now it would seem as if all else
was swallowed up in the sound of tremendous blows, as if the car were
being struck again and again by a mighty battering-ram. Then a chorus
of shouting went roaring up, as if an army cried. Noise and physical
sensation were too intimately blended to be separated; his brain
struggled in confusion, emerging now and then for a moment of
consecutive thought and sinking back into semi-unconsciousness as a
spent swimmer goes down, fighting wildly for life. He knew that a light
had come into the car. He saw it amid the smoke, and his first thought
was that it was flame. Dulled and half asphyxiated, he said to himself
now almost with indifference that the end had come. Then with a thrill
which for a moment aroused all his energies he recognized that it was
the glow of a lantern. He was aware that rescuers were close above him,
climbing down through the windows over his very head. He cried to them
in a paroxysm of appeal:--

"Save her! Save her!"

Whether he was heeded amid the babble of cries and all the noises which
seemed to swell to drown his voice, he could not tell, but in another
instant he felt that friendly hands had seized Miss Morison, and were
endeavoring to lift her insensible form. He strove to loosen his hold,
but the effort gave him agony so intolerable that he could do nothing.
A thousand points seemed to rend and tear him as he tried to move, and
when a voice somewhere above him shouted: "We'll have to try to lift
them together!" he experienced a strange sort of double consciousness
as if he stood outside of himself and heard others talking of him. He
felt himself grasped under the arms, and the pain of being moved was
too horrible to be endured. He shrieked in mortal agony, and then in a
whirl of dizzying circles seemed to go down in a tide of blackness
sparkling with millions of sharp scintillations.



                      VIII


                LIKE COVERED FIRE
                        Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 1.


Philip Ashe found himself less and less able either to understand or to
sympathize with the politics of Mrs. Wilson. He believed in the
righteousness of her cause, and was keenly alive to the peril of the
appointment of Mr. Strathmore to the vacant bishopric. It is an
inevitable and necessary condition of enthusiasm that it shall be
narrow; and religious fervor would be impossible to a mind open to
conviction. To accept the possibility of any opposed truth is to be
secretly doubtful of the creed which one holds; and tolerance is of
necessity the child of indifference. Had Ashe been able to perceive
that the church would go on much the same no matter which of the rival
candidates was chosen, it would have been impossible for him to be so
deeply concerned for the success of Father Frontford. As it was he was
as much in earnest as Mrs. Wilson, and thus he felt forced to acquiesce
in the strangeness of her methods of work. He said to himself that he
supposed this electioneering to be a necessity, no matter how
unpleasant; and he added the reflection that in any case it was not in
his power to prevent it.

Other feelings were, moreover, completely absorbing his mind. Although
he was not yet conscious that anything had come between him and the
church, priesthood in which had been his highest earthly ideal, the
truth was that his passion for Mrs. Fenton waxed steadily. Chance threw
them together. Mrs. Fenton had been appointed to a committee on
charities, and it happened that Ashe was a visitor in the North End in
a region which the committee were making an especial field of labor. He
was called into consultation with her, and sometimes they even went
together to visit some of the poverty-stricken families which evidently
existed chiefly to be subjects for philanthropic manipulation. Day by
day Ashe felt her speak to him more easily and familiarly; and although
their talk was strictly impersonal and unemotional, none the less did
it feed his growing love.

The nature which does not sometimes try to deceive itself is an
abnormal one; and Ashe was not behind his fellows in devising excuses
for the joy which he found in Mrs. Fenton's presence. He dwelt in his
musings upon her devotion to the church, her good works, her visitings
of the poor and sick. He assured himself with a vehemence too feverish
not to be fallacious that he was instigated only by entirely
disinterested feelings; by the desire to assist in deeds of Christian
helpfulness, and by pleasure in the society of one whose devotion to
godliness was so marked. He argued with himself as eagerly as if he
were struggling to convince another, protesting to his own secret heart
as earnestly as he would have protested to a friend.

A man seldom really deceives himself, however, save in thinking that he
can deceive himself. There were moments in which his inner self rose up
and laughed him to scorn; moments in which his sin glowed before him in
colors blood-red. He saw himself apostate, false to his vows, drawn
away by his earthly lusts and beguiled. There were nights when he cast
himself upon the ground in an agony of self-abasement, beating his
breast and praying in a passion of remorse; times when by the cruelty
of his self-accusings he involuntarily sought to do penance for the
sweet sin which festered in his bosom.

Worse than all was the color which was imparted to his passion by the
self-imposed prohibitions which he was violating. The insistence upon
the earthly side of love which is an inevitable accompaniment to the
idea that woman is a temptation, cannot but degrade the relation of the
sexes in the mind of the professed celibate. To keep before the
thoughts the theory that passion is a snare and a pollution is to
render it impossible to love with purity and self-abandonment. Poor
Philip, endowed at birth with a nature of instinctive delicacy, could
not free himself from the taint of his training; yet he shrank as from
hot iron from the blasphemy of connecting any shadow of earthliness
with the woman who had become his ideal. His only resource was to take
refuge in repeating to himself that he did not love Mrs. Fenton; but
even in denying it he felt that he was defending himself from a charge
which was a degradation to her as well as to himself. He fell into that
morbid state of mind where whatever he tried as a remedy made his
disease but the worse; where the idea of love was the more horrible to
him the more it possessed and pervaded his whole being.

Mrs. Herman was not unobservant of his condition, although she was far
from understanding his state of mind. She felt that there was little
use in forcing his confidence, but she gave him now and then an
opportunity to confide in her, feeling sure that he would be the better
for freeing his heart in speech.

She was sitting one afternoon alone in the library when Ashe came home
from a missionary expedition. The day was gray and gloomy, and the
early twilight was shutting down already, so that the fire began to
shine with a redder hue. Mrs. Herman was taking her tea alone, and as
it chanced, she was thinking of her cousin.

"You are just in time for tea," she greeted him. "It is hot still."

"But I seldom take tea," he answered, seating himself by the fire with
an air of weariness which did not escape her.

"That is so much more reason that you should take it now. It will have
more effect. I can see that you are tired out. One lump or two?"

He yielded with a wan smile, and, resuming his seat, sat sipping his
tea in silence for some moments. At length he sighed so heavily that
she asked with a smile:--

"Is it so bad as that?"

"Is what so bad?" he returned, looking at her in surprise.

"You sighed as if all life had fallen in ruins about your feet, and I
couldn't help wondering if there were really no joy left to you."

He smiled rather soberly, and did not at once reply. The fire burned
cheerily on the hearth, noiseless for the most part, but now and then
purring like a cat full of happy content; the shadows showed themselves
more and more boldly in the corners, daring the firelight to chase them
to discover their secrets. The colors of the room were softened into a
dull richness; the dim gilding on the old books which had belonged to
Helen's father, dead since her infancy, caught now and then a gleam
from a tongue of flame which sprang up to peer into the gathering dusk;
the copper tea equipage reflected a red glow, and gave to the picture a
certain suggestion of comfort and cheer.

"I was thinking how comfortable it is here," Philip said at length.

"And that made you sigh?"

"Yes; I'm ashamed to say that it came over me how far away from me all
this is."

"If it is," she returned slowly, "it is simply because you choose that
it shall be."

He turned his face toward her as if about to protest; then looked again
into the fire. The conversation seemed ended, until Mrs. Herman spoke
again as if nothing had been said.

"You have been slumming this afternoon?"

"I do not like the name, but I suppose I have."

"It isn't a cheerful day to go poking about alone among the tenement
houses."

"I was not alone," Ashe answered with a hesitation which she could not
help noting and with a significant softening of voice. "Mrs. Fenton was
with me."

"Ah!"

The exclamation was involuntary. In an instant there had flashed upon
Helen's mind a suspicion of the true state of things. The despondency
of her cousin, the reflection upon the comfort of domesticity,
connected themselves in her thought with trifling incidents which had
before come under her observation; and his manner of speaking brought
instantly to her mind the conviction that Ashe was thinking of Mrs.
Fenton with more than the friendliness of acquaintanceship. When Philip
looked up with a question in his eyes, however, she was already on her
guard.

"The weather is so doleful," she hastened to add, "that I should think
that even philanthropy might lose its power of amusing."

"Cousin Helen," returned he, with some hesitation, "I do not like to
hear you speak in that way of what is part of my life work."

She smiled; then sighed and shook her head.

"My dear Philip," replied she, "I had certainly no intention of
wounding you; and if you'll let me say so, I think you are going out of
your way to find cause of offense. Philanthropy isn't a thing so sacred
that it is not to be spoken of with a smile."

"No; but"--

"But what?"

He did not answer at once. He put down his empty cup absently, and then
sat staring into the fire as if he were trying there to read the
solution of the riddle of existence.

"Come," Helen observed, after waiting for a little, "you have something
on your mind. What is it? It will do you good to tell it, even if I'm
not clever enough to help you."

"I am sure that you could help me," he began eagerly; and then in a
changed voice he added, "if anybody could."

She left her place behind the tea-table and came nearer to him, sitting
directly before the fire. The light fell on her convincing face and on
her wavy hair. She folded her hands in her lap, and looked at him.

"Well?" she said.

"I do not know how to say it," Philip responded slowly. "I am afraid
that you have not much sympathy with my views of life."

"I probably have more than you realize. It's true that I do not believe
as you do, but we are both Puritans at heart, so that in the end our
theories come to much the same thing."

He looked up with evident inability to follow her meaning.

"I don't understand," he said.

"Very likely I couldn't make myself clear if I tried to explain.
Suppose we give up abstractions and come to the concrete. What is the
especial thing in which you think that my theories are different from
yours?"

"I do not think," he answered, hesitating more than ever, "that you
have much sympathy with asceticism."

"None whatever," she declared uncompromisingly. "Nobody could have more
honor for a sacrifice to principle than I have; but I believe that a
sacrifice to an idea is apt to be the outcome of nothing but vanity or
policy."

"But what is the difference?"

"Why, an idea is a thing that we believe with the head; don't you know
the way in which we think things out while we secretly feel altogether
different?"

"I do not think I follow you; but surely self-denial is a sacrifice to
principle."

"Not necessarily. I'm afraid I may seem to you profane, Philip, but I
must say that it seems to me that asceticism is one of the worst
plague-spots which ever afflicted humanity. The root of it is the pagan
idea of propitiating a cruel deity by self-torture."

"How can you say so!" he cried. "It is the pure devotion of a man to
the good of his higher nature and to the good of the race."

"As far as the race goes, vicarious suffering can't be anything, so far
as I see, except an effort to placate an unforgiving deity. As for the
devotion of a man to his higher nature, you will never convince me that
to go against nature and to indulge in morbidness is improving to
anything. But here we are, swamped in a bog of great moral propositions
again. We can't agree about these things, and the thing which we really
want to say will be lost sight of entirely."

He turned his face away from her again, either troubled by what she had
been saying or unable to find words and confidence to go on with the
confession of his trouble.

"Is it," Helen inquired, "that you have found that you have yourself a
doubt of the value of asceticism?"

"No, not that," he answered, dropping his voice; "but--but I begin to
doubt myself."

She leaned forward in her chair. Some power outside of her own will
seemed to constrain her.

"Philip," she said, bending over and touching his hand, "has love made
you doubt?"

The question evidently took him entirely by surprise. She wondered what
impulse had made her speak and how her question would affect him. He
flushed to his forehead, and cast at her a look so full of pathetic
appeal that she felt the tears come into her eyes. It was the look of a
hunted creature which sees no way of escape, yet which has not the fury
of resistance, which pleads its own weakness. She knew that Philip
could not equivocate and that the secret of his heart lay bare before
her. She shrank from what she had done, and a flood of pity and
sympathy filled her mind.

He gave her no more than a single look, and then buried his face in his
hands.

"I have betrayed my high calling," he exclaimed in a voice of bitter
suffering. "I have put my hand to the plough and looked back. I am too
weak to be worthy to"--

"Stop," she interposed brusquely, although she was deeply touched. "I
can't listen to that sort of talk. It isn't wholesome and it isn't
manly. If you have fallen short of your ideal, your experience is that
of the rest of the race. I suppose the secret of our making any
progress is the power of conceiving things higher than we can reach. It
keeps us trying."

"But I devoted myself to"--

"My dear boy," she interrupted him again, "you are like the rest of us.
You told yourself that you would be above all the passions and emotions
of common humanity, and you are discouraged to find that you're human
after all. That's really the whole of it."

"But to allow yourself to love"--

It was not necessary for her to interrupt him now. He stopped of his
own will, casting down his eyes and blushing like a school-boy. It
seemed to her that it might be better to try raillery.

"To allow yourself, O wise cousin!" she cried. "Men do not allow or
disallow themselves to love. It's deeper business than that."

"But I should have had strength not to yield."

"Is there anything discreditable in loving?" she demanded.

"There is for a priest."

"If there were, you are not a priest."

"In intention I am; and that is the same in the sight of Heaven."

She could not repress a gesture of impatience. She felt at once an
inward annoyance and a secret admiration. The temper of his mind was
exasperatingly like her own in its tenacity of conviction. He would not
excuse himself by any shifts, no matter how convincing they might seem
to others. The matter must be met fairly and frankly, and she must
reach his deepest feelings if she would move him. She reflected how
best to deal with him, and with her thoughts mingled the question
whether Edith Fenton could return Philip's love. The young man was well
made and sufficiently good-looking, although paled by study and
austerities. He was of good birth and property, and from a worldly
point of view not entirely an unsuitable match for the widow, should
she think of a second husband. He was somewhat younger than Mrs.
Fenton; and Helen was not without the thought that this passion might
be on his part no more than the inevitable result of his coming in
contact with a beautiful woman after having been immured in the
monastic seclusion of the Clergy House; a passion which would pass with
a wider acquaintance with the world. The whole matter perplexed and
troubled her, and yet she earnestly longed to help her cousin.

"Dear Philip," she said, "I can't tell you how I enter into your
feeling. I don't agree with you, but we are not so far apart in
temperament, if we are in doctrine. I'm afraid that you'll think that
I'm merely tempting you when I say that it seems to me that your
conscientiousness is entirely right, and that your conviction is all
wrong."

"Of course I know that you do not hold the same faith that I do."

"But one of your own faith might remind you that your own church
upholds the marriage of the clergy."

"Yes," he assented with apparent unwillingness, "but my conscience does
not."

"Do you mean that you find your conscience a better guide than the
church? That seems to put you on my ground, after all."

"Oh, no, no! Certainly I do not put myself above the authority of the
church."

"The eagerness with which you disclaim any common ground with me isn't
polite," she retorted, glad of a chance to speak more lightly and
smilingly; "but it's sincere, and that is better."

"I wasn't trying to disclaim thinking as you do; but to insist that I
do not set myself above the church."

"Then I repeat that the church sanctions the marriage of the clergy. If
you don't agree, I don't see why you do not really belong in the Roman
Catholic Church."

There was a long pause, during which she watched her cousin narrowly.
He seemed to be thinking deeply, with eyes intent on the fire. She was
so little prepared for the direction which his thought took that she
was startled when he said at last with a sigh:--

"I do sometimes find myself envying the absolute authority with which
the Roman Catholic Church speaks."

"Authority!" she repeated indignantly. "Do you mean that you wish to
give up your individuality?"

"No; not that; but it must be of unspeakable comfort in times of mental
doubt to repose on unquestioned and unquestionable authority."

Helen rose from her place by the fire and walked to the window. She
felt that she was on very delicate ground, and she would gladly have
escaped from the discussion could she have done so without the feeling
of having evaded. She stood a moment looking out into the darkening
street, dusky in the growing January twilight, bleak and dreary. Then
with a sudden movement she went to her husband's desk and took up a
picture of her boy, a beautiful, manly little fellow of three years, of
whom Philip was especially fond. Crossing to her cousin, she put the
picture in his hand, at the same time turning up the electric light
behind him.

"See," she said, with feminine adroitness. "I don't think I've shown
you this picture of Greyson."

He looked at it earnestly, and sighed.

"It is beautiful," said he. "Greyson is a son to be proud of and to
love."

"Well?" she asked significantly.

"What do you mean?" returned he. "What has Greyson's picture to do with
what we were talking about?"

She took the photograph from his hand, extinguished the light, and
walked back toward the desk. The room seemed darker than before now
that the firelight only was left. Suddenly she turned, with an outburst
almost passionate:--

"O Philip!" she exclaimed. "Can't you see? My son! Surely if there is
anything in this world that is holy, that is entirely pure and noble,
it is parentage. Do you suppose that all the churches in the world,
with authority or without it, could make Grant and me feel that there
is anything higher for us than to take our little son in our arms and
thank God for him!"

He did not answer, and she controlled her emotion, smiling at her own
extravagance, while she wiped away a tear. She kissed the picture, and
put it in its place; then she returned to her chair by the fire.

"I don't expect you to understand my feeling," she said. "You never can
until you have a son of your own. If a little cherub like Grey puts his
baby hands into your eyes and pulls your hair, you'll suddenly discover
that a good many of your old theories have evaporated."

"But, Cousin Helen," he began hesitatingly, "certainly there is often
sin"--

She interrupted him indignantly.

"There is no sin in faithful, loving, self-respecting marriage," she
insisted. "That is what I am talking about. It is the holiest thing on
earth. Anything may be degraded. I've even heard of a burlesque of the
sacrament. I don't see why I shouldn't speak frankly, Philip. You are
in a state of mind that is morbid and self-tormenting. If you love a
woman, tell her so honestly and clearly; and if she is a good woman and
can love you, go down on your knees, and thank God."

He leaned his forehead on his hands, as if he were struggling with
himself. The firelight shone on his rich hair, auburn like her own.
Helen watched him anxiously, wondering if she had said too much, and
whether she were taking too great a responsibility in the advice she
gave. Certainly anything must be good that took him out of his
unhealthy mood.

"Come," she said, rising, and turning on the electric light again. "It
is time for Grant to be at home, and for me to be dressing. We are to
dine at the Bodewin Rangers to-night."

He put up his hand to arrest her, and said in a tone that wrung her
heart:--

"But, Cousin Helen, I cannot speak of love to a woman until I am ready
to give up for her my priestly calling."

"Until you are willing to give up your unwholesome idea of celibacy and
asceticism, you mean."

"It would be sacrificing a principle to a passion."

Helen sighed.

"I could reason with you," she returned, half-humorously, "but how
shall I get on with all the Puritan ancestors who prevail in you and
me! The thing that I say isn't that you are to give up your notions
about the celibacy of the priesthood in order to marry, but because
they are unwholesome and abnormal. The thing that most closely links
you to humanity is the thing that best fits you to be of use in the
world."

He regarded her with a glance of painful intensity.

"But suppose," he suggested, "that the woman I loved could not love me?
Then I should come back to the church, and lay on the altar only a
discarded and worthless sacrifice."

"Come back to the church!" she echoed. "You don't leave it. If marriage
takes you out of the church, then the sooner such a church is left the
better! Do you realize what you are doing, Philip? Do you remember that
you insult the good name of your mother by the view you take of
marriage? I am sick of all this infamous condemnation of what to me is
holy! If the church cannot rise to a noble and pure conception of it,
the sooner the church is done away with, the better for mankind!"

"But you wrong the church," he interrupted eagerly. "The church makes
marriage a sacrament; it recognizes its purity; it"--

"Then what are you doing," she burst in, "with your exceptions to the
theory of the church? It is you who degrade it--Pardon me, cousin," she
added in a calmer voice, coming to him and laying her fingers lightly
on his shoulder. "I am speaking out of my heart. I have the shame of
knowing that I once failed to realize how high and how noble a thing
marriage is. I am older than you, and I have suffered as I hope you may
never have to suffer; the end of it all is that I have learned that
there is nothing else on earth so blessed as the real love of husband
and wife. Of course," she concluded, as he would have interrupted, "I
talk as a woman, and I cannot decide what you are to do. Only I would
like you to believe that I would help you if I could, and that what I
say of marriage is the thing which seems to me the truest thing on
earth."

Then without waiting for reply, she went away and left him to his
thoughts.



                         IX


               HIS PURE HEART'S TRUTH
                          Two Gentlemen of Verona, iv. 2.


"Who is Mr. Rangely?" Ashe inquired one morning at breakfast.

Mrs. Herman looked at her husband as if she expected him to reply,
although the question had been addressed to her.

"Fred Rangely," Grant Herman answered, "is a writer. He writes for the
magazines and is a newspaper man. He's written one or two novels, and
the first one was pretty successful. He's written plays too."

Helen smiled.

"Grant is too good-natured to tell you what you really want to know,"
she commented. "Mr. Rangely was once in some sort a friend of his, in
the old days when there was still something like an artistic
brotherhood in Boston, and he can't bear to say things that are not to
his credit. Now I should have answered your question by saying that
Fred Rangely is a warning."

"A what?" Ashe asked, while Herman sighed.

"A warning. A dozen years ago he was one of the most promising men
about. He had made a good beginning, he was clever and popular, and
both as a novelist and as a playwright we hoped for great things from
him."

"And now?"

"Now he is a failure."

Herman looked up almost reprovingly.

"I don't think he would recognize that," he observed.

"No, he wouldn't; and that's the worst of it. Ten years ago if anybody
had said of Fred Rangely: 'Here's a fellow that has started out to do
good work, but has found that there's more money in sensationalism; who
despises the popular taste and caters to it; who writes things he
doesn't believe for the newspapers and spends the money in running
after society,' he would have pronounced such a fellow a cad. Now he
would say: 'Well, a man must live, you know; and the public will only
pay for what it wants.' It's lamentable."

"You put it rather worse than it is," her husband responded. "We are
all in the habit of judging men as if their degradation was deliberate,
which as a matter of fact I suppose it never is. Rangely hasn't coolly
accepted the choice between honesty and Philistinism. It's all come
gradually."

"Like learning to pick pockets," she interpolated.

"Besides," Herman continued, "we over-estimated in the beginning both
his character and his talent. He found he couldn't do what was expected
of him, and he was weak enough to do then what was most comfortable
instead of what seemed to him highest. It is what nine men out of ten
do."

"Of course," Helen assented, "but after all it has come about by his
giving in on one thing after another. There was always a good deal that
is attractive about him, but he never showed much moral stamina. He
could never have married as he did if he had possessed fine instincts."

"And his wife?" Ashe inquired.

"Oh, he married a New York girl, who"--

"There, there," broke in Herman good-naturedly. "It is just as well not
to go into a characterization of Mrs. Rangely. I own that there isn't
much good to be said of her; so it is as well to let her pass."

"Well, so be it," his wife assented, smiling. "I have only to say," she
added, turning to her cousin, "that when Grant declines to have a woman
discussed it is equivalent to a condemnation more severe"--

"Nonsense," protested Herman. "Don't believe her, Ashe. As for Mrs.
Rangely, it's enough to say that she is merely an imitation in most
things, and that she has called out the worst of her husband's nature
instead of the best. I'm sorry to say it, but I'm afraid it's true."

Mrs. Herman looked at him with a smile which seemed to tease him for
having been betrayed into saying a thing so much more severe than were
his usual judgments. Then with true feminine instinct she brought the
talk back to its most significant point.

"Why did you ask about his wife?" she inquired of Philip.

"I--I did not know," he returned, so evidently disconcerted that she
did not press the matter.

Had Helen been a gossip she might have added that Rangely had acquired
the reputation of being always philandering with some woman or other.
Before his marriage he had been the slave of Mrs. Staggchase, and now,
after devotion to all sorts of society women, he had come to be counted
as one of the train of admirers who offered their devotion at the
shrine of Mrs. Wilson. Where a Frenchwoman prides herself on the
intensity of the devotion of some man not her husband, an American of
the same type glories in the number of slaves that her charms ensnare.
In either case the root of the matter is vanity rather than passion.
The American fashion is at once the more demoralizing and the less
dangerous. Mrs. Wilson in the early days of her married life had tried
to make her husband jealous by allowing the desperate attentions of a
single lover. She never repeated the experiment. The lover went abroad
to recover from the sting of having been made hopelessly ridiculous,
and Mrs. Wilson learned that in marrying she had found a master.
Fortunately she had married for love, and no woman loves a man less for
finding him able to control her. In these days Mrs. Wilson amused
himself by having a troop of admirers, and perhaps prided herself upon
being able to outdo the wiles of the other women of her set in securing
and holding her captives; but she discussed them with her husband with
the utmost frankness, mocking them to their faces if they made a step
across the line which she drew for them. They were kept in a state of
marked but respectful admiration. It was expected of them that they
should pretend to be consumed by a passion as violent as they might
please, but always a passion which was hopeless, which asked for no
reward but to be allowed to continue; which found in mere admission to
her presence joy enough at least to keep it alive.

It may be that Rangely had more vanity than the rest of Mrs. Wilson's
followers, or it may be that he was more resolute. Certain it is that
he was more presuming than the rest, and that his devotion had not
failed to produce a good deal of talk. Little as Mrs. Herman was
accustomed to pay attention to social gossip, she had not failed to
hear tattle about Elsie Wilson; and while she probably did not much
heed it, she was at heart too conscientious not to feel shame and
irritation. That a woman in the position of Mrs. Wilson should allow
herself to give rise to vulgar gossip moved her to deep disapproval;
while she could not but feel contempt for the man who neglected his own
wife to wait upon the caprices of one whom Helen looked upon as a
heartless and vain creature.

Behind the question which Ashe had asked about Rangely lay an incident
which had occurred the day previous. He was now called upon to see Mrs.
Wilson frequently in relation to matters connected with the election,
and with that instinct which was inborn she had carelessly exercised
upon him her arts of fascination. There is a certain sort of woman in
whom the mere presence of anything masculine awakens the rage for
conquest. It is as impossible for such women not to exert their
fascinations as it is for a magnet to cease to attract. It is the
destiny of woman to love, and dangerous is she who is inspired only
with the desire to be loved, the woman who instead of loving man loves
love. Elsie was saved from being such a monster by the fact that she
had a husband strong enough to subdue and control her nature; but
nothing could prevent her from trying her wiles on every man she met.

Philip was too completely unsophisticated to understand, and too much
absorbed by his passion for another woman to respond to the cunning
attractions of Mrs. Wilson; yet it is not impossible that she so far
influenced him as to render him unconsciously jealous of another man.
He had surprised Rangely kissing the hand of that lady with an air of
devotion so warm that the blood of the young deacon rose in resentment
which he supposed to be entirely disapproval. He was in a state of mind
which made him especially sensitive to any suggestion of love; and the
sight of any man caressing the hand of a beautiful woman could not but
set his heart throbbing with disconcerting rapidity. In his world even
the touch of a woman's fingers was almost a forbidden thing, and to
kiss them an act not to be so much as imagined. Philip dared not think,
or to define to himself what significance he attached to this incident.
An unsophisticated man is often suspicious from the simple fact that he
is forced to distrust his judgment. He is unable to estimate the value
of appearances, and in the end often falls the victim of errors which
might seem to arise from malevolence or low-mindedness, when in reality
they are the inevitable fruit of ignorance.

As Philip stood confronted with Mrs. Wilson after Rangely had left the
room it seemed to him that he read unspeakable things in her glance.
His clerical bias with its unholy blight of asceticism, his ignorance
of the world, made him a victim of a misapprehension which brought the
blood to his cheeks. His hostess looked at him curiously, and then
burst into a laugh.

"Upon my word," she cried, "I believe you are shocked! You are really
too delicious!"

He flushed hotter yet, and there came over him a helpless sense of
being alike unable to understand this brilliant creature or to cope
with her.

"But--but," he stammered, "I--I"--

"Well?" she demanded, her eyes dancing. "You what? You saw Mr. Rangely
kiss my hand. You may kiss it too, if you like; though I doubt if you
can do it half so devotedly. He's had a lot of practice with a lot of
hands."

Ashe stared at her with wide open eyes.

"But has he a wife?" he asked gravely.

"Meaning to remind me that I have a husband?" she gayly returned. "Yes;
we are both of us married. To think," she continued, spreading out her
hands and appealing to the universe at large, "that such simplicity
exists! Where have you been all your life? Did you never kiss a lady's
hand--or a lady's lips, for that matter?"

"I think you forget, Mrs. Wilson," Ashe said with real dignity, "that I
am a priest."

She regarded him with lifted brows for a moment. Then she moved to a
seat.

"Come," said she; "sit down and talk to me. Where have you passed your
life? You cannot have been brought up in a monastery, for we don't have
them in our church."

"It is a great pity," responded Philip, obeying her command, and
seating himself in a large arm-chair near her.

"Do you really mean it?" was her reply. "Yes, I believe you do! You
were evidently born to be a monk. Oh, how _triste_ it must be to be
made without an appreciation of us!"

He remained silent, his face more grave than ever.

"Well," she went on, settling herself comfortably in the corner of her
sofa amid a pile of sumptuous cushions, "tell me something about your
life. It may be that you were designed by fate to introduce a new order
of monks."

"There is not much to tell," he responded stiffly and almost
mechanically. "I was brought up in the country by a widowed mother. I
went through Harvard and the Divinity School, and since then I have
lived at the Clergy House."

She regarded him closely. Her glance seemed half mocking, and yet to
search into the very secrets of his heart, as if she were asking him
questions which he would not have dared to ask himself. Her eyes
suggested impossible things; they demanded if he had not known of
forbidden cups which held wine deliriously enticing. He cast down his
glance, no longer able to endure hers, yet not knowing why he was thus
abashed.

"But don't you know anything of life?" she questioned. "How could you
go through Harvard without seeing something of it? What were your
amusements?"

"I rowed some, and I walked. The only thing that was a real pleasure
outside of my work was to be with Maurice Wynne. I do not remember that
I ever thought about needing to be amused. Of course I knew a few
fellows. I never knew a great many of the men."

"And no women?"

"None except the boarding-house keeper."

She looked at him rather incredulously. Then she once more threw out
her hands in a gesture of amusement and amazement.

"Good heavens!" declared she; "there are just two things which might be
done with you. You should be put in a glass case as a unique specimen
of otherwise extinct virtue; or you should be sent to Paris to learn to
be a real man. However, it's not my place to take charge of you, so
that may pass."

There burned in the cheek of Ashe a spot of crimson which was perhaps
too deep not to betoken something of the nature of earthly indignation.

"Mrs. Wilson," he said, "I came here to discuss church interests, and
not to be myself the subject of remarks which you certainly would not
think of making to other gentlemen who call on you."

She clapped her hands.

"Bravo!" she cried. "There's the making of a man in him. It's a
thousand pities you can't go to Paris and learn the fun of life."

He rose indignantly.

"If you wish only to talk lightly of evil things," said he, "I do not
see that it is necessary for me to take up more of your time."

"Well," she responded, smilingly unmoved, "I'll confess that if there
is one thing for which I am especially grateful to Providence it is for
its having spared me the ennui of having to live in a virtuous world!
But sit down, and I'll talk as if that blessing had not been granted to
us. As for the salutation of Mr. Rangely which so shocked your
reverence, that was part of the campaign. He had just promised to write
an article for the 'Churchman' advocating Father Frontford from the
point of view of a layman; and of course until that is in print it is
necessary to be gracious to him. The trouble with you is that you've
seen so little of life that you exaggerate the most innocent things.
You really are rather insulting to me, if you think of it; but I pardon
it because you don't know what you were doing. I suppose you never
wanted to kiss a woman's hand or to write a sonnet to her eyebrow?"

Ashe felt the blood rush into his face in so hot a tide that he
involuntarily turned away from his tormentor and walked toward the
door. The question would in any case have been disconcerting, but it
was made doubly so by the word which recalled the phrase from the
Persian hymn which was in his mind so closely associated with Mrs.
Fenton: "O thou, to the arch of whose eyebrow the new moon is a slave!"
He had taken but a step, however, before Mrs. Wilson sprang from her
seat, clapping her hands again. She interposed between him and the
door, her face radiant with fun and mischief.

"Oh, what a blush!" she cried. "Upon my word, there's a woman; there is
a woman even in that icebox you keep for a heart!"

She burst into a peal of laughter, while he stood confounded and
speechless, trying to look unconscious, and vexatiously aware of how
completely he failed. Mrs. Wilson laid the tips of her slender fingers
on his arm, and peered up into his eyes.

"I wouldn't have believed it, St. Anthony! Come, make me your mother
confessor, and I'll give you good advice. It's part of my mission to
take charge of the love affairs of the clergy. Only yesterday I spent
half the afternoon trying to find out how deeply Mr. Candish is smitten
with a pretty widow."

Ashe started in amazement and alarm. The words of Mrs. Herman
connecting the name of Mrs. Fenton with that of Candish flashed into
his mind, and seemed to supply what Mrs. Wilson left unspoken. The
jealous pang which he felt at this confirmation of the interest of
Candish in the woman he loved was doubled by the resentment he felt
that this mocking torment before him should dare even to think of
Edith. Almost without knowing it he broke out excitedly into protest.

"How dare you meddle with her affairs?" he cried.

Mrs. Wilson stared at him an instant in amazement, evidently taken
completely aback. Then a light of cunning comprehension flashed into
her sparkling eyes.

"Ah!" exclaimed she. "You too! Is Mrs. Fenton so irresistible to the
ecclesiastical heart?"

He confronted her in silence. A wave of misery, of helplessness, of
weakness, swept over him. He had no right even to be Mrs. Fenton's
defender. He was, as Mrs. Wilson intimated, not a real man, but a
priest. The very tone of the whole conversation this morning showed how
far she was from regarding him as one having any part in her world. He
had only injured Mrs. Fenton by his ill-judged outburst, and given this
creature who so delighted in baiting him one more opportunity. Worse
than all else was the fact that he had given her a chance to jest about
the woman whom he loved. The tears rushed to his eyes in the intensity
of his feelings, and the beautiful face before him, with its teasing
brightness and dancing fun, swam in his vision. He hated its laughter,
and he expected fresh mockery for the emotion which he could not help
betraying. To his surprise, however, Mrs. Wilson again laid her hand on
his arm, and her face lost its gayety.

"You poor boy," she said, with genuine feeling in her tone, "is it so
real as that? I wouldn't have hurt you for the world, if I had known.
What business had you to be meddling with vows and renunciation until
you knew what they meant?"

She moved back to her seat as she spoke, motioning Ashe to resume his
place. He was too deeply moved to obey her.

"If you will excuse me," he said, "I will see you to-morrow in regard
to those delegates. I--I am not quite myself."

"But you shall not go without saying that you forgive me for my
teasing. Really, I am sorry and ashamed. I never intend to hurt you,
but I see that my teasing may be taken more seriously than it is meant."

There was real gentleness and pity in her smile, and as she rose to
stand looking into his face with a winning smile of apology he forgot
all his bitterness.

"The trouble is with me," he said. "I do not understand the world, and
I should keep out of it."

"Oh, not at all," she retorted briskly. "You should learn how to live
in it."

A spark of mischief kindled in her glance as she spoke, and she
extended to him the back of her hand. Her smile challenged him, and he
had been won and moved by the sympathy of her voice. The hand, too, was
so beautiful, so slender, so feminine; he had so keen a longing to be
comforted, to be soothed by womanly softness, and to assuage his
loneliness by woman's sympathy, that it seemed impossible to resist the
invitation of those delicate fingers. He took her hand, and raised it
half way to his lips. Then he dropped it abruptly, letting his own arm
swing lifelessly to his side.

"No," he said bitterly. "I am a priest!"



                         X


                A SYMPATHY OF WOE
                         Titus Andronicus, iii. 1.


The first sensation which returning consciousness brought to Berenice
Morison, after the shock of the collision and the feeling that the
whole train had been hurled confusedly into space, was that of coming
into fresher air as if she were emerging from the depths of the sea.
Opening her eyes without comprehending where she was or what had
happened, she found herself on the side of an overturned car. Around
her were dreadful noises, yells, groans, cries, shouts; her nostrils
were filled with the reek of burning stuffs; the light of lanterns and
of torches blinded her eyes; a sense of horror oppressed her; appalling
calamity which she could not understand seemed to have overtaken her;
and she shuddered with terror unspeakable. Her first impulse was to
shriek and to attempt to flee from the fearful things which surrounded
her; but instantly the self-control of returning reason made itself
felt.

Berenice found herself supported by a couple of men, and it became
clear to her in an instant that she had just been lifted from that pit
below where she could see the glint of flame and the blinding smother
of smoke, and from which came such heartrending cries that she
instinctively tried to cover her ears. In the movement she realized
that beside the hold which her rescuers had of her, she was grasped by
other arms; that she was in the embrace of a man apparently dead. In
the dim light her dazed sense did not recognize him, and she struggled
to release herself from the hold of this corpse.

"Take him away from me!" she shrieked hysterically in mingled terror
and repulsion.

"Gently, gently," said one of the men who held her. "He's got killed
tryin' to save yer."

"If this cut in his arm was in your back," remarked the other, who was
unlocking the hands so strongly clasped behind her, "it'd 'a' been a
finisher."

Her head reeled, and she nearly swooned again; but somehow she found
herself released, and passed down from the car into the arms of more
men.

"For God's sake, hurry," one of them said. "It's getting too hot to
stand here."

A blistering puff of smoke enwrapped her as she went down. She saw a
face blackened and ghastly advance in the flaring light of a lantern.
Hands that seemed to come out of a cloud and a great darkness helped
and sustained her, until she was out of the instant press beside the
burning car. When once she was free and stood upon her feet, she
regained something like self-possession. Her head swam, but she
realized the situation and felt that she was able to help herself.

"I am not hurt," she said to those who would have assisted her. "Don't
mind me."

As she spoke, the body of a man was passed out of the smoke close to
her, and she saw that it was Wynne. Instantly she remembered being
flung into his arms, although what followed she could not recall. She
looked at him now with a piercing conviction that he was dead. His
cassock hung about him in rags, his face was smeared with blood and
grime, his arm hung limp and bleeding. The words of the rescuer on the
car-roof came to her, and she saw in the disfigured form of the young
deacon the body of the man who had given his life for hers. Instantly
all her powers rallied to help and if possible to save him.

"Bring him this way," she said, stepping forward eagerly, her weakness
forgotten. "I'll take care of him."

She moved out of the smoke without any clear idea where she was going
or what she could do. The hurt man was brought after her, one of the
many that were being carried as dead weights among the confused and
agonized crowd. At a short distance from the track there were hastily
arranged car-cushions, coats, and loose coverings thrown down on a bank
half covered with snow. Here the bearers laid Wynne, hurrying back to
their work with a precipitancy which seemed to Berenice heartless.

The scene which Berenice took in at a glance was so wild and terrible
that it stamped itself on her brain in a flash. Lanterns were burning
all about, dancing and flitting to and fro like fireflies in a mist.
The eye caught everywhere glimpses by their light of disordered groups,
dim and dreadful as a nightmare. Close about her were the victims
heaped as if from a battlefield, the wounded moaning in pain, the women
wailing over the dying or the dead, each with cruel egotism intent upon
her own, and seizing upon any helper with terrible eagerness of
despair. A hundred feet away, lighted by the flames which were
beginning to thrust quick tongues through the smoke and the darkness,
was a long heap of shapeless wreck, about which dark figures were
swarming like midges about a bonfire. She could distinguish in the
middle of the line the two locomotives silhouetted against the
darkness, standing half on end like two grotesque monsters rearing in
deadly conflict. Every moment the flames became fiercer, and the
hurrying lanterns moved more wildly.

It was Wynne, however, that claimed her attention. One swift glance
took in the awful picture, and then she sank down on her knees beside
him as he lay, bleeding and insensible, perhaps dead. For a moment she
was ready to cast herself down on the snow in helplessness and in
terror at the horrors of the situation; but the grit of stout Puritan
ancestors was in her fibres, the moral endurance which finds in the
sense of a duty to be done an inspiration that lifts above all
difficulties. Her work was before her; to abandon it impossible.

The flames of the burning car brightened with appalling rapidity.
Shrieks arose so piercing that they wrung her heart as if with a
physical agony. It was the car from which she and Wynne had been taken
which was now that hell of fire. Its glare lit up the pale and bleeding
face beside her, and she realized that at that minute they might have
been in that awful agony. She began to sob wildly, but she began, too,
to try to bring Wynne back to consciousness. She took snow in her hands
and put it to his forehead; she twisted her handkerchief about his arm
to stop its bleeding. She tried to recall what she had heard at
Emergency Lectures, with a strong determination forcing herself to
remember. Kneeling in the snow, in the light of the burning car, her
heart torn by the cries of the suffering, trembling with excitement,
fear, and the shock she had undergone, sobbing almost hysterically, she
yet constrained herself to do her best, binding up his arm with strips
of her clothing, and trying to bring back his senses.

A physician came to her without her knowing until he was at her side.
He bent to examine Wynne, and Berenice tried to repress her sobs that
she might talk to him, and take his directions. The life of Wynne might
depend upon her calmness. She caught up more snow, and pressed it to
her own temples.

"Is he much hurt?" she asked feverishly.

"It is not dangerous as far as I can judge," the doctor answered
hurriedly. "Get him away from here as soon as you can."

She looked after him as he hurried on to other patients, and her first
feeling was one of indignation. Then it occurred to her that his going
so soon must mean that her patient was less hurt than she had feared.
But why was Wynne so long insensible? She knelt beside him again, and
as she did so he opened his eyes.

"Where am I?" he cried feebly.

He tried to start up, but fell back with a groan.

"There has been an accident," she said hurriedly. "It's all right now.
You are safe. Are you in much pain?"

"Are you hurt?" he demanded almost fiercely.

"No, no; never mind me."

He struggled again to rise, but fell back with a groan. She put her
hand on his shoulder.

"Lie still," she commanded authoritatively. "I'll see what can be done.
Lie still while I look about."

A second car was burning, and the whole place was aglare with yellow
light. The wild groups stood out black against the trodden and dingy
snow, while overhead rolled clouds of sooty smoke. It occurred to
Berenice that the accident had taken place so near Brookfield that many
persons must have come from the town. She seized a respectable-looking
man by the arm, and asked him if he knew of any way in which she could
get an injured friend to Brookfield. He stared at her a moment as if it
was impossible at such a time to receive words in their ordinary
meaning, but when the question had been repeated he answered that there
were some hackmen from town in the crowd. He helped her to find one,
and as Mrs. Morison was well known, Berenice had little further
difficulty. Wynne submitted to being half led, half carried through the
crowd, and when at last with the assistance of the hackman Berenice got
him into the carriage he fainted again.

Singular and frightful to Berenice was that ride. The terrors through
which she had passed, the shock, mental and physical, which she had
undergone, had almost prostrated her. As soon as she was in the
carriage she broke out into hysterical tears. The fainting of her
companion, however, called her attention from herself, forcing her to
think of him. She supported his head on her shoulder, lifting his
wounded arm on to her lap; and into her heart came that thrill of
interest and compassion which is the instinctive response of a woman to
the appeal of masculine helplessness. A woman's love is apt to be half
maternal, and she who nurses a man is for the time being in place of
his mother. Berenice's thoughts were in a whirl, but pity for the hurt
man at her side was her most conscious feeling. She remembered the
words of her rescuer, and endowed Wynne with the nobility which belongs
to him who risks his life for another. What had happened she could not
tell. She remembered the awful terror of the collision, and mistily of
being hurled into his arms; but after that came a blank until the
moment of her rescue. It was evident that Wynne had in some way been
hurt in protecting her, and the very vagueness of the service he had
rendered made the deed loom larger in her imagination. She felt his
breath warm on her cheek, and suddenly into her dispassionate musings
there came a fresh sense, which made her face grow hot. She was angry
at the absurdity of flushing there in the dark, and asked herself why
the mere breath on her cheek of an insensible and wounded man should
set her to blushing like a self-conscious fool! Then she remembered how
he had held her in his arms, and she grew more self-conscious still. A
jolt made her companion moan, and in a twinkling all else was forgotten
in the anxiety of getting to shelter and aid.

When the carriage stopped before the house of Mrs. Morison, the old
lady and a servant appeared instantly, rushing out to see what the
arrival meant. Almost before the carriage had come to a stand-still,
Berenice put her head out of the window and called as cheerily as she
could:--

"All right, grandmamma."

She could not keep her voice steady, and she could only try to carry
off her emotion by a laugh which was rather shaky and hysterical. She
could not rise, for Wynne's head was on her shoulder. The carriage door
was torn open, and she felt her grandmother's arms about her in the
darkness.

"My darling! My darling!" she heard murmured in a sobbing voice.

"Look out, grandmother," she said, embracing Mrs. Morison with her one
free arm; "I've brought a man with me, and he's hurt. I think he's
fainted."

There is nothing so efficacious in restraining the outpouring of
emotion as the necessity of attending to practical details. The need of
getting Wynne out of the hack and into the house as speedily and as
safely as possible restored Mrs. Morison to calmness, and although for
the rest of the evening and for many days after she and her
granddaughter had a fashion of rushing into each other's arms in the
most unexpected manner, they now devoted themselves to the unconscious
young deacon.

Wynne revived again when he was lifted out of the carriage, and when he
had been, with the friendly aid of the driver, got into the house and
given a little brandy, he came once more to his complete if somewhat
shaken senses. He was too weak from the shock and the loss of blood to
resist anything that his friends chose to do to him, and although he
feebly protested against being quartered upon Mrs. Morison, his protest
was not in the least heeded.

"Say no more about it," Mrs. Morison said, with a quiet smile. "You are
here, and you are to stay here. There is nowhere else for you to go,
even if you don't like our hospitality."

"That isn't it," he began feebly; "only I've no claim"--

"There, that will do," Berenice interposed with decision. "Do you
suppose, grandmother, that it's possible to get anybody to come and see
his arm?"

"I'm afraid not, dear," was the answer. "Everybody's at the wreck. I've
been cowering down in the corner of the fire for what seemed to me
years since Mehitabel came rushing in with the news; and all the time
I've heard people driving past the house on their way out of town."

"There ain't a man left," put in Mehitabel, a severe elderly servant,
who had the air of being personally responsible for her mistress, and
of being bound to fulfill her duties faithfully, even if the effort
killed her. "I see Dr. Strong go gallopin' past first, and the other
doctors was all after him; even to that little squinchy electrical
image that's round the corner on Front Street."

"Electrical image?" repeated Berenice.

"She means the eclectic physician," explained Mrs. Morison. "I'm sure
that there's no use in sending for the doctors now. Later we will see.
We must manage the best we can. If I hurt you, Mr. Wynne, you must tell
me."

Berenice looked on, sick with the sight of the blood, while her
grandmother examined the wounded arm. Wynne shrank a little, but
Berenice noted that he bore the pain pluckily. The sleeve was cut to
the shoulder, and his arm laid bare. A jagged cut was revealed reaching
from the wrist to the elbow; a cut so ugly in appearance that the girl
went faint again.

"There, there, Miss Bee," old Mehitabel said, taking her by the
shoulder. "You've had enough of this sort of thing for one night.
You'll dream gray hairs all over your head if you don't get out."

But Berenice refused to give up her place. She stood beside Wynne while
her grandmother examined the arm, handing the things that were wanted;
fighting with the faintness that came over her in waves.

"No, Mehitabel," said she. "I'm made of better stuff than you think."

In her heart she had a half unconscious feeling that she had been
inclined to hold this man in contempt because of his priestly garb; and
that she owed him this reparation. She did not know what had occurred
in that overturned car; but she looked back to it as to a horror of
great darkness in which Wynne had risked his life for hers. She felt
that she could not do less than to stand by while the wound he had
received in her service was being attended to. It was Wynne himself who
put her away.

"You are too kind, Miss Morison," he said; "but you are not fit to do
this. I beg that you'll not stay. Your face shows how hard it is for
you."

The first thought that shot through her mind was one of relief that she
now might properly leave her self-inflicted task; the second was a pang
of self-reproach that she should wish to leave it; the third and
lasting was a sense of pleasure that even in his pain he had not failed
to note her face and divine her feelings.

"Mr. Wynne is right," Mrs. Morison added decisively. "Mehitabel can
help me, my dear. Go into the other room and let Rosa get you a cup of
tea."

"It won't be much of a cup of tea," Mehitabel commented grimly. "That
fool of a girl's got it into her head that it's a good time to cry for
her doxy, because he's a brakeman on some other train."

Berenice smiled at the characteristic crispness and the absurd speech
of the old servant. She remembered Mehitabel from the days when in
pinafores she used to visit here, and when she looked upon the tall,
gaunt woman with an awe which was saved from being terror only by the
fact that she had learned to associate with that abrupt speech an after
gift of crisp cakes. Mehitabel was to her as much a part of the
establishment as were the tall chairs, the lion-headed fire-dogs, or
the silver which had belonged to her grandmother's grandmother.

Passing into the dining-room Berenice summoned the afflicted Rosa, who
came with face all be-blubbered with tears, and who sniffed audibly as
soon as she caught sight of the visitor.

"How do you do, Rosa? I wouldn't cry, if I were you," Berenice said.
"Mehitabel says that this wasn't his train."

"Oh, I know it, Miss," responded Rosa, with more tears; "but I can't
help thinking how dreadful it would be if it was; and me not to know
whether he was dead or alive. It don't seem to me I could ever marry
him, not to be able to tell whether he'd come home any day dead or
alive. I'll have to give him up, Miss; and he's real kind and
free-handed."

Her tears flowed so freely at the thought of giving up her lover that
they splashed on Berenice's hand as Rosa leaned over to reach for
something on the table.

"Well, Rosa," Miss Morison remarked, smiling at the absurdity of the
maid, and wiping her hand, "I'm sorry that you feel so bad; but I don't
like to be deluged with tears."

"Indeed, Miss," Rosa returned penitently, "I didn't mean to cry on you;
but tears come so easy in this world. We're all born crying."

Berenice laughed in spite of herself.

"If we are born crying," she said, "that's reason enough for our
smiling when we've outgrown being babies."

"That's all well enough for you," Rosa retorted with fresh tears.
"You've got your man here all safe if he is hurt a little; and I don't
know"--

Berenice broke in with indignant amazement, feeling her face burn.

"My man!" she exclaimed. "How dare you speak to me like that! Mr. Wynne
is nothing to me. He's only a clergyman that was hurt saving my life."

She broke off with a laugh somewhat hysterical. Her nerves were not
under control yet.

"I'm sure I didn't mean," wailed the girl, "to say anything wrong."

"There, there, Rosa," the other interrupted. "We are both upset. You
shouldn't take so much for granted, or talk to me about 'men.'"

But in her mind the phrase repeated itself vexatiously: "your man."



                         XI


          IN PLACE AND IN ACCOUNT NOTHING
                          1 Henry IV., v. 1.


The power of self-torture which the human heart possesses is well-nigh
infinite. When one considers how futile are self-reproaches,
self-examinations, remorses for faults and weaknesses; how vanity puts
itself upon the rack and conscience inflicts envenomed wounds; how self
tortures self until the whole man writhes in anguish, and in the end
nothing is altered by all this pain, one might almost thank the gods
for moral insensibility. Yet New England was founded upon the principle
that this temper of mind develops manlihood; that inward struggles are
the only discipline which can fit a human being for the outward
conquest of life. The Puritans had power to subdue the wilderness, to
overcome whatever obstacles interposed to the founding of a state and
the establishing of the truth as they conceived it, because all these
difficulties were accidents, outward and of comparative insignificance
when set against the real life, which was within. If a heritage of
self-consciousness has come down with the noble gifts which the
forefathers have left to their children, it is at least part of the
price paid for great things.

To Maurice that night only the pain and misery of his Puritan
inheritance made themselves felt. Through the long hours he lacerated
his heart and soul with repentance, with remorseful self-reproaches,
enduring agony intense enough to be the reward meet for a crime.
Fevered with the loss of blood, racked with the smart of bodily wounds,
bruised and sore from the injuries of the accident, unable to move
without torture in every joint, he yet forgot physical in mental
suffering.

The weakness and disorder of his body confused and distorted his
thoughts, but it was in any case inevitable that with his training he
should be wrung with bitter self-condemnation. He flushed and thrilled
at the remembrance of the pressure of Berenice against his breast; the
warmth of her breath, the odor of her hair, seemed to come back to him
even out of the tumult and reek of the burning car. He remembered how
it had seemed to him--to him, a priest--sweet to die if he might die
clasping unrebuked this woman in his arms. The blood throbbed in his
temples as he recalled the wild thoughts that had swirled in a mad
throng through his brain in those moments which had seemed like hours;
the blood throbbed, too, in his wounded arm, so that a groan forced
itself through his parched lips. He was constantly throwing himself to
and fro as if to escape from some teasing thought, always to be by the
sharp pang in his wound brought to a sense of his condition. The whole
night passed in an agony of mind and body.

There were moments, too, when he seemed to stand outside of himself and
judge dispassionately this human creature, wounded, broken, rent in
body and in soul; moments in which he sometimes seemed to smile in
supreme contempt of the wretch so weak, so wavering, so utterly to be
despised; sometimes to protest in angry pity against the unmerited
anguish which had been heaped upon the sufferer. He had instants of
delirious clearness and exaltation in which he felt himself lifted
above the ordinary weaknesses of humanity; to see more clearly, and to
take a view broader than any to which he had ever before attained. It
shocked and startled him to realize that in these intervals which
seemed like inspiration,--intervals in which he felt himself
illuminated with inner light,--he cast from him the ideals which he had
hitherto cherished. As if for the first time seeing clearly, he felt
that men should not be hampered by dogmas which cramp and restrain. A
line he had seen somewhere, and which he had put aside as irreverent
and irreligious, kept repeating itself over and over in his head--

      "He had crippled his youth with a creed."


Life stretched out before him futile and meaningless unless love should
light it, unless he could win Berenice; and he protested feverishly
against any vow that would thwart or restrain him. He had crippled his
youth with a creed unnatural and deforming; it was time for the manhood
within him to shake off its fetters and assert its strength. He told
himself wildly that now for the first time he saw life as it was; that
now first he understood the meaning of existence, and that life meant
nothing without freedom and love.

The beliefs of years, however, or even those habits which so often pass
for beliefs, are not to be done away with in a night. Even love cannot
completely alter the course of life in a moment. At the last, worn out
with the conflict, but with a supreme effort to regain spiritual calm,
Maurice flung his whole soul into an agony of supplication, as he might
have flung his body at the foot of a cross, and prayed to be delivered
from this too great temptation. He would renounce; he would pluck up by
the roots this passion which had sprung and grown in his heart; at
whatever cost he would tear it up, and be faithful to his high calling.
As a child casts itself upon the bosom of its mother, he cast himself
upon the Divine, and with an ecstatic sense of pardon, of peace, of
perfect joy, he fell asleep at last.

Maurice awoke in broad daylight, with a confused sense that the world
was falling in fragments about his ears, and that his name was being
shouted by the angel of the last trump. He found that the physician who
could not be had on the previous night had now been brought to his
chamber by Mehitabel.

"Here's the saw-bones at last," was the characteristically
uncompromising introduction of the woman.

"Dr. Murray's come to tell you that all Mis' Morison did last night was
wrong, and that probably you'll have to have your arm cut off 'cause of
it."

Wynne sat up in bed dazed and uncomprehending, but the smile of the
doctor brought him to a sense of where he was. The latter was not in
the least surprised by Mehitabel's manner of speech.

"If you'd had anything to do with it, Mehitabel," was Dr. Murray's
comment, "I've no doubt the arm would have had to go; but when Mrs.
Morison does a thing, it's another story."

"Humph!" sniffed she. "You've got some small amount of sense, if it
ain't much. Now, young man, set your teeth together and put out your
tongue--your arm, I mean."

Maurice smiled, not so much at the humor of the error as at the fact
that it was so evidently intentional on the part of the elderly virgin,
who cunningly glanced at him and at the doctor to discover if the rare
stroke of wit were properly appreciated.

"Jocose as ever, Mehitabel," observed the doctor, going to work at once
with swift and delicate precision. "You've a nasty cut here, Mr. Wynne;
but you're lucky to get off with nothing worse. It's a good deal to
come through such an accident without a permanent injury."

"That's true," Maurice responded cheerfully. "I dreamed in the night
that I was all in bits."

"Plenty of poor fellows were. It was the most terrible smash-up for
years."

"How is Miss Morison?" Wynne asked, wondering if his voice betrayed the
inward agitation without which he could not pronounce her name.

"Oh, she's all right. Nervous and shaky, of course; but she's a sound,
wholesome creature, and it won't take her long to recover her tone."

"Yes; I brought her up," interposed Mehitabel, with grim
self-complacency. "Don't pull that bandage so tight, doctor. You want
to have me running over after you in an hour to come and loosen it."

"That's it, Mehitabel; teach your grandmother to suck eggs. I come
here, Mr. Wynne, chiefly to learn my profession from her."

"She seems willing to teach you," Wynne replied, and then, with a
boyish doubt if she might not take offense, he added, "which of course
is very kind of her."

Mehitabel chuckled in high good-humor.

"Kind it is and unappreciated it is; and little is the credit he does
to his training. Men are all alike; if they owned half they owe to
women they'd be too ashamed to show their heads in daylight."

The droll airs of the old woman entertained Wynne so greatly that he
bore with exemplary fortitude the painful attentions of the physician,
the harder to bear because the wound had had time to inflame. The arm
was dressed at last, and the doctor took himself away with a parting
passage of arms with Mehitabel.

"The thing for you to do, young man," she said, when Dr. Murray had
departed, "is to stay in bed where you are, and that's reason enough
for a man to want to get up."

"I'm not fond of staying in bed," Maurice responded with a smile; "and
besides that I must get back to Boston."

She regarded him with an expression of marked disfavor.

"Humph," said she. "Quarters ain't good enough for you, I suppose."

"On the contrary, it is I who am not good enough for the quarters."

Mehitabel went on with her work of arranging the curtains and putting
the room to rights as she answered:--

"Well, I dare say you ain't; but what special thing've you done?"

"Special thing?" Maurice repeated, somewhat confused. "Oh, I see. The
fact is, I don't think I've any right to impose on the hospitality of
Mrs. Morison."

"Well," assented she again, "I dare say you ain't; but if she's
willing, you ain't no occasion to grumble, 's I see. She ain't a-going
to hear of your starting out hot-foot, 's if she wouldn't keep you.
It'd look bad for the reputation of the family."

"But," began he, "I"--

"Besides," the old woman continued, ignoring his attempt to speak, "you
ain't got much to wear. Them petticoats you come in, which ain't
suitable for any man to wear, without it's the bearded lady in the
circus if she's a man, which I never rightly knew, is so torn to pieces
by the grace of heaven that you can't go in them, and all the rest of
your clothes are all holes and blood."

"I suppose my clothes were pretty well used up," he replied, divided
between a desire to laugh and a feeling that he should resent the
affront to his clerical garb; "and of course my baggage is nowhere. Can
I get clothing here, or shall I have to send to Boston?"

"You can't get men's petticoats," Mehitabel retorted uncompromisingly,
"nor none of them Popish things. If it's good, plain God-fearing pants
and such, there ain't no trouble, and the price is reasonable."

"Plain God-fearing trousers and coat will do," Maurice answered,
bursting into a laugh. "Do you think that you could send for some if I
give you the size?"

She was evidently pleased at the success of her attempts to be funny,
for her face relaxed, but she set her mouth primly.

"I'd go myself," was her reply. "I'd trust myself to pick out things,
and it might give the girls ideas to go traipsing round buying pants
and men's fixings."

When she was gone Maurice lay in a pleasant half-doze, smiling at the
absurd old servant with her labored determination to be thought witty,
and wondering at the caprices of existence. He was interrupted by the
arrival of his breakfast, and after that had been disposed of he
received a visit from Mrs. Morison. She was a fine old lady with snowy
hair, her sweet face wrinkled into a relief-map of the journey of life,
her eyes as bright and sparkling as those of her granddaughter. Wynne
could see the family likeness at a glance, and said to himself that
some day when time had wrinkled her smooth cheeks and whitened her hair
Berenice would be such another beautiful dame. Mrs. Morison brought
with her an air of brisk yet serene individuality, as of the fire which
on a winter evening burns cheerily on the hearth, warming,
invigorating, suggesting wholesome and happy thoughts. She was so
kindly and yet so thoroughly alive to the very tips of her fingers that
her age almost seemed rather a merry disguise like the powdered hair of
a young girl.

"Good-morning," she greeted him cheerily. "The doctor says that you are
doing well. I hope that you feel so."

"Thank you," he answered. "I don't seem to have as many joints as I
used to have, but I'm doing famously, thanks to the skillful treatment
I had last night."

"It was not too skillful, I'm afraid; but Dr. Murray says I did no
harm, and that's really a good deal of a compliment from him."

"I cannot thank you enough for your kindness," Maurice said. "It is so
strange to be taken care of"--

He broke off suddenly, awkward from shyness and genuine feeling. He
looked up, however, to meet a glance so reassuring that he felt at once
at ease.

"It is time that it ceased to be strange," she returned. "We must try
before you go to make you more accustomed to being looked after a
little."

He returned her kind look with a grateful smile.

"You are too generous," he said. "I must not trespass on your
good-nature. I think that I could manage to get back to Boston to-day
if the trains are running."

"The trains are running, but that is no reason why you should think of
running too. We mean to mend you before we let you go."

"But"--

"There is no 'but' about it," Mrs. Morison declared, speaking more
seriously. "Berenice and I have settled it, and we are accustomed to
having our own way. You are selfish to wish that we should be left with
all the obligation on our shoulders."

"Obligation?" repeated he. "How on earth is there any obligation but
mine?"

"Do you think that there is no obligation in owing to you Bee's life?"

He stared at her in complete confusion. He made a vain effort to recall
clearly what had happened in the car. He remembered the crash, the din,
the pain, the horrible clutch on his arm, the choking reek of the
smoke, his frantic fear for Berenice, but all these things seemed
blurred in his mind like a landscape obscured by a night-fog. Only one
memory stood out clear and sharp; that was the joy of holding Berenice
clasped in his arms, and of thinking that they would die together. He
felt the blood mount in his cheek at the thought, and he hastened to
speak, lest his hostess should divine what was in his mind.

"Why do you say that?" he asked. "It was not I that saved her. I was
not even conscious when she was taken out."

Mrs. Morison smiled, and touched lightly with the tip of her finger the
bandaged arm which lay on the outside of the coverlid.

"We won't dispute about it," said she. "The proof is here. Let it go,
if you like; but we shall remember."

"But," protested Maurice, "it wouldn't be honest for me to let you
think that I did anything for Miss Morison. I should have been only too
glad to help her, but I couldn't. I wish what you think could have been
true; but since it isn't, I can't let you think it is."

Mrs. Morison let the matter drop, but her kind old eyes were brighter
than ever. She contented herself with saying that at least he was to
remain with them, and need not try to escape; then she led the talk to
more indifferent matters. Her hand, worn and thin, the blue veins
relieved under the delicate skin, lay on the white coverlid like a
beautiful carving of ivory. As Maurice looked at it, it brought into
his mind the hand of his mother, as in her last days, when he sat by
her bedside, it had rested in the same fashion. The tears sprang in his
eyes at the memory, half-blinding him. As he tried to brush them away
unseen he caught the sympathetic look of his hostess, and its sweetness
overpowered him still more. Meeting his glance, she leaned forward
tenderly, taking his fingers in her own.

"What is it?" asked she softly.

"Your hand," he answered simply. "It looked so like my mother's."

"Poor boy," she murmured.

He returned the pressure of her clasp, and then the masculine dislike
for effusiveness asserted itself.

"I'm afraid I'm weaker than I thought," he said shamefacedly. "I'm
almost hysterical."

She glanced at him shrewdly, and smiling, rose.

"For all that," she returned, "you are to get up. Dr. Murray says that
it will be better, and you would get hopelessly tired of bed before
to-morrow morning. I'll send you something in the way of clothing, and
we'll let you play invalid in a dressing-gown to-day. If Mehitabel can
help you, you've only to ring. I dare say that you can do something
with one hand."

"One never knows until he tries," Wynne answered.

Maurice wished to ask for a barber, but could not pluck up courage.
When he was alone he gazed ruefully into the mirror at his stoutly
sprouting black beard, which so little understood the exigencies of the
situation that it persisted in growing as vigorously as ever.

"If I stay here a couple of days without shaving," he mused, "I shall
simply be hideous. Well, my vanity very likely needs a lesson. What did
Mrs. Morison mean by my saving Miss Morison's life? I certainly could
not have said so when I was unconscious. It must be from something she
herself has said. If I could only remember what did happen after the
car went over!"

His bath and toilet were difficult and unsatisfactory enough. The linen
with which he was provided, however, smelled sweetly of lavender, and
the odor seemed to bear him away into a pleasant reverie, in which he
was chiefly conscious of the pleasure of being near--of being near, he
assured himself, so delightful and sympathetic an old lady as Mrs.
Morison. A feeling of well-being, of content, saturated him. Behind his
thought of his hostess and his denial to himself that the presence
under the same roof of Berenice was the true source of his happiness,
lay the consciousness that the latter regarded him as her preserver. He
resolutely thrust the thought down deep into his heart, but he could
not forget it.

Before he was ready to leave his chamber Mehitabel brought him a
telegram from Mrs. Staggchase, to whom he had sent a line announcing
his safety. It was merely a friendly word with an offer to come to him
if he needed her; but it changed the whole current of his thoughts. He
seemed to see the mocking smile of his cousin as she read that he was
staying with the Morisons, and to hear again her words about his period
of temptation. He resolved, however, to put the whole question of the
future out of his mind. Somehow there must be a way to steer safely
between his duty and his inclination. He failed to reflect that he who
decides to compromise between duty and desire has already sacrificed
the former.

Berenice greeted him on his appearance in the library, whither he
descended rather shakily. She held in her hand a telegram when he
entered under the escort of Mehitabel, and her cheeks were flushed.
Instantly into his mind came the feeling that her color was connected
with the message which the yellow paper brought, and he became jealous
in a flash. There was no possible reason why he should scent a rival in
the mere presence in his lady's hand of a telegram, unless there were
an intangible shade of self-consciousness in her manner. He had come
downstairs eager to see her and to assure himself that she was really
no worse for the accident, but the sight of the paper instantly changed
his mood. In crossing the half-dozen steps from the door to the fire
Maurice shifted from frank eagerness to aggrieved distrust. He said
good-morning as he entered in the tone of a lover; he spoke as he
reached the hearth with the formality of an acquaintance.

He was too keenly alive to the change in his feelings not to know that
he showed it. He endeavored to hide his perturbation under an
appearance of simple politeness, but he was sure that she watched him
and that she was puzzled.

"Well," she said, as she arranged a cushion in the big easy-chair
beside the crackling wood fire, "you have the genuine scarred veteran
air."

"Please don't bother to wait on me, Miss Morison," he answered, trying
to speak naturally, and painfully aware that he did not succeed. "I'm
all right, except for the scratch on my arm."

"Scratch, indeed," she returned with a smile which almost disarmed him.
"How many stitches did the doctor have to put in?"

"'Bout enough for a week's mending," interpolated Mehitabel, putting
him into the chair with an air of authority, and preparing to retire.
"There, now stay there till you want to go upstairs again, and then
send for me."

"Indeed," he protested, laughing, "I am not helpless. You can't make a
baby of me just for a disabled arm."

"I suppose," Berenice said, "that I ought to be willing to say that I
had rather the wound were in my back, where it would have been but for
you; only as a matter of fact I shouldn't be telling the truth. I am
sorry for you, Mr. Wynne; but I can't help being glad for myself."

She seemed to be setting herself to win him from his ill-humor, and he
had to look into the fire away from her lips and eyes to prevent
himself from yielding. He fortified his resistance, which he felt to be
weakening, by the reflection that it was his duty not to be carried
away by her charm. He called upon his religious scruples to aid him in
holding to his passion-born jealousy.

"There," Miss Morison said, when he had been properly ensconced and
Mehitabel had departed, "now it is my duty to entertain you. What shall
I do? My accomplishments are at your service. I can read, without
stopping to spell out any except the very longest words. I can play two
tunes on the mandolin, only that I've forgotten the middle of one and
the other has a run in it that I always have to skip. The piano is too
far off across the hall to be available; so that the little I can do in
that way doesn't count. I can--let me see, I can teach you three
solitaires, or play cribbage, or--I beg your pardon, I forgot."

"You forgot what?" he asked, so intent upon watching the sunlight
filtering through her hair that he had hardly noticed what she said.

She looked at him questioningly.

"You don't play cards, perhaps?" she said tentatively.

"No," he answered. "In the country in my boyhood they weren't held in
high repute, to say the least; and naturally we don't play at the
Clergy House."

There was a brief interval of silence, during which he watched her,
while she in her turn looked into the fire. When she spoke again it was
in a different tone.

"I know," said she, "that you must think me frivolous, and that I can't
be anything else; but"--

"Oh, no," he interrupted, "I never thought you frivolous."

She made an impulsive little gesture with one of her hands.

"Oh, you wouldn't put it in that way, I dare say. You'd call it being
worldly, I suppose; but it comes to much the same thing."

Wynne could not understand what was the direction of her thoughts, and
he was taken entirely by surprise when she leaned forward impulsively
and took in hers his free hand.

"At least," she said, quickly and eagerly, "I can't forget that you
saved my life, and I thank you from my heart if I don't know just how
to do it in words."

He returned the pressure of her fingers, longing to cover them with
kisses.

"I'm afraid," responded he, "that I've very little claim to glory on
account of anything I did for you. I certainly don't deserve the credit
of having saved you. I only wish I did."

She laughed gayly, springing up from her seat, and he realized that his
voice had lost all trace of unfriendliness. He told himself recklessly
that he did not care; that if he were a thousand times a priest he
could not but be kindly to Berenice.

"Come," she laughed, "we have been through a real adventure; and that's
more than happens to most people if they live to be a hundred."
Suddenly she became grave. "I can't bear to think of it, though," she
added. Then she turned toward him, and spoke with seriousness. "At
least, Mr. Wynne, I am not so flighty that I do not thank God for my
escape yesterday."

"Amen," he responded.

She walked over to the window, and stood looking out at the sunny day.
The fire burned cheerfully on the wide, red hearth, and Maurice looked
into its glowing heart thinking gratefully of his preservation and of
the friendly refuge into which he had been brought. No reverent man can
come face to face with death and escape without some feeling of awe and
of gratitude to the power which has preserved him; and Maurice was
filled with a sense of how great had been the hand which could bring
him through such peril, how kind the protection which had preserved
Berenice unscathed. Humility and tenderness overflowed his heart, and
the inward thanksgiving which his spirit breathed was as sweet and as
unselfish as if a personal passion had never invaded his breast.

"It seems to me," Berenice remarked from her place by the window, "that
the woods on the hills over there are already beginning to show signs
of spring. There is a sort of delicate change of color in them that
means buds beginning to grow."

Before he could reply, the door opened, and Mehitabel presented herself
with a card.

"Oh," said Berenice, as she received it, "already!"

There seemed to Maurice something of impatience or dismay in her tone.
She excused herself and went out, leaving the old servant with Wynne.
As soon as the door closed, Mehitabel turned upon him at once.

"Do you know him?" she demanded.

"Know whom?"

"This sprig that's come from Boston to see Miss Bee?"

Maurice looked at her with a sharp sense that he ought not to allow her
to go on, yet with a desire to know more so burning that he could not
refrain.

"I didn't even know that anybody had come from Boston to see Miss
Morison," he replied; "so that it isn't easy to say whether I know him
or not."

"His name is Parker Stanford, and he's all the signs of being better'n
his grandfathers and knowing it through and through. He's too fond of
his looks to suit me."

"I don't know him," Maurice answered, "except that I've heard my
cousin, Mrs. Staggchase, mention his name. He's very rich, I believe,
and a good deal of a leader in society."

"Humph," sniffed Mehitabel. "He may be a leader in society, but he's as
selfish as a sucking calf!"

"You seem to know him pretty well," commented Maurice. "I suppose
you've seen him often."

"Never saw him in my life till this minute. Young man, I'll tell you
this, though. Every woman with any brains knows what a man is the
minute she claps eyes on him; only if he's good-looking, or awful
wicked, or makes love to her, or forty thousand other things, she'll
deny to herself that she knows any bad about him."

"Then it seems to be much the same thing as if your sex weren't gifted
with such extraordinary insight," Maurice responded, laughing.

"If women didn't cheat themselves there wouldn't be no marriages,"
Mehitabel retorted, grinning, and retired in evident delight over her
success in repartee.

As for Maurice, he became wonderfully grave the moment he was left
alone.



                         XII


               THE ONLY TOUCH OF LOVE
                          Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii. 7.


_To be_ is an irregular verb in all languages, but always regular is
the verb _to love_. There are many sides to the existence of mortals;
but to love is the same for high and low. Any mortal knows little
enough about himself; but a mortal in love knows nothing. Love is a
bewildering and a bedazzling fire, wherewith the eyes of youth are so
blinded that they are able to see clearly neither within nor without.
Often it happens, indeed, that the first intimation the heart has of
the presence of the divine flame is the bewilderment which fills the
mind.

Berenice had long been contentedly and unenthusiastically convinced
that, she was to marry Parker Stanford. She approved of him; he was
wealthy, well-born, agreeable enough, and apparently very fond of her.
She had not, it is true, become formally engaged to him. When he had
asked her to become his wife she had teasingly asked for time for
deliberation; but this was not because she felt any especial doubt
about ultimately accepting him. She was pleased, maiden-like, to dally,
and shrank from being formally bound. Her pulses had not yet stirred
with the unrest which love awakens. Her vanity had been pleasantly
aroused, and for the rest she was in all the ignorance of those whom
passion has not yet made wise. She regarded marriage rather as an
abstract thing; she was familiar with the idea that it was a matter of
social arrangement and necessity, to be looked upon as a part of life.
She had, it is true, some vaguely sentimental notion that love was a
necessity, and being persuaded that the match before her was a
desirable one, was persuaded also that she was in love with Stanford.
At least she was sure that he was in love with her, and as she liked
him, that answered. To find a man amusing, agreeable, handsome, and
fulfilling the social requirements of a desirable husband seemed to her
unsophisticated mind to love him. She was pleased with her lover; she
was not insensible of the triumph of having won the attentions of one
of the most sought-after men in her set; to pass her life in the
well-ordered establishment which he would provide seemed to her a
decorous and desirable method of fulfilling the destiny of a woman. She
was willing that the event should be postponed indefinitely, it is
true; and the man himself in her considerations of the future was
something of a shadow; a shadow pleasant enough, yet so remote as to
count for nothing intimately important. She was somewhat less
sophisticated than most modern girls, inheriting that New England
nature which is slow to understand emotion and endowed with the power
rather of tenacity than of spontaneity of passion.

When on the day previous Stanford had come to the train to see Berenice
off, she had been especially gracious. She had been in particularly
good spirits, full of amusement that Mr. Wynne was to be her neighbor
on the train, and that he did not know it. She had chanced to send for
tickets with Mrs. Wilson, the pair had laughingly planned the
arrangement, and Berenice had promised herself some entertainment in
teasing the young cleric on the journey. It pleased her, too, that
Stanford should take the trouble to come to the station, especially as
Kate West, who had tried so hard to secure him despite the fact that
she was ten years his senior, chanced to be meeting a friend and to be
there to see. She allowed herself to smile on her lover with more
warmth than usual, and was a little vexed as well as a little amused by
it afterward. On the train she reflected that if she were to be so
gracious Stanford would press his suit more warmly than she wished; yet
on the other hand it occurred to her that if she were to be engaged to
him, she might as well get it over. Why not marry in the spring and go
abroad? She wished much to go to Bayreuth for the Wagner operas in the
summer, and the aunt with whom she had hoped to travel was not willing
to go. Besides, she really could not afford the trip, and at least
Stanford had plenty of money. The idea of marrying with a thought to
his wealth was distasteful, and she at once said to herself that she
could not do that; but if she were to marry him--As the train rolled on
she had filled in the talk with Wynne with speculations whether it
might not be as well to let Stanford propose once more, and have
matters settled.

These cogitations, however, she interspersed with reflections that her
traveling companion had a beautiful eye and a finely cut nostril; that
he was on the whole a fine-looking man, handsome and well made, if he
were not disguised in that detestable clerical garb; and that his hands
were distinctly those of a gentleman. She liked the tones of his voice
and the carriage of his head, smiling to herself at the thought that in
the latter there was hardly so much meekness as was to be expected in
one of his profession. She laughed at him almost openly, for to the
young woman of to-day there is apt to be something bordering on the
ludicrous and unmanly in a youth who is preparing to take orders, no
matter how great her respect for the completed clergyman. Berenice felt
something not entirely free from a trace of good-natured contempt for
deacons in the abstract, not dreaming that she might be led to make an
exception in favor of this especial deacon in the concrete. She became
more and more alive to the attractions of Wynne, although up to the
time of the accident she hardly realized the fact.

From the moment, however, that the rescuer said to her that Maurice had
saved her life, her feeling was changed. She felt that she had failed
to do Wynne justice; that she had allowed his cassock to be the sign of
a lack of manhood; she accused herself of having wronged him. She began
now to exalt him in her thoughts, and to regard him as a hero. She had
long been aware of the effect that she had on him. From the morning
when she had encountered him at the North End, and had met the quick,
troubled glance of his eye, full of doubt and of fire, she had been
conscious that he was not indifferent to her presence. She had not
reasoned about it; but it gave her pleasure. It was a passing breath of
homage, pleasing like a breath from some rose-bed passed in a walk. Up
to the moment, however, when she said to herself that he had risked his
life for her, Berenice had never consciously thought of Maurice as a
lover. When she saw him lying insensible, depending upon her, a new
feeling kindled in her breast. She would not think of it; she shrank
from it, and refused to acknowledge it to herself. Yet for her the
world was altered, and however she might try to hide the fact from her
heart, secretly she felt it fluttering and throbbing deep within her
breast.

When the telegram came in the morning announcing the visit of Stanford,
her first thought was one of gratification. The act was friendly, and
it gave her a pleasant sense of importance. The reaction came
instantly. The purport of the visit flashed upon her. She remembered
how she had smiled on Stanford yesterday,--Yesterday that now seemed so
far away that she looked back to it over distances of emotion which
made it strangely remote. She felt that she must receive him; but she
found herself seeking for the means of making him understand that what
he hoped was forever impossible. She certainly could never marry him.
She was sure that the thought could never have been seriously in her
mind. The idea of belonging to him, of having no right to think of
another man with tenderness, became all at once too repugnant to be
endured. She would not consider why her attitude was so different from
that of yesterday; she only insisted vehemently in her thought that now
first she really knew her own mind. Her cheek burned at the reflection
that Stanford was probably sure of her consent to be his. It seemed to
give him a claim upon her; to shut the door upon all other
possibilities; to smutch the whiteness of her soul and render her
unworthy of any man whom she might some day come to love. To remember
that in her secret thought she had actually contemplated being
Stanford's wife made her cringe.

She stood by the window with the telegram in her hands, twisting it to
and fro, wondering what it was possible for her to do. She thought of
excusing herself from her visitor when he should come, but the evasion
seemed to her unworthy, and she was eager to free herself from even the
suspicion of belonging to him. She felt that she could not breathe
freely until she were clear of the faintest shadow of any claim, even
in Stanford's secret thought. She must belong once more to herself.

It was at this point in her musings that Wynne came into the library.
He was pale and sunken-eyed, and the tinge of his sprouting beard gave
to his face a certain virility which startled her. It imparted a trace
of something perhaps remotely animal and brutal, subtly altering his
whole expression. He became in appearance at once more vigorous and
more human. For the first time Berenice saw a suggestion of the
possibility that this man might be a master; and the strength in man
that makes a woman tremble also makes her thrill. Some inward voice
cried in her ear: "Here is the reason why Parker Stanford is
repugnant!" But she denied the accusation indignantly in her mind,
putting the thought by, and refusing to see in Wynne anything more than
the man to whom she had cause to be grateful. Yet in that part of her
mind where a woman keeps so many things which she declines to confess
to herself that she knows, Berenice from that moment kept the fact that
this man before her had touched her heart.

She made a strong effort to greet Wynne frankly, and to conceal from
him the feeling which his coming excited. She would have died rather
than show him how glad she was that he had come. She saw the eagerness
of his glance when he entered, and she felt the warmth of his greeting.
She noted the change in his manner, and fancied it arose from his fear
lest he betray himself. She set herself to overcome his reserve; and
when she had succeeded she sprang up with a gay laugh, light-hearted
and full of a delicious, incomprehensible pleasure. She wanted to break
out into singing, so sweet is the delight of new love unrecognized save
as simple joy in living.

The entrance of Mehitabel with the card of Mr. Stanford brought her
back to earth.

"Already?" she said, feeling as if she were defrauded that thus her
moment of enjoyment was cut short.

She could not trust herself for more than a word of excuse to Wynne,
but hurried to her chamber to collect her thoughts and to examine her
toilet before she descended to her visitor. Some inward personality
seemed to be trying properly to frame the speech by which she should
make Stanford understand that it was idle for him to hope longer; while
all the time she was thinking of the man whom she had just left.

Stanford was holding out his hands to the blaze in the fireplace when
she entered the parlor, for the morning was a sharp one. Berenice saw
with appreciation how satisfactory he was in all his appointments and
in his bearing; how well kept and how well bred. She felt, however, for
the first time that he was perhaps a little too faultlessly attired for
a man, and she glanced at his cleanly shaven cheek with an acute memory
of the stout black stubble on the face she had left behind her, yet
carried still in the eye of her mind.

"Good-morning," she said, giving the visitor her hand, and making her
manner at once as cordial and as unemotional as possible. "It was too
good of you to come all the way up here in this cold weather, just to
see me."

He pressed her hand with eagerness, and so meaningly that the color
flushed into her cheeks. His air seemed to her to have in it a
suggestion of intimacy which was irritating beyond endurance.

"There was nothing good about it," he answered. "I had to assure myself
by actual sight that you were safe; and, besides, it gave me an excuse
for coming, and I was only too glad of that."

"Sit down," Berenice said, ignoring the compliment. "It really was
frightful; but I came through safe. Grandmother wouldn't let me see the
paper this morning; but I know the details must have been horrible."

She grew grave as she spoke. She seemed again to see the whole terrible
sight. The wreck, thrusting out tongues of fire, the dead and the dying
strewn about on the snow; Wynne, at her feet, insensible and ghastly in
the uncertain light. She shuddered and drew in her breath.

"Oh, don't let's talk about it!" she exclaimed. "I can't bear to think
of it, and I feel as if I should never get it out of my head!"

Stanford was silent a moment, pulling his mustache as if trying to find
the right word.

"It must have been awful," he said hesitatingly; "and I'll never speak
of it again if you don't wish. Only I must say that it was dreadful to
me too. The thought of how near I came to losing you is more than I can
stand."

She leaned back in her chair, suddenly chilled, yet moved by the
feeling in his voice. Her conscience reproached her that she had
allowed a false hope to grow up in his mind. She felt as if he were
establishing a claim upon her, and that at any cost she must make him
see things as they were.

"You are very kind," she responded, trying to keep her tones from being
too cold; "but of course we always feel a shock when any friend has
been through a great danger."

Her eyes were cast down, but she could divine his regard of disquiet
and surprise.

"And especially those we love," he added, leaning forward, and
endeavoring to take her hand.

"Oh, of course, Mr. Stanford," she said hastily. "That is of course
true. Were people in Boston much excited about the accident?"

She felt herself a hypocrite, yet she could not help this one more
effort to avoid the explanation she dreaded.

"I suppose so. I don't know. I was so taken up with thinking about you,
that I paid very little attention to anything else."

"I'm afraid I didn't deserve it. I wasn't thinking of anybody but
myself. It was very good of you."

"Of course you weren't thinking of anybody," Stanford responded,
pulling his mustache more furiously than ever; "but I was at the club
instead of being in a burning car. I was half crazy at the thought that
my future wife"--

"Stop!" Berenice broke in. "You mustn't say such things. I'm not your
future wife!"

"Forgive me. I know I haven't any right to say that when you haven't
promised; but I can't help thinking of you so, and"--

"Oh, please don't!" she cried.

A wave of humiliation, of repulsion, of terror, swept over her. That
this man had thought of her as his wife seemed almost like an
inexorable bond. She shrank away from him with an impulse too strong to
be controlled.

"But, Berenice, I"--

She sprang up and faced him.

"I have never promised you!" she declared with hurried vehemence. "I
never will promise you! I can't marry you. If I've made you think so, I
didn't mean to. I didn't know my own mind. I thought--O Mr. Stanford,
if I have deceived you, I beg your pardon. I"--

The tears choked and blinded her. She broke off, and put her
handkerchief to her eyes; but when she heard him rise and hurry toward
her, she went on hastily.

"I've let you go on thinking I'd marry you; I know I have. I thought so
myself; but I've found out that it's all a mistake. I didn't realize
what I was doing. I'm so sorry. I do hope you'll forgive me."

He regarded her in amazement not unmingled with indignation.

"You have let me think so," he said. "Now I suppose there's somebody
else."

"Oh, I shall never marry anybody," she answered quickly.

"When a girl tells one man she never'll marry," retorted he bitterly,
"there's sure to be another man in her mind."

She felt herself burn with blushes to her brow; and then in very shame
and anger to grow pale again. Her first impulse was to leave him; but
she controlled herself. He was her guest, he had come all the way from
Boston to assure himself that she was safe, and more than all she was
sorely aware that she had not treated him well. To have injured a man
is to a woman apt to be an excuse for continuing to treat him ill; but
when the opposite occurs she can be very forbearing.

"There is no other man," she said with dignity. Then she added, more
mildly: "Badly as I may have treated you, I don't think you've quite
the right to say such a thing as that to me."

"I haven't," he acknowledged contritely. "I beg your pardon; but I
surely have a right to ask what I've done to change you so. You were
not like this yesterday."

Berenice forced herself to meet his eyes, but she ignored his question.
She sank back into the chair from which she had risen to face him.

"Come," said she, trying to speak lightly, "I don't see why we need
stand. We are not rehearsing private theatricals. It was very kind of
you to take the trouble to come all the way up here, but you must see
that my nerves are all on edge. The shock has completely upset me."

"Poor girl!" he said.

There was a genuine ring in his voice which irritated while it touched
her. She hated to feel that he was really hurt. It made her seem the
more deeply guilty, and she unconsciously desired to discover in him
some excuse for her own shortcomings.

"Oh, it's over now," she responded. "Let's talk of something else."

"I'd be glad to," Stanford replied, "but I can't seem to. I want to
know how you escaped. I won't ask you to tell me now, but I keep
thinking about it."

"I'm afraid I can't tell you much. I remember a tremendous crash, and
being thrown against Mr. Wynne"--

"Mr. Wynne?"

The tone showed Berenice that Stanford did not attach especial
importance to the question, but asked only from a natural curiosity.
Nevertheless she could not keep her voice from, hurrying a little as
she answered:--

"Mr. Wynne is a young clergyman who was in the seat next to mine. He's
a cousin of Mrs. Staggchase."

"Oh, a clergyman," Stanford echoed.

The tone seemed to her excited mood to be full of intolerable
superiority.

"He may be a clergyman," she retorted with unnecessary warmth, "but he
is a gentleman and a hero. He saved my life!"

"Oh, he did!"

The exclamation stung her beyond endurance. She sprang up with flashing
eyes.

"Mr. Stanford," she exclaimed, "I don't know what you mean to
insinuate, but you will please to remember that you are speaking of the
man that saved me, and of my grandmother's guest."

"Your grandmother's guest? Do you mean that he is staying here?"

"Certainly he is. Why shouldn't he be?"

The young man rose, and stood looking at her a moment; then he began to
pace up and down, his gaze fixed on the floor. Berenice felt herself
being swept away by tumultuous feelings which she could neither compel
nor understand. Her mind was in confusion, out of which rose most
definitely the desire that Stanford would go and leave her in peace.

"There is no reason why I should question the right of Mrs. Morison to
choose her own guests," said Stanford at length, pausing, and speaking
with an evident effort to be entirely calm; "and as I know nothing of
this Mr. Wynne, I shouldn't in any case have a right to say anything
about him. You can't wonder, though, that I'm jealous of him for having
had the luck to save your life, or that when I come here and find you
so suddenly different and this man staying in the house and a hero in
your eyes"--

"I wish that you wouldn't keep calling Mr. Wynne 'this,'" she
interrupted hastily. "It sounds dreadfully superior. Come," she added,
softening her tone, and pleased at having prevented him from going on,
"there is no need that we should quarrel about him. He is a priest, or
going to be, and he's to take the vows of celibacy, so that it is
absurd for anybody to think of being jealous of him. If I seem
different to-day, it isn't any wonder after what I've been through."

"I beg your pardon," he said, coming quickly forward and extending his
hand. "I'm awfully selfish. Of course I understand that what you've
been saying isn't to be taken seriously. We stand as we did before.
Only," he added, his voice deepening, "you are to remember that the
danger of losing you has shown me how fond I am of you. Good-by."

He stooped and kissed her hand, and before she could speak, he was
gone. She stood where he had left her, hearing him leave the house, and
the tears came into her eyes.

"Oh," she moaned to herself, "I've made it worse than it was before. I
wanted to be honest, and he wouldn't let me!"

She stood a moment disconsolately, then she shrugged her shoulders as
if to throw off all care.

"Well," she told herself, "I've given him fair warning. Now it is time
to go and entertain grandmother's guest."



                         XIII


                   A NECESSARY EVIL
                           Julius Caesar, ii. 2.


While the advocates of Father Frontford were laboring, the friends of
other candidates were not idle. By the middle of January, however, the
contest had practically narrowed itself down to a struggle between the
supporters of the Father and those of the Rev. Rutherford Strathmore.
Other names had been suggested, but in the end it was felt that there
was no doubt that one or the other of these men would succeed to the
vacant bishopric. Even church politicians are human, and most divisions
are sure sooner or later to arouse the vanity of contestants. The
struggle, which begins without consciously personal motives, is apt to
be strongly tempered by the determination not to be beaten. For
thousands who can accomplish the difficult feat of triumphing humbly,
there is hardly one who can submit to defeat generously; and against
the humiliation of failure the human being instinctively strives with
every power. Those who upheld the rival candidates were undoubtedly
convinced that they had the best interests of the church at heart; but
that meant the election--even at some cost!--of their favorite.

There could be no question that Mr. Strathmore was the more generally
popular candidate. He was a man who appealed strongly to the common
heart, both by his sympathy and by flexibility of character and
temperament which made it impossible for him to be repellantly stern or
austere. He preached the high ideals which are dear to the best thought
of the children of the Puritans; he demanded high purpose and high
life, noble aims and unfailing charity; while he laid little stress on
dogmas, and allowed an elasticity of individual interpretation of
doctrine which made the creed easy of adoption by all who believed
anything. His enemies--for he was by no means so insignificant as to be
without enemies--declared that he carried the doctrine of "mental
reservations" to the extent of rendering the articles of faith mere
empty forms of words; his defenders protested that he was but wisely
conforming in non-essentials to the progressive spirit of the age.
Bitterly attacked by the more conservative members of his own
denomination, he was looked up to by the general public as a great
spiritual leader, and loved with an affection exceedingly rare in this
unpriestly age. Those who urged his elevation had the support of the
body of the laity, and also of the public outside of the church, which
for once was interested in church politics on account of affection and
reverence for the candidate.

Mr. Strathmore himself had the discretion not to express himself freely
in relation to his own feelings in the matter. The enthusiastic
assertions of his friends that no one save him could fill the vacant
office he had answered by observing with a smile that the church was
indeed fallen upon evil times if there was in it but one man fit to be
made a bishop. He had added, it is true, that if it were the will of
Providence that he be the one chosen he should accept the office as a
duty given him by Heaven, and should devote himself to it with all his
ability. It was by no means the least of Mr. Strathmore's gifts that he
had the grace of speaking always without any suggestion of cant. There
was an impression of candor and enthusiasm in everything he said, so
that words which might on the lips of another sound conventional or
meaningless became on his spontaneous and vital. "He is too modest and
self-forgetful to wish for the honor," his friends commented now; "but
he is too conscientious not to put aside his personal preferences for
the good of the church. He may shrink from the high places, but he is
the ideal man for them." As much of this sort of thing was said in the
public print, it is not impossible that the Rev. Rutherford Strathmore
was aware of it; but he had the good taste to ignore it, even in
conversation with his nearest friends, and the tact to carry himself
without self-consciousness or the appearance of humility with which a
smaller man would have shown that he knew that he was being praised.

Of friends he had a host well-nigh innumerable. He had an especial
liking for young men, and a great influence over them. He had the art
of arousing in them an emotional enthusiasm toward a higher life, so
that he had never lack of efficient helpers among the laymen in
whatever projects he undertook. He had also that invaluable attribute
of the priest, the gift of inspiring confidence and opening the heart.
He did not seem to seek confidences, yet they always came to him. Young
men in trouble, young women in woe, lads in the impressionable period
when sentimental experiences assume importance prodigious, youth of
both sexes bewildered between physical and religious sensations, the
sick and the poor, the ignorant and the cultivated, all found in him
that sympathy which opens the heart, and which, most of human
qualities, endears a man to his fellows.

Mr. Strathmore and Father Frontford might not unfairly be said to
represent the two extremes of modern theology: on the one hand the
relaxing of creeds, the liberalizing of thought, the breaking down of
barriers which have divided the church from the world, and, above all,
acquiescence in individual liberty of thought; on the other hand, the
conservative element taking the position that individual liberty of
interpretation means nothing less than a practical destruction of all
standards, and that what is called the liberalizing of thought can
result in nothing less than the utter overthrow of the church.
Undoubtedly either would have declared that he held the other to be a
devout and godly man; but he must inwardly have added, a mistaken and
conscientiously mischievous one. If Mr. Strathmore was right, Father
Frontford was little less than a mediaeval bigot, unhappily belated; if
the Father was correct, then Strathmore, despite all his influence, his
popularity, his power of attracting great congregations, was little
better than a dangerous and pestilent heretic.

One morning Mr. Strathmore sat in his study talking to a visitor in
clerical dress. The room was luxuriously appointed, for Mr.
Strathmore's belongings were always of a sort to minister pleasantly to
the sense. The walls were lined with books in sumptuous bindings, the
windows hung with heavy curtains of crimson velvet, the floor covered
with rich rugs. A bronze statuette of Savonarola stood on an ebony
pedestal between two windows, consorting somewhat oddly with the velvet
draperies which swept down on either side. Indeed, there might be
thought to be something in the thin, spiritually impassioned face of
the monk, in the eagerly imperative gesture with which he pointed with
one hand to the open Bible he held in the other, not entirely
consistent with the somewhat worldly air of the room. The handsome
carved chairs, cushioned with fine leather, the beautiful landscape by
Rousseau above the mantel, the bronze and silver of the writing-table,
had been given to the popular pastor by enthusiastic admirers, however,
and perhaps the Savonarola better expressed his own inner feelings. Mr.
Strathmore's face, it is true, was in itself somewhat unspiritual. The
clergyman was of commanding presence, and while neither unusually tall
nor exceptionally large, he somehow gave, from the air with which he
carried himself, the impression of size and importance. His eyes were
keen and piercing, neither study nor the advance of years having dimmed
their clear sight or reduced him to the necessity of wearing glasses.
He was still handsome, although his face was too full, and he was too
generously provided with chins. As he talked, his face would have
seemed almost blank and expressionless had it not been for his keen
eyes, full of alert intelligence and abundant vitality. His glance was
acute and searching, and yet nothing could exceed its kindliness and
sympathy.

The visitor who sat talking with Mr. Strathmore was almost ludicrously
his opposite. Mr. Pewtap was a small, ineffectual creature, with
inefficiency oozing out of his every pore. He was conspicuously the
incarnation of well-meaning and exasperating incompetence; one of those
men who might be forgiven everything but the fact that their
stupidities are invariably the result of the best intentions. It was
evident at a glance that this man had used the church as a genteel
pauper asylum, wherein his ineptitude might be devoted to the service
of Heaven since nothing gifted with the common sense of earth would
tolerate it. His very attitude was an excuse, and the way in which he
handled his hat might have provoked profanity in any saint at all
addicted to nerves. Mr. Pewtap was more than usually crushed in his
appearance, and toed in more than was his custom, because he had come
on an awkward errand, and had been telling his host that he could not
vote for him in the coming election.

Mr. Strathmore had received this declaration with good-humor, and even
with no appearance of disapproval.

"Of course, Mr. Pewtap," he said, "I am human, and it would be
disingenuous for me to pretend that I am not pleased by the fact that
my name has been mentioned in connection with the bishopric. I can
conscientiously affirm, however, that the good of the church is more
dear to me than ambition. Even were it not, I hardly think that I am
capable of being offended with any man who felt it his duty to vote
against me."

He smiled with winning warmth. The other moved in his seat uneasily,
becoming momentarily more apologetic until he seemed to beg pardon for
existing at all.

"I have always felt," he said confusedly, "that you ought to be chosen.
That is, I mean that when Bishop Challoner was taken from us I said to
Mrs. Pewtap that you were sure to succeed him."

Mr. Strathmore smiled, but he did not offer to help his visitor out of
the tangle in which he was evidently involving himself.

"It isn't the good of the church, exactly," Mr. Pewtap stumbled on,
turning his seedy hat about like a slow wheel which had some connection
with grinding out his speech, "that I--Yes, of course I mean that the
good of the church must be considered first, as you say."

Speechlessness seemed to overcome him, and he looked upon his host with
a piteous appeal in his face.

"I understand that it is not an easy thing for you to tell me that it
seems best to you not to vote for me," Mr. Strathmore said kindly. "I
appreciate your coming to me on an errand so hard for you."

Mr. Pewtap sighed eloquently.

"If circumstances," he interpolated eagerly, "if circumstances were
different"--

"Of course," the other responded with a genial laugh. "As they are,
however, it seems to you best to vote for Father Frontford, and you
have a kindness for me that makes you come and tell me your reason. I'm
glad you do me the justice to believe that I won't misunderstand."

"Oh, I was sure you wouldn't misunderstand. You see, Mrs. Frostwinch
has been so good to my family. I have seven children, Mr. Strathmore,
all under ten."

The eye of the host twinkled, but he was otherwise of admirable gravity.

"And my chance might be better if you hadn't so many?" he suggested.

"Oh, we never could have had so many if it hadn't been for Mrs.
Frostwinch," Mr. Pewtap responded eagerly. "I mean, of course, that we
couldn't have taken care of them all. She has for years given Mrs.
Pewtap a little annual income,--little to her, I mean, of course; but
it doesn't take much to be a great deal to us."

Mr. Strathmore picked up a paper-knife of cut silver and played with it
a moment in silence, as if waiting for the other to go on.

"Do I understand," he said at length, "that Mrs. Frostwinch has
something to do with your decision in regard to the election?"

"Yes; she wrote to me that she was sure that I'd vote for Father
Frontford, and that she was greatly interested in his being bishop.
It's the only thing she ever asked of me, and she has been so generous
that I don't see how I can refuse when Father Frontford is so good a
man, and so earnest for the upbuilding of the church."

"You must certainly follow your conscience," Strathmore commented
blandly.

"Oh, I shouldn't have any conscience against voting for you, Mr.
Strathmore; I couldn't possibly have. Besides, it would be my
inclination if circumstances were different. I wanted to explain to you
that it is not because I fail to appreciate how kind you have been to
me that I vote for him. When I was told yesterday that the vote was
likely to be close, and that my vote might make a difference, I assure
you I was quite distressed. I told Mrs. Pewtap last night in the night
that I couldn't feel comfortable till I'd seen you and explained."

"It is most kind of you," Strathmore put in, his face inscrutable, but
his eyes still kindly.

"I wanted to explain that under the circumstances I had no choice."

"I understand. It is not necessary to say any more about it. Of course
in a case of this sort a man has only to follow his conscience, and let
the consequences take care of themselves."

"That is what I said to Mrs. Pewtap," was the enthusiastic reply. "I
said to her that you would understand that this is a matter to be
decided by conscience and not by individual preferences. Otherwise I
should have been very glad to vote for you. I am sure you understand
that I personally wish you all success."

He rose as he spoke, his face lighted with an expression of relief.

"I am very much obliged to you, I'm sure," he ran on. "I knew you
wouldn't blame me, but these things are always so hard to state
properly so that there sha'n't be any misunderstanding. You have taken
a great weight off of my mind. Of course, as you say, in such a case
there is nothing to do but to act according to one's conscience, and
let the consequences be cared for by a higher power. Only personally,
you know, personally I shall be delighted if you are successful."

When Mr. Pewtap was gone Mr. Strathmore stood a moment in thought, his
forehead wrinkled as if with doubt. Then his face melted into a smile,
as if he were amused at the peculiarities of his visitor. He shrugged
his shoulders, and sat down to write a note. At that moment there was a
tap at the door, and his colleague came into the room.

"Good morning, Thurston," Mr. Strathmore greeted him. "I shall be ready
to go with you in a moment. I am writing a note to Mrs. Gore."

The Rev. Philander Thurston was a short, brisk, worldly-looking divine,
with shrewd glance. Nature had evidently been somewhat too hasty or
careless in the making of his face, for she had cut his nostrils
unpleasantly high and set his eyes much too near together.

"I saw Mrs. Gore yesterday," Thurston responded. "She thinks that she
can answer for those votes of which we were speaking. She says that the
vote of Mr. Pewtap will depend upon Mrs. Frostwinch."

"He has just been here," Strathmore said smiling. "He told me in so
many words that he is to vote for Frontford. His conscience will not
allow him to run the risk of depriving his children of the annuity Mrs.
Frostwinch gives his wife. I'm sure I'm not inclined to blame him."

"It is outrageous that he should fail you after all you've done for
him," Thurston declared with some heat. "I never had any confidence in
him."

"Oh, he acts according to his nature," was the good-humored response,
"and I'm afraid there isn't substance enough to him for grace to get a
very strong hold to change him. If Mrs. Frostwinch is taking an active
part in this matter there are others she can influence."

"Yes," the colleague said. "I thought that she was too much taken up
with that mind-healing business; but she evidently wants to help bring
the church back to the formalities of the Middle Ages. Frontford would
have the whole diocese going to confession if he had his way."

"He could do nothing of the kind if he did wish to do it," Mr.
Strathmore answered quietly. "The worst that he could bring about would
be to give the impression to the world that the church was retrograding
instead of progressing. He would be entirely opposed to individual
liberty of conscience everywhere, and that seems to me to be in
opposition to the spirit of the age."

"It undoubtedly is," assented the young man eagerly.

"The gravest harm that he could do in the church," pursued the other,
"would be to encourage the substitution of form for spirit. The more
religious faith is shaken, the greater is the temptation to supply its
place by a ritual, and this temptation seems to me the most imminent
and deadly peril of the church to-day."

"It certainly is," confirmed the colleague.

"Besides," Strathmore added emphatically, rising as he spoke, "the
deepest need of any time can be met only by a church which is in
sympathy with the tendencies of the time."

"You put it admirably," the other murmured.

Strathmore regarded him keenly, almost as if he suspected some hidden
thought behind the words.

"It is time for us to go," he said in his usual genial tone.

The two clergymen left the house and went down the street together,
talking of parish business, until they came to the street-corner where
they were to take a car. As they stood waiting for this conveyance, a
lady came quickly forward and spoke to Mr. Strathmore, who greeted her
cordially, expressing much pleasure in seeing her.

"You were so kind to me," she said. "I have been thinking of all you
said to me last week, and it seems to me that I can bear my burden
better. I want to thank you with all my heart."

"There is nothing to thank me for," he answered with grave tenderness.
"The blessing is mine if I have been able to help you."

"But there was no one else," she said, tears springing in her eyes,
"that I could have talked to so freely. You understood and sympathized.
It was like talking to a brother."

He took her hand with an air perfectly unaffected and unobtrusive, yet
which was almost paternal in its benignity. Her look was one almost of
reverence as she hurried on her way with bowed head.

"Thurston," Mr. Strathmore asked, as they took the car together, "do
you know the name of that lady who spoke to me on the corner?"

"I didn't notice, sir. I was watching for the car."

"She seemed to know me perfectly," Strathmore said rather absently,
"and yet I can't place her. By the way, did you bring that letter from
the church committee in New York? There is a passage in it that I may
want to read at the meeting."

"I brought it, sir. There is likely to be a good deal of difference of
opinion at the committee meeting to-day," Mr. Thurston said with an air
of craftiness which was like an explanatory foot-note to his character,
"so I judged that it was well to be provided with documents."

The other made no reply, but fell into deep thought, making no further
remark until they left the car near the place where they were to attend
a meeting of the Charity Board.

"I think," he observed dispassionately, "that there are four clergymen
whose votes Mrs. Frostwinch may be able to control."



                         XIV


             HE SPEAKS THE MERE CONTRARY
                          Love's Labor's Lost, i. 1.


Ashe had in these days been dallying with temptation. He contrived not
to confess it to himself, but by a variety of ingenious devices to
cheat his conscience into the belief that he was serving the church by
his consultations with Mrs. Fenton, his services to her charity work,
and his continual thought of her views in regard to the election. It is
amazing how clever even a dull man may be when it comes to inventing
excuses for his own beguiling; and Philip struggled with such
desperation to convince himself that he was acting disinterestedly that
he all but succeeded. He could not, however, achieve what is
impossible; and there was a pain in the heart of the young man which
testified that his sense of right was sore despite all his cunning.

At the meeting of the Charity Board to which Mr. Strathmore had been
going, Ashe sat beside Mrs. Fenton. His obvious excuse was that she was
to make a report, and that he, as a visitor in her district, was able
to support her in case there were any discussion. The session had been
looked forward to with much interest, from the general feeling that
there would probably be something like a conflict between the Frontford
and Strathmore factions. There had for a long time been a growing
division on the subject of the method of conducting church charities;
and it was expected that at this meeting the feeling would break out
openly. It would not be easy to say how it was known that anything of
the sort was to occur. There was no announcement of business which
differed materially from that of the ordinary sessions of the board.
The time did not seem propitious for a discussion, and there were
evident reasons why the followers of either candidate might be supposed
to wish to avoid arousing antagonism; yet it was certain that the
meeting would not close without some sort of a demonstration. There are
times when public feeling seems to demand and force declarations of
principle or of purpose which policy would gladly suppress; and such a
time had arrived in the Charity Board. Ashe was so strongly moved by
the possibilities of the situation that even the proximity of Mrs.
Fenton did not absorb his attention; although he was not for a moment
unconscious of being beside her.

The business routine was gone through, and after that half an hour
passed in the ordinary fashion. At the end of that time Mr. Thurston,
with apparent unconsciousness, threw a spark into the combustibles.

"The fact seems to be," he said, "that there has been too much the air
of proselyting in our charity work, and that has brought it into
discredit with the class which we most wish to reach."

He sat down with a face admirably controlled. Mr. Strathmore showed in
his benignant countenance nothing save charity for all and general
approval of the remarks of his subordinate. The audience stirred
nervously, realizing that the critical moment had come. Father
Frontford, pale, ascetic, austere, rose with grave deliberation.

"What has just been said," he began, "brings up a subject which has
been in the minds of many for some months,--the question whether there
is or should be any difference between the charity work of the church,
and that of the city or the world in general. As far as I understand
the position of the last speaker, I take it to be his opinion that
there is, or at least that there should be, no such difference. He
believes in alleviating misery, and he would have religion kept in the
background, lest the poor should feel that they are being fed for the
sake of being led to a better life. I do not myself see the objection
to their thinking so. I am by no means sure that they do; but I am
convinced that they look for a motive, and it seems to me better that
they should believe the object of missionary work to be proselyting--I
think that that was the word--than that they should embrace the too
prevalent and most dangerous idea that charity is a bribe from the rich
to keep the poor quiet. There is not a little feeling nowadays that
philanthropy is encouraging socialism. The poor echo incendiary orators
in saying that the rich dole out a little of what they know to belong
to the poor so that they may be allowed to keep the rest unmolested. I
believe that this feeling is a menace to the State, and that
philanthropy which nourishes such a belief is working hand in hand with
treason."

He paused a moment, and there arose a faint murmur. Ashe looked at his
companion, and encountered a glance which seemed to express something
of his own surprise at the boldness of Father Frontford's words. That
the speaker should be uncompromising was to be supposed, but this was
an attitude unexpected and astonishing. One or two men started up as if
to reply, but the Father went on again. His voice was thin and
incisive, with a vibrating quality when it was raised which affected
the nerves. It was easy to dislike his tones, but it was not easy to
resist their influence. He passed to another point, and his words had a
keener emphasis.

"Neither have we escaped the accusation that we use the poor simply as
a means of self-improvement. An old Irish woman in a tumble-down
tenement house once said to me: 'Ye'll have no chance to work out your
salvation doing for me.' I believe that there are many of the poor who
more or less consciously have the same idea. They think that we make
visiting them a sort of penance, and they resent it. I am not sure that
I can find it in my heart to blame them."

"He is either sacrificing himself completely, or making one of those
bold strokes that are irresistible," Ashe whispered to Mrs. Fenton; and
she nodded assent.

"What should be," the speaker proceeded, amid a deep hush which showed
the keen interest which his words had aroused, "is that we should dare
to be consistent. As individuals and as churchmen we should exercise
the virtue of charity, but both as individuals and as churchmen we are
bound to see to it that we make our charity effective for the glory of
God and the salvation of men. There is no stronger instrument in our
hands than philanthropy, and not to utilize it for the good of the
church is to be culpably negligent. I believe that charity should be
the instrument of evangelization. The poor will have a reason for our
interest in them. Let them have this. Let them believe, if they will,
that we purchase their spiritual acquiescence by ministering to their
bodily needs. Certainly I believe that we should limit our work to
those who can be spiritually influenced. There are more of these than
we can at present attend to, and I am in favor of boldly and
consistently taking the position that as administrators of the bounties
of the church we feel bound to use them for the advancement of the
church. To aid the corrupt, the evil, the hardened without any attempt
to draw them into the fold and without any pledge that they will be
influenced, is simply to aid the avowed enemies of religion and to
strengthen their hands against righteousness."

The air of the room was becoming electric. Philip could see the
exchange of glances all around him, some of surprise, some of
consternation, some--or he was deceived--of triumph and scornful
satisfaction. He fancied that he saw Mr. Thurston shoot toward Mr.
Strathmore a flash of gratification, but the face of the latter
remained unmoved and inscrutable. Ashe, full of uneasiness as to the
result of the speech, was greatly excited, but at the same time moved
to profound admiration for its boldness and its consistency. He was in
sympathy with the views expressed, and he was more than ever convinced
that Father Frontford was the only man for the sacred office of bishop.

"Even our Lord," Father Frontford went on, his thin cheeks burning and
his slender frame swayed by the strength of his emotion, "did not many
works in places where he found unbelief. There was no limit to his
power; there was no limit to his mercy. It was out of love for the
whole of mankind that He refused to benefit individuals who would have
hindered the work He came to do. The example is one which we shall do
well to follow. We have more work than we can do in aiding the faithful
and in building up the church. Let us accept the name of proselyters
which has been contemptuously flung at us, and wear it as our glory. We
are proselyters. We must be proselyters. It is the highest joy and
honor of our lives that we are allowed of heaven to take this work upon
us. God will require it at our hands if we fail in our private
charities, and still more if we fail in the administration of the
revenues of the church to be always ardent, consistent, unwearied
proselyters!"

There was a good deal of applause when the speaker sat down. The
profound earnestness of the man carried the hearers away, at least for
the moment. Ashe saw Thurston look inquiringly at Strathmore, as if to
ask if the latter was not intending to reply, but Strathmore sat silent.

"Don't you suppose Mr. Strathmore means to speak?" Mrs. Fenton
whispered. "He almost always does speak after Father Frontford, and he
has expressed very strong views about the charities."

"I cannot understand why he doesn't speak," Ashe responded. "It may be
he feels that the meeting is not with him, and does not wish to take
the unpopular side."

Several men did speak, however, among them Mr. Candish. Their remarks
were in accord with the views expressed by the Father, yet they somehow
lessened the effect of his words. Put into their plain and sometimes
even awkward language his position seemed unpractical and hopelessly
far from daily life; so that even Ashe, warm partisan as he was, could
not but feel his enthusiasm somewhat chilled. Again he intercepted a
glance between Thurston and his superior. Philip sat with the two men
directly in his range of vision, and could not keep his eyes from
watching them. He recognized that there was danger in the keen, crafty
face of the colleague, thin-lipped and narrow-eyed; he wondered in
troubled fashion how far it was possible that Mr. Strathmore was of the
same nature as his assistant. Ashe was confident that Thurston was a
born intriguer, and he instinctively watched for signs of understanding
between Mr. Strathmore and the other. He could detect nothing of the
sort. The Rev. Rutherford Strathmore bore a countenance as beneficent,
as kindly, as guileless as ever; responding to the challenge of his
colleague's eyes by no evidence of understanding or connivance. It was
not until the talkers ceased and there fell a silence which indicated
that the first force of admiration and enthusiasm had spent itself,
that Strathmore rose.

"No one can possibly disagree with the sentiments which have just been
expressed," he began in his cordial, frank manner. "There is no truth
which we need in these days to keep more constantly before us than the
duty of being always eager for the advancement of the church, and of
employing all means to this end. The question which is of vital
interest is how best to do this. When the caution was given that to the
harmlessness of doves be added the guile of serpents, it might almost
seem as if it was especially intended for our own day and case. There
has certainly never been a time when wisdom was more needed than it is
to-day. The growth of doubt, the overthrow of old traditions, old
beliefs, old forms, in short of all that has been sanctioned by custom
and by time, have gone on in every department of human knowledge and
endeavor. The spirit of the time is restless, progressive, liberal,
even irreverent. The beautiful serenity of the church, its reverent
conservatism, its hallowed enthusiasm, for old ideals, are at variance
with the temper of the century. Since the church is the shrine of truth
it is impossible that it should alter with every shifting of scientific
thought, every alteration in the fashions of human opinion; and we
stand face to face with the trying fact that the age is not in sympathy
with the church."

He paused, looking down as if in thought. Ashe regarded him closely,
much impressed by the apparent spontaneity and candor with which this
was said. The hearers were closely attentive. "The only thing upon
which we seem to have some possible disagreement," continued Mr.
Strathmore, "is in regard to the best method of meeting this want of
sympathy, this feeling which often seems to amount almost to general
indifference. Is it to arouse all the suspicion and opposition
possible? Is it to seem to justify the charges brought against us of
narrowness, of formalism, of repression, and of obstructing the
progress of the race? It does not seem to me that this is the wisest
course. I agree that it is our duty to forward the interests of the
church, and to make our administration of charity a means to this end.
It is certainly a question whether open and avowed proselyting is the
best means. Religion is no more to be bought with a price than is love.
The person who conforms for a soup-ticket or a blanket has simply added
hypocrisy to his other failings, and has moreover gained for the church
that contempt which men always feel for those they have overreached.
The child that goes to Sunday-school for the Christmas tree and the
summer week has learned a lesson in deception which can never be
blotted out. It is of course proper that these means should be used;
but unless it is understood fully and frankly that they are employed
not as a bribe but as a persuasion, not as a price but as a kindness,
the evil that they do is more than any good that it is possible to
bring about through their means. I do not believe that our charities
should be conducted on the basis of bargain and sale; nor do I believe
that they should be put on a sectarian basis at all."

He sat down quietly, with an unimpassioned air which seemed to rebuke
the emotional close of the remarks of Father Frontford. Strathmore
could be emotional and impassioned upon occasion, and this deliberate,
matter-of-fact mien affected Ashe as a calculated stroke of policy.
Philip felt that his leader had suffered a defeat; and he was
profoundly moved by the thought. Other speakers took up the question,
but he paid little heed. He was occupied in speculating how the meeting
would affect the chances of the election. When he was walking home with
Mrs. Fenton after the session was over, he was so absorbed that she
rallied him on his absent-mindedness.

"I was thinking of the discussion," he said. "I am afraid that Father
Frontford injured himself this morning."

"But how noble it was of him to say what he believed in spite of the
chances," she responded. "I was delighted with Mr. Candish for
seconding him as he did."

"Yes," Ashe said, a pang of jealousy piercing him at the mention of Mr.
Candish. "It was fine. What I cannot make out," he added, "is whether
Mr. Strathmore is as simple and candid as he looks. He always seems to
speak sincerely and freely, and yet he somehow contrives never to say
anything that might not have been thought out with the most clever
policy."

"I cannot make out either," returned she. "Mr. Fenton used rather
paradoxically to say that Mr. Strathmore was too frank by half to be
honest."

She sighed as she spoke, and instantly all thought of bishops and
church matters vanished from the mind of Ashe. He became entirely
absorbed in wondering how warm was Mrs. Fenton's affection for her dead
husband and in hating himself for the thought.



                         XV


              HEARTSICK WITH THOUGHT
                          Two Gentlemen of Verona, i. I


Instead of returning to Boston next morning, Maurice remained at
Brookfield for ten days. Mrs. Morison decided the matter, and it is not
to be supposed that he was entirely unwilling to be constrained.

He naturally saw much of Berenice, and he passed hours in brooding over
thoughts of her. He was convinced that she was not engaged. She had
spoken of Stanford's visit, and it had seemed to Wynne that she had
conveyed the impression that her relations to the visitor were less
intimate than might at first sight appear. If she were free--the
thought made his heart beat, and he wondered if, had the circumstances
been different, he might himself have won her. He tormented himself
with all her ways and words; the smiles she gave him, the trifling
attentions which were addressed to the guest, but which seemed to have
a touch of something deeper, that might be due to her thinking of him
as her preserver, but which might even go beyond that. There was a
delicious torture in all this reverie, in these continual
self-reproaches which involved the thought of her, the remembrance of
how she had looked, how she had spoken, how she had moved. He became
every day more hopelessly her slave, yet every day insisting more
strongly to himself that he felt nothing more than warm friend. Once
for a moment he tried to believe that his feeling was merely a desire
for her spiritual good, that his attitude was that which it was proper
for a priest to feel toward a beautiful and frivolous worldling; but
the pretense was too ghastly, and he abandoned it with a shudder of
disgust. He had moments, too, when he said to himself frankly, in
defiance or in sorrow as the mood might be, that he loved her; but for
the most part he tried to keep the assumption of simple friendship
between him and bitter thought.

He found great pleasure in Mrs. Morison. She was to him a revelation of
possibilities of which he had never dreamed. It was a continual
surprise to him to find himself so impressed by the wit, the wisdom,
and the sanity of this fine old lady. He not only felt himself an
ignorant and inexperienced boy beside her, but found himself shrinking
from comparing with her the men whom he had followed as leaders. The
ease of her manner, the completeness of her self-poise, her frank
simplicity, high-bred and winning, delighted him, while the extent of
her mental resources filled him with amazement.

Mrs. Morison opened to Wynne a new world in her conversation. At first
she gave herself up chiefly to entertaining him, telling him delightful
stories of famous folk she had known, of her life abroad and in
Washington. She was full of charming little tales which she had the art
of relating as if she were not thinking of how she was telling them,
but as if they came to her mind and bubbled into talk spontaneously.
She had a way, too, of putting in unobtrusive observations on character
and events which impressed Maurice. The art of saying things
trenchantly he had found in Mrs. Staggchase, but his cousin had the air
of being aware of her cleverness, while Mrs. Morison said these things
as if they were of the natural and habitual current of her thoughts.
Mrs. Morison said clever things as if she thought them; Mrs. Staggchase
as if she thought of them.

It did not take the young man long to discover that Mrs. Morison was
not in sympathy with his creed. She was too well-bred to bring the
matter forward, but he could not resist the temptation now and then to
touch upon it. She was of principles at once so broad and so deep that
he found himself as often surprised by her devoutness as he felt it his
duty to be shocked by her liberality. One day when Maurice had made
some allusion to a discussion over the doctrine of predestination which
was agitating the English church, Mrs. Morison said:--

"It always seems to me a pity that those who believe in that dreadful
doctrine do not remember that if one were not one of the elect, he
could at least carry through eternity the realization that he was lost
through no fault of his own. God could not take from him that
consolation."

He was silent in mingled amazement and disapproval; yet he found his
mind following out with obstinate persistence the train of thought
which her words suggested. In this or in many another remark it could
hardly be said that her words convinced him, but they awoke a swarm of
doubts in his mind. He found himself following speculations that were
lawless, wild, dangerous, and intoxicating. However convinced he might
be that the reasoning of Mrs. Morison was fallacious, he did not find
it easy to tell just wherein the fallacy lay. He felt that as a priest
he should be able to refute her, and he was filled with dismay to
discover that he was rather himself falling into the attitude of a
doubter.

One subject which was constantly in his mind he did not touch upon
until the day before he left Brookfield. He longed to sound Mrs.
Morison on the subject of a celibate priesthood. He was well enough
aware that she would not approve of it, and he was irritated by the
knowledge that he secretly felt that her decision would be founded on
strong common sense. He tried to assure himself that it was her
dangerous laxity of principle that blinded her to the nobility and
sanctity of asceticism; but it was impossible to feel that such was the
case. He was teased by a wish which he would not acknowledge that she
might advance arguments which he could not controvert; though to
himself he said that she would be his temptation in tangible form, and
that he would struggle against it with his whole soul.

His opportunity came while they were discussing the election of the
bishop. Mrs. Morison was not immediately concerned in the matter, not
being a churchwoman, but she had an intelligent interest in all
questions of the day.

"I find it hard to understand," Mrs. Morison observed, "how any
churchman can be so blind to the importance of conciliating public
thought and the general feeling as for a moment to think of any other
candidate than Mr. Strathmore. He is so completely in sympathy with the
broadening tendencies of the time."

"But that means ultimately the destruction of creeds," Maurice
objected, answering rather the implication than her words.

"I think that perhaps the highest courage men are called upon to show,"
she answered, "is that of giving up a theory which has served its use.
The race forces us to do it sooner or later, but the men who are really
great are those who are able to say frankly that their creeds have done
their work, and that the new day must have new ones. You might almost
say that the extent to which a man prefers truth to himself is to be
judged by his willingness to give up a dogma that is outworn."

"But you leave no stability to truth."

"The truth is stable without effort or will of mine," she returned,
smiling; "but surely you would have human appreciation of it advance."

He felt that there must be an answer to this, but he was not able to
see just what it was, and he shifted the question.

"But Mr. Strathmore," he said hesitatingly, "is married."

"Yes," she assented. "'The husband of one wife.'"

"If you begin to quote Scripture against me," Maurice retorted,
laughing in spite of himself, "I might easily reply to St. Paul by St.
Paul. But letting that pass, it is certainly true that the church has
always held that marriage absorbs a man in earthly things so that he
cannot give the best of his thoughts to his work."

"When the church sets itself against marriage," Mrs. Morison responded
quietly, "it seems to me to be setting up to know more than the Creator
of the race."

Maurice colored, although he might not have been able to tell whether
his strongest feeling was horror at this bold language or joy at the
emphasis with which she spoke.

"Perhaps I should beg your pardon for saying so frankly what I think,"
Mrs. Morison continued. "It isn't the way in which one generally talks
to a clergyman; but the subject is one for which I haven't much
patience, and of course I couldn't help seeing that you are in doubt
yourself."

Maurice started.

"What do you mean?" he stammered. "I--I in doubt?"

"I hadn't any intention of forcing your confidence," returned she. "I
am an old woman, and sometimes I find that I don't make allowance
enough for the slowness of you young people in arriving at a knowledge
of self."

He cast down his eyes.

"Until this moment," he said, "I have never acknowledged to myself that
I was in doubt. I see what you mean, and it shows that I have been
playing with fire."

She looked at him questioningly, then turned the subject.

"Which is perhaps a hint that our fire is going down. Sit still,
please. Every woman likes to tend her own fire."

"I should have learned that by this time," was his answer. "I lost an
inheritance once by insisting upon fixing a fire."

"That sounds interesting. Is it proper to ask for the story?"

"Oh, there isn't much of a story. I had a great-aunt who was worth a
lot of money, and who was eccentric. She was in a way fond of me when I
was a child, and used to have me at the house a good deal. I confess I
didn't like it much. Things went by rule, and the rules were often
pretty queer. One of them was that nobody should presume to touch the
fire if she was in the room. I liked to play with the fire as well as
she did, and when I was a boy just in my teens I used to do it. After
she'd corrected me half a dozen times I got into my foolish pate that
it was my duty to cure her of her whim. So I set to poking the fire
ostentatiously until she lost her temper and ordered me out of the
house. Then she burned up the will in my favor and made a new one,
giving all her money to the church."

"How unjust," commented Mrs. Morison, "and how human. Did you never
make peace with her?"

"Yes, but of course I was careful that she should understand that I
didn't do it for the sake of her money. She told my mother that she had
made a new will in my favor, but it never turned up. My aunt's death
was very singular. She was found dead in her bed, and the woman who
lived with her, an old nurse of mine, had disappeared. Of course there
was at once suspicion of foul play, but the doctors pronounced the
death natural, and there was no evidence of theft."

"Did you never discover the nurse?"

"Never. We tried, for we thought she might give a clue to the missing
will. She'd been in the family so long that she was a sort of
confidential servant, and knew all Aunt Morse's affairs. She was
devoted to me."

"The romance may not be ended yet," Mrs. Morison suggested smilingly.
"Who knows but the missing nurse will some day turn up with the missing
will."

"I'm afraid that after a dozen years there's little enough chance of
it."

His mind was so racked upon this wretched question of the right of a
priest to marry, that he could not rest until he had drawn from
Berenice also an expression of opinion on the subject. He made Mr.
Strathmore again the excuse for the introduction of the topic.

"I don't see," he said to her, "how you can think that it's well to
have a married bishop. His wife is sure to be meddling in the affairs
of the diocese."

She looked at him with a mocking glance.

"Do you wish to drag me into a discussion of the wisdom of allowing the
clergy to have wives?" she asked cruelly.

He flushed with confusion, but tried to carry a bold front.

"Very likely it does come down to the general principle of the thing,"
he answered.

"Well then, the question of the marriage of the clergy doesn't interest
me in the least."

She looked so pretty and mischievous that he began to lose his head.

"But it is of the greatest possible interest to me," he returned, with
a manner which gave the words a personal application.

She flushed in her turn, and tossed her head.

"That is by no means the same thing," she retorted.

"But what interests me you might try to consider; just out of charity,
of course."

"Oh, well, then, since you ask me, this celibacy of the clergy of our
church isn't at all a thing that anybody can take seriously. Everybody
knows that a clergyman may have his vows absolved by the bishop, so
that after all he can marry if he wants to; so that the whole thing
seems"--

"Well?" he demanded, as she broke off. "Seems how?"

"Pardon me. I didn't realize what I was saying."

"Seems how?" he repeated insistently.

He challenged her with his eyes, and he could see the spark which
kindled defiantly in hers. She threw back her head saucily.

"Well, since you insist! I was going to say that it made the whole
thing seem a little like amateur theatricals."

He became grave instantly.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "You do not seem to understand that what
you are speaking of may mean the bitter sacrifice of a man's whole
life. Even a clergyman is human, and may love as strongly, as
completely"--

He choked with the emotion he could not control. He realized that he
was telling his passion, and there came to him an overwhelming sense
that he must never tell it save in this indirect manner. He hastened on
lest she should interrupt him.

"Don't you suppose that a priest may know what it is to worship the
very ground a woman walks on? Don't you suppose he has had his heart
beat till it suffocated him just because her fingers touched his or her
gown brushed him? A man is a man after all, and the dreams that come to
one are much the same as come to another. The difference is that the
priest has to tear his very heart out, and turn his back on all that
other men may find delight in."

Berenice looked at him with shining eyes, not undimmed, he thought, by
tears.

"If you really care for her so much," she said softly, "you can give
only a divided heart to your work. It is better to own that to
yourself, isn't it?"

"For her?" he echoed.

"Oh, there must be somebody," she returned hastily, her color coming.
"No matter about that."

"But think of giving up!" he cried, leaning toward her. "Even those who
believe nothing despise a renegade priest."

"That's of less consequence than that he should ruin his life and
despise himself."

He held out his uninjured hand impulsively.

"Berenice!" he whispered.

She flushed celestial red, and for an instant her eyes responded to the
love in his. Then she sprang to her feet, with a laugh.

"There!" she cried. "See what dunces we are to get to discussing
theology. I'll never forgive you if you try to inveigle me into another
talk about such subjects. Here is Mehitabel to say that she's ready to
help you with your packing."



                         XVI


               THE GREAT ASSAY OF ART
                          Macbeth, iv. 3.


"I am sorry if I kept you waiting," Mrs. Wilson said to her husband,
coming into the library one afternoon, "but the fact is that I was
dressing for a comedy." "Gad! you dress for a comedy every day, as far
as that goes."

She made a mocking courtesy.

"Well, what is life without comedy?"

"Oh, nothing but a bore, of course. Is this comedy with some of your
ministerial hangers-on?"

She sat down by the fire and stretched out her feet upon a hassock. She
was radiant with beauty and mischief, and dressed to perfection.

"That isn't a respectful way to speak of the clergy."

"It's as respectful as I feel," he responded, lighting a pipe. "You do
have a nice gang of them round. There's Candish, for instance. He looks
like an advertisement for a misfit tailor, and he's fairly putrid with
philanthropy."

Elsie gave a quick burst of laughter. Then she pretended to frown.

"Chauncy," she said, "you have the most abominable way of putting
things that I ever heard. What would you say to the youngsters from the
Clergy House that I have in train? They're perfect lambs, and they love
each other like twins. Have you seen them?"

"Oh, yes; I've seen them. They seem to have been brought up on
sterilized milk of the gospel, and to have Jordan water for blood."

"Oh, don't be too sure. You can't tell from a man's looks how red his
blood is, especially if he's a priest. I suppose it's the men that have
to hold themselves in hardest that make the best ministers."

"I dare say," he answered indifferently. "Priest-craft has always been
clever enough to see that unless the things it called sins were natural
and inevitable its occupation would be gone. However, as long as folks
will follow after them they'd be foolish to give up their trade."

"Of course," his wife assented laughingly. "You won't get a rise out of
me, my dear boy."

Dr. Wilson chuckled.

"You're a devilish humbug," he remarked admiringly; "but you do manage
to get a lot of fun out of it."

She smoothed her gown a moment, half smiling and half grave.

"Of course it's of no use to tell you that in spite of all my fun I'm
serious at bottom," she said slowly; "but it's a fact all the same. I
don't take things with doleful solemnity like the old tabbies; but
that's no sign that I'm not just as sincere. It's no matter, though;
you won't believe it. What did you want to see me about?"

"Oh, it was about those mortgages. I saw Lincoln this morning, and he
has heard from Mrs. Frostwinch. She insists upon paying them off."

"Then there isn't any truth in the story that that Sampson woman is
circulating that Anna is going to build a spiritual temple or
something. I never believed that Anna could be such an idiot as to give
her money for anything so vulgar."

"The whole thing is nonsensical on the face of it," was his response.
"Mrs. Frostwinch can't build churches, let alone temples, if there's
any difference."

"Oh, in these days," Elsie interpolated, "a temple is only a church
_déclassé_."

"She has only a life interest in the property," Wilson went on.
"Berenice Morison is residuary legatee of almost everything, unless
Mrs. Frostwinch has saved up her income."

The talk ran on business for a few moments, Wilson advising with
shrewdness, and practically deciding the matter for his wife.

"I suppose," he said, when this was disposed of, "that Mrs. Frostwinch
is too much wrapped up in faith-cure nonsense to take much interest in
your holy war against Strathmore."

"She isn't so much wrapped up in that stuff as you think. Dear Anna
hasn't any sense of humor, but she's a model of propriety, and she's
constantly shocked at herself for being alive by a treatment so
irregular. She was mortified beyond words when that Crapps woman gave a
treatment to Mrs. Bodewin Ranger's dog."

"That snarling little black devil that's always under foot at the
Rangers'? Gad! I'd like to give it a treatment!"

"It got its ear hurt somehow, and Mrs. Crapps pretended to cure it.
Mrs. Ranger was all but in tears over it, she was so grateful. Anna was
entirely disgusted. She told Mrs. Crapps that she hadn't known before
that she was in the hands of a veterinary."

Dr. Wilson smoked in silence for a moment. The fire of soft coal purred
in the grate, the smoke from his pipe ascended in the warm air. The
thin sunshine of the winter afternoon filtered in through the windows,
and made bright patches on the rugs.

"By the way," Wilson asked lazily, "how is the campaign going? I
haven't heard anything interesting about it for some time."

"Oh, things are moving on. The man I sent up to canvass the western
part of the state--one of your sterilized milk-of-the-word babies, you
know,--got smashed up in the accident; but he'll be back in a few days.
Cousin Anna has brought her pensioners into line beautifully. There's
no doubt that we'll carry the convention."

"What happens after that?"

"The election has to be ratified by a majority of bishops; but of
course they'll hardly dare to go against the convention, even if they
want to."

"It would make things much more interesting if they'd do it, and get up
a scandal," commented the doctor. "You'll get bored to death with the
whole thing if something exciting doesn't turn up."

"I had half a mind to get up a scandal myself with Mr. Strathmore,"
Elsie said with a laugh; "but I confess I should be afraid of that
she-dragon of a wife of his."

"It's devilish interesting to know that you are afraid of anybody."

"At least," she went on, "I could go to New York and see Bishop
Candace. I can wind him round my finger. I'd tell him what Mrs.
Strathmore said about his Easter sermon last year. With a little
judicious comment that would do a good deal. I never yet saw a man that
couldn't be managed through his vanity."

"I suppose that explains why I'm as clay in your hands."

"Oh, you're not a man; you're a monster," she retorted, rising. "Well,
I must go and prepare for my comedy."

He regarded her with a look of evident admiration; a look not without a
savor of the sense of ownership, and, too, not entirely devoid of
good-natured insolence.

"You are devilishly well dressed for it," he observed.

"Thank you," returned Elsie, sweeping him a courtesy again. "The wife
that can win compliments from her own husband has indeed scored a
triumph."

Dr. Wilson puffed out a cloud of smoke with a characteristic chuckle.

"I have to admire you to justify my own taste. But you haven't told me
about the comedy."

She thrust forward one of her pretty slippers.

"Do you see that?" she demanded.

"I suppose you expect me to say that I see the prettiest foot in
Boston."

"Thank you again, but I'm not yet reduced to trying to drag compliments
out of you, Chauncy. I sha'n't do that till the other men fail me. It's
the slipper I wanted you to notice, and these ravishing stockings."

"If the comedy has stockings in it," he began; but she stopped him.

"There, no impudence," she said. "Did you ever see anything so entirely
heavenly as those stockings and slippers? I declare I've wanted ever
since I put them on to keep my feet on the table to look at."

"You might do worse."

"Oh, I'm going to."

"Indeed! It's apparently getting time for me to interfere. What's your
game?"

"I'm going to squelch that detestable Fred Rangely."

"How?"

"My slippers," Elsie said vivaciously, again thrusting one of them
forward, "are ravishing."

"Gad," her husband returned, regarding her with a look of the utmost
amusement in his topaz-brown eyes, "you have a good deal to say about
them."

"Do you notice anything particular about my hair?" she asked.

"It looks as if it might come down."

"It will come down," she corrected, nodding. Then she glanced at the
clock. "It will come down in about twenty minutes; all tumbling over my
shoulders. I shall be so mortified and surprised!"

Her husband stretched himself luxuriously back in his chair, regarding
her with laughing eyes. There was an air of perfect understanding
between the two which might have been an effectual enlightenment for
any man who thought of making love to the wife. Elsie went on, telling
off on her slender fingers the points as she made them.

"In fifteen minutes I shall be standing on the piano in the
drawing-room, straightening a picture. I never can bear a picture
crooked, and I had Jane tip it a little this morning, just to vex me.
Fred Rangely will come in unannounced. Of course I shall be dreadfully
confused, and have to get down. In my maidenly confusion I am almost
sure I can't help showing my slippers, and just a trifle--a very
discreet trifle, of course,--of these beautiful, beautiful stockings.
Nothing vulgar, you know, but"--

"But just enough," interpolated Wilson with huge enjoyment. "You
needn't apologize. I don't begrudge the poor devil whatever
satisfaction he can get out of that."

"And then as he is helping me down, with his heart in a flutter,--it
will flutter, I assure you."

"You mean his vanity; but it's of no consequence. He'd call it a heart
if he were putting the scene in a novel."

"With his whichever it is in a flutter, by some provoking accident down
comes my hair and tumbles over his shoulders."

Wilson regarded her with amused admiration.

"Five years ago," he observed placidly, "I should have thought you were
telling me half the truth to cover the other half, and were really
having a devilish flirtation with that cad."

Elsie flushed, and into her gay voice came a strain of seriousness.

"Five years are five years," she answered. "Don't go to dragging all
that up again, Chauncy."

His laugh was not untinged with malicious delight, but he put his hand
on hers and patted her fingers.

"All right, old girl. Bygones are bygones. But what in the world is all
this fooling with Rangely for?"

"Why, don't you see? The fool is sure to say something so silly that I
can snub him within an inch of his life. I've only been holding off
until he had that thing written for the Churchman. Now I've got that,
I'll settle him."

"Oh, the gratitude of women!"

"Why, it isn't that. He needn't be smirking at me the way he does. I
simply won't stand it. Besides, he makes eyes at me wherever I go, just
to advertise the fact that he's silly about me. He's a cad, through and
through. Would you come here as he does if I refused to invite your
wife?"

Chauncy Wilson laughed again, leaning forward to knock the ashes out of
his pipe.

"He's a fool, fast enough; and I dare say you're tired of his beastly
spooning; but all the same, the real reason for this circus is that you
want to amuse yourself."

She drew up her head in mock dignity.

"Of course," she returned, "if my own husband does not appreciate how I
resent"--She broke off in a burst of laughter. "Nobody ever understood
me but you, Chauncy," she cried. "Good-by. It's time I took the stage."

She threw him a kiss, and went to the drawing-room. Looking at her
watch, she placed herself behind the curtains of a window which
commanded the avenue. Presently she espied her victim, and with a last
glance around to assure herself that everything was as she wished it to
be, she mounted to the top of the piano. There she hastily tucked the
hem of her skirt between the piano and the wall. The reflection in a
great blue-black Chinese jar showed her when Rangely appeared between
the portières, so that she was able to step back as if to view the
effect of her work just as he reached the middle of the room.

"Be careful!" exclaimed he, hurrying forward. "You almost stepped off
backward!"

She wheeled about quickly.

"O Mr. Rangely!" she cried. "How did you get into the room without my
knowing? How horrid of you to surprise me like that!"

"But think how charming it is for me," he responded with an elaborate
air of gallantry. "It is so delightful to see you on a pedestal."

"Meaning that I am no better than a graven image?" she demanded with a
smile. "If that is the best you can do, I may as well come down."

She held out her hand for his, and then sat down, displaying one of the
fascinating slippers, and the openwork instep of her silk stocking,
through the meshes of which the pearly skin gleamed evasively.

"My dress is caught," she said, turning to conceal her face, and
pretending to pull at her skirt. "I hope my slippers haven't damaged
the piano."

"The piano is harder than my heart if they haven't!"

She gave a sly twitch at a hairpin.

"That is very pretty," observed she, giving her head a shake that
brought her hair down in a rolling billow. "Oh, dear! Now my hair has"--

Before she could finish he had dropped her fingers, and gathered her
hair in both hands, kissing it again and again.

"Mr. Rangely!" she exclaimed. "What do you mean?"

For reply he stooped to her foot, and kissed the mesh-clad instep
fervidly.

"How dare you!" she cried, scrambling down hastily without his
assistance.

But, alas, even trickery is not always successful in this uncertain
world! The hold of the piano upon the hem of her gown was stronger than
she realized. She tripped and stumbled, half-hung for a second, and
then dropped in an inglorious heap at the feet of the man she wished to
humiliate.

Elsie was on her feet in a minute. She did not take the hand which
Rangely extended, but drew back, her eyes sparkling with rage.

"Oh, you find it laughable, do you?" she cried. "A gentleman would at
least have concealed his amusement!"

He grew suddenly grave, and seemed not a little surprised.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I hope you were not hurt."

She looked at him scornfully without replying, and then walked to the
mantel, where there was a small antique mirror of silver.

"Thank you, not in the least."

Her tone was no warmer than an arctic night. She gathered her hair, and
began to twist it up. He followed and stood behind her with an air at
once deprecatory and insinuating.

"I shouldn't think you could see in that thing," he observed.

She took no notice of his words.

"If I laughed," continued he, "it was only from nervousness. I was
carried away"--

"I observed that you were," she interrupted icily.

He stood awkwardly a moment, while she finished putting up her hair.
Then, as she turned toward him, he smiled again, holding out his hand.

"Surely you are not angry with me," he pleaded. "I care more for your
feeling toward me than for anything else in the world."

"It would amuse Mrs. Rangely to hear you say so, not to mention my
husband."

He stared at her with the air of a man not sure whether he is awake or
dreaming.

"What are they to us?" he asked, sinking his voice almost to a whisper.

"Mrs. Rangely may be nothing to you, but Dr. Wilson is still a good
deal to me, thank you."

He looked at her again with perplexity in his glance, but with his face
hardening.

"You surely cannot mean that you have ceased to care for me just for a
second of meaningless laughter?"

She swept him a scornful courtesy.

"You do these things better in your novels, Mr. Rangely, which shows
what an advantage it is to have time to think speeches over. I wouldn't
have my hero say a thing like that, if I were you. It would make him
seem like a conceited cad."

The insolence of her manner was such as no man could bear. Rangely
crimsoned to the temples. He paced across the room, while she coolly
seated herself in a great Venetian chair, and began to play with a
little jade image. He came back to her, and stood a moment as if he
could not find words.

"Why don't you go?" she asked, looking up at him as if he were a
servant sent upon an errand.

"Because," he broke out angrily, "when I go I shall not come back; and
I should like to understand this thing."

She shrugged her shoulders, and leaned back in her chair, looking him
over from head to foot.

"Why you quarrel with me is more than I know," he went on. "You've got
tired of me, I suppose, and want to amuse yourself with another man."

The red flushed in her cheek.

"If my husband, who you say is nothing to us, were here," she said, "he
would horsewhip you."

The other laughed savagely.

"He is not here, however, so you may digest my remark at your leisure."

Mrs. Wilson rose from her seat with an air of dignity which was really
imposing.

"Mr. Rangely," she said, "it is not my custom to bandy words, even with
my equals. I have allowed you the freedom of my house because I was
willing to help you in your desire to be useful to Father Frontford.
You have taken advantage of my kindness to insult me. This seems to me
sufficiently to explain the situation."

He stared at her a moment in evident amazement. Then he burst into
hoarse laughter.

"My desire to be useful to Father Frontford!" he echoed. "That is the
best yet! You know I cared nothing about your pottering old church
politics except to please you."

"I see that I was deceived completely," she responded coldly.

She crossed the room and pressed an ivory button.

"Deceived!" he sneered. "It would take a clever man to deceive you."

She looked not at him, but beyond him. He turned, and saw a footman in
the doorway.

"The gentleman wishes to be shown out, Forrester," said she.

She held the tips of her fingers to Rangely.

"Thank you so much for coming," she murmured in her most conventional
manner.

"The pleasure has been mine," he responded.

They both bowed, and Rangely followed the footman.



                         XVII


                    A BOND OF AIR
                           Troilus and Cressida, i. 3.


"You have made a new man of me," Maurice Wynne had said to Mrs. Morison
in bidding her good-by; and the words repeated themselves in his mind
as he came back to Boston, and as he once more took up for a few days
his home with Mrs. Staggchase.

There is nothing more inflammable than the punk left by the decay of a
religion, and any theology may be said to be doomed from the moment
when men begin to ask themselves whether they believe it. Maurice had
been so strenuously questioning his belief that it is small wonder that
he found his heart full of fire. In the days of his stay at Brookfield,
moreover, he had been rapidly journeying on the road toward a new view
of life; and the idea of returning to the Clergy House became to him
well-nigh intolerable. It seemed like taking upon himself once more the
swaddling-clothes of infancy.

On the afternoon of his return, he hurried to see Ashe, and found
himself obliged to wait some time for his friend's return from a
committee meeting. Mr. Herman chanced to be at home alone, and Maurice
sat with him in the library. Wynne had come to know the sculptor fairly
well, and had been warmly drawn toward him. He was to-day struck more
than ever by the strength and self-poise which Herman showed. The young
man was seized with a desire to appeal to the sanity and the kindliness
of one who seemed to possess both so aboundingly.

"Have you ever found yourself all at sea, Mr. Herman?" he asked
abruptly.

"Of course. I fancy every man has had that experience."

"But," Maurice hurried on, more impulsively yet, "you can never have
felt that you were a renegade and a hypocrite. That's where I am now."

The sculptor regarded him with evident surprise, yet with a look so
keen that Maurice felt his cheeks grow warm.

"Does that mean," Herman asked with kindly deliberation, "that you are
tired and out of sorts, or is it something deeper?"

Wynne was silent a moment. Now that he had broken the ice, he feared to
go on. It was something of a shock to find himself on the brink of a
confidence when he had not intended to make one.

"I'm afraid it goes deep," he answered. "The truth is, Mr. Herman, that
I've come back with my whole mind in a turmoil."

Herman seemed to hesitate in his turn.

"I'm afraid I'm a poor one to help you, Mr. Wynne. Mrs. Herman does the
mental straightening-out for this family. Besides, we look at things so
differently, you and I, that I shouldn't know how to put things to you
if I tried."

"I've no right to bother anybody with my troubles," Maurice said.

"That anybody could help you would give you a claim upon him," Herman
responded cheerily. "I noticed, Mr. Wynne, that things were not going
right with you before you went away. May I give you a piece of advice?"

"I shall be glad if you will."

"Then if I were you, I'd go and talk with Mr. Strathmore."

"With Mr. Strathmore!" Maurice echoed in surprise.

"Oh, I know he isn't exactly of your way of thinking in church
matters," Herman proceeded. "He's still farther from my position, but
he's the man I should go to. He is so human, and so sympathetic, that
there isn't such another man in Boston for comfort and advice."

"But I've always been opposed," Maurice protested, "to all"--

"That's no matter. He's too big a man for that to make any difference.
Go to him as a fellow that's in a hobble, and the only thing he'll
consider is how to help you. He's had experience, and he has the gift
of understanding."

No more was said on the subject, but the words stuck in Wynne's mind.
Since all things seemed to him to be turning round, why should he not
take this one more departure from the old ways? Yet it was in some sort
almost like treason to Father Frontford to seek aid and comfort from
Strathmore. Although the thing had never been so stated in words, it
was understood at the Clergy House that Strathmore was to be looked
upon in the light of an enemy to the faith, and Wynne felt as if he had
been enrolled to fight the popular preacher under the banner of Father
Frontford. It seemed the more treasonable to desert the Father Superior
now that he was in the midst of a desperate struggle. Maurice knew,
however, that it was useless to carry to his old confessor doubts which
for the heart of the stern priest could not exist. He would simply be
told that doubt was of the devil and was to be crushed; and the young
man felt that this would leave him where he was now. If he were to seek
aid, it must at least be from one who would understand his state of
mind.

Wynne resumed his clerical garb on the morning after his return to
Boston. His conscience reproached him for the strong distaste which he
felt for the dress, and his spirits were of the lowest. About the
middle of the forenoon, he started out to try the effects of a walk. It
was a clear, brisk morning, with a white frost still on the pavements
where the sun had not fallen. The air was invigorating, and Maurice
began to feel its exhilaration. He walked more briskly, holding his
head more erect, even forgetting to be irritated by the swish of his
cassock about his legs. Without consciously determining whither he
would go, he followed the streets toward the house of Mr. Strathmore,
in that strange yet not uncommon state of mind in which a man knows
fully what he is doing, yet assures himself that he has no purpose.
When at last he found himself ringing the bell, Wynne carried his
private histrionics so far that he told himself that he was surprised
to be there.

The visitor was shown at once to the study of Mr. Strathmore, whose
readiness to receive those who sought him was one of the traits which
endeared him to the general public. Maurice felt the keen and inquiring
look which the clergyman bestowed upon him, and found himself somewhat
at a loss how to begin.

"I am from the Clergy House of St. Mark," he said, rather awkwardly.

"So I judged from your dress," Strathmore responded cordially. "Sit
down, please. That is a comfortable chair by the fire."

The professed ascetic smiled, but he took the chair indicated.

"It is a beautiful, brisk morning," the host went on. "The tingle in
the air makes a man feel that he can do impossible things."

Wynne looked up at him with a smile. He was won by the heartiness of
the tone, by the bright glance of the eye, by some intangible personal
charm which put him at once at his ease and made him feel that
understanding and sympathy were here.

"And I have done the impossible," he said. "I have ventured to come to
talk with you about the celibacy of the clergy."

He saw the face of the other change with a curious expression, and then
melt into a smile.

"And what am I, a married clergyman, expected to say on such a topic?"

Maurice smiled at the absurdity of his own words, and then with sudden
gravity broke out earnestly:--

"I am completely at sea. All things I have believed seem to be failing
me. I don't even know what I believe."

"Will you pardon me," Strathmore asked, "if I ask why you consult me
rather than your Superior?"

Maurice flushed and hesitated: yet he felt that nothing would do but
absolute frankness.

"I will tell you!" he returned. "I was to be a priest. I went into the
Clergy House supposing that that was settled. I see now that I really
followed a friend. If he went, I couldn't be shut out. Now I have been
among men, and"--

He hesitated, but the friendly smile of the other reassured him.

"And among women," he went on bravely; "and--and"--

"And you have discovered the meaning of a certain text in Genesis which
declares that 'male and female created He them,'" concluded Strathmore.

Wynne felt the tone like a caress. He seemed to be understood without
need of more speech. His condition, which had seemed to him so
intricate and so unique, began to appear possible and human. He was not
so completely cut off from human sympathy as he had felt.

"Yes," he assented; "I will be frank about it. I did not think that
Father Frontford would understand what it meant to feel that life is
given to us to be glorified by the love of a woman."

"If this is all that is troubling you," Strathmore remarked, "it seems
to me that your position, though it may not be pleasant, is not very
tragical. Our bishops are generally willing to absolve from vows of
celibacy."

"I doubt if Father Frontford would be," Maurice commented involuntarily.

"That is perhaps one of his virtues in the eyes of his supporters,"
Strathmore suggested with a twinkle.

"I have not taken the vows, however," Maurice responded hastily,
flushing, and ignoring the thrust.

"Then what is your trouble?"

"When I meant to take them, it was the same thing."

"Do I understand you that to intend to do a thing and then to change
the mind is the same as to do it?"

"Oh, no; not that; but I am not clear that it isn't my duty to take
them. I'm not sure that it is right for a priest to marry--if you will
pardon my saying so."

"And you come to me to convince you? It seems to me that Providence has
already done that through the agency of some young woman. If you really
know what it is to love a good woman there is no real doubt in your
mind as to the sacredness of marriage,--for the clergy or for anybody
else. Isn't your trouble perhaps an obstinate dislike to seem to
abandon a position once taken?"

The words might have sounded severe but for the tone in which they were
spoken.

"But that is not the whole of the matter," Maurice continued, feeling
as if he were being carried forward by an irresistible current. "If I
have been mistaken on this point about which I have felt so sure and so
strongly, what confidence can I have in my other beliefs?"

"Ah, it goes deep," Strathmore said with emphasis. "It is of no use to
put old wine into new bottles. The effect of trying to make you young
men accept mediævalism, like clerical celibacy, is in the end to make
you doubt everything. Haven't you any respect for the authority of the
church?"

"Oh, implicit!" Maurice responded.

"But," his host remarked with a smile, "because you begin to have
doubts about a thing which the church doesn't inculcate, you show an
inclination to throw overboard all that she does teach."

Maurice was silent a moment, playing with a rosary which he wore at his
belt. He was surprised that he had never thought of this; and he was
startled by the doubt which had arisen in his mind as soon as he had
declared his implicit faith in the church. He realized in a flash that
while he had spoken honestly, he had not told the truth.

"I am afraid that I'm not quite honest," he said, "though I meant to
be. I'm afraid that after all I don't feel sure of all the church
teaches."

"My dear young man," the other replied kindly, "you are fighting
against the age. You have been taught to believe,--if you will pardon
me,--that the thing for a true man to do is to resist the light of
reason. There are, for instance, a great many things which used to be
received literally which we now find it necessary to interpret
figuratively. It would be refusing to use the reason heaven gives us if
we refused to recognize this. The teachings of the church are true and
infallible, but every man must interpret them according to the light of
his own conscience and reason."

"But if this is once allowed I don't see where you are to draw the
line. The heathen are very likely honest enough."

"I said the teaching of the church, Mr. Wynne. If a man earnestly
searches his heart and follows this guide as he understands it, there
can be no danger."

"Mr. Strathmore," Maurice said, "perhaps it seems like forcing myself
upon you, and then taking the liberty of fighting your views; but this
is too vital to me to allow of my stopping for conventionalities. You
seem to me to be inconsistent. You refer to the church as the supreme
authority, but you give into the hand of every man a power over that
authority."

The other smiled with that warm, sympathetic glance which was so
winning.

"Does it seem possible to you," asked he, "that two human beings ever
mean quite the same thing by the same words? Isn't there always some
little variation, at least, in the impression that a given phrase
conveys to you and to me?"

"Theoretically I suppose that this is true," assented Maurice; "but
practically it doesn't amount to much, does it?"

"It at least amounts to this," was the reply, "that what one man means
by a set form of words cannot be exactly the same that another would
mean by it. The creed is one thing to the simple-minded, ignorant man,
and something infinitely higher and richer to a Father in the church.
You would allow that, of course."

"Yes," Maurice hesitatingly assented, "but I shouldn't have thought of
it as an excuse for laxity of doctrine."

"I am not recommending laxity of doctrine. I am only saying that since
absolute unity of conception is impossible, it is idle to insist upon
it. I am not excusing anything. A fact cannot need an excuse in the
search for truth."

The young deacon felt himself sliding into deeper and deeper waters,
though the mien of Strathmore seemed to inspire confidence. He was more
and more uncertain what he believed or ought to believe.

"But is this the belief of the church?" he persisted.

"What is the belief of the church if not the belief of its members?"

"I do not know," Maurice answered. "I came to you to be told."

He tried to grasp definitely the belief which was being presented to
him, but it appeared as elusive as a shadow in the mist. Mr.
Strathmore's look was as frank and clear as ever. There was in his eyes
no sign of wavering or of evasion; his smile was full of warmth and
sympathy.

"My dear young friend," the elder said, "I don't pretend to speak with
the authority of the church; but to me it seems like this. We live in
an age when we must recognize the use of reason. We are only doing
frankly what men have in all ages been doing in their hearts. Men
always have their private interpretations whether they recognize it or
not. Nothing more is ever needed to create a schism than for some clear
thinker to define clearly what he believes. There are always those who
are ready to follow him because this seems so near to what many are
thinking."

"But that is because so few persons are ever able to define for
themselves what they do believe," Maurice threw in.

"Then do they ever really appreciate what the doctrines of the church
are?" Strathmore asked significantly.

Maurice shook his head. He seemed to himself to be entangled in a net
of words. He could not tell whether the man before him was entirely
sincere or not. There seemed something hopelessly incongruous between
the position of Mr. Strathmore as a religious leader and these opinions
which seemed to strike at the very foundations of all creeds; yet the
manner and look with which all was said were evidently honest and
unaffected.

"Don't suppose that I think it would be wise to proclaim such a
doctrine from the housetops," continued Strathmore, answering, Maurice
felt, the doubt in the face of the latter. "I speak to you as one who
is face to face with these facts, and must have the whole of it."

Maurice rose with a feeling that he must get away by himself and think.

"Mr. Strathmore," he said, "I am more grateful than I can say for your
kindness. I'm afraid that I've seemed stupid and ungracious, but I
haven't meant to be either. I see that every man must work out his own
salvation."

"But with fear and trembling, Mr. Wynne."

The smile of the rector was so warm and so winning that it cheered
Maurice more than any words could have cheered him; Mr. Strathmore
grasped the young man warmly by the hand and added:--

"Don't think me a heretic because I have spoken with great frankness.
Remember that the good of the church is to me more dear than anything
else on earth except the good of men for whom the church exists. God
help you in your search for light."



                      XVIII


        CRUEL PROOF OF THIS MAN'S STRENGTH
                         As You Like It, i. 2.


The afternoon was already darkening into dusk one day late in January
when Philip Ashe stood in the hallway of a squalid tenement house,
looking out into a dingy court. The place was surrounded by tall
buildings which cut off the light and made day shorter than nature had
intended, an effect which was not lessened by the clothes drying
smokily on lines above. In one corner of the court yawned like the
entrance to a cave the mouth of the passageway by which it was entered.
In another stood a dilapidated handcart in which some dweller there was
accustomed to carry abroad his rubbishy wares. The windows were for the
most part curtainless, rising row above row with an aspect of
wretchedness which gave Ashe a sense of discomfort so strong as almost
to be physical. Here and there rags and old hats did duty instead of
glass; some windows were open, framing slatternly women.

These women were stupidly quiet. Ashe wondered if they would have
talked to each other across the court if he had not been in sight, or
if the gathering dusk silenced them. One of them was smoking a short
black pipe, and once let fall a spark upon the head of another idler a
couple of floors below. The injured woman poured forth a volley of
oaths, and Ashe expected a war of words. Nothing of the sort occurred.
The figure above was so indifferent as hardly to glance down where the
offended harridan was steaming with a fume of curses.

Philip began to be uneasy. He looked up at the darkening sky, and
backward to the gloom of the stairway behind him. No gas had been
lighted in the building, and he wondered if any ever were. It was
certainly too late for Mrs. Fenton to be poking about in these
dangerous places. They had been doing charity visiting together, and
she had insisted on coming to this one house more before going home. He
had remonstrated, but she had laughed at his fears.

"I don't believe any of these places are really dangerous," she had
declared. "I've been coming here for years, and nobody ever troubled
me."

"By daylight it is all very well," he had answered, "but it's a
different thing after dark. I have been here once or twice to see some
sick person in the evening, and it is a rough place."

"But it isn't after dark," she had persisted, "and it won't be for an
hour."

She had had her way, but Ashe reflected uneasily that if harm came to
her it would be his fault. He should have insisted upon her going home.
The light was fading fast, and the locality was one of the worst in
town. He wondered why the mere absence of daylight gave wickedness so
much boldness. Men who by day were the veriest cowards seemed to spring
into appalling fearlessness as soon as darkness gave its uncertain
promise of concealment. The thought made him turn, and begin slowly to
walk up the stairs.

He was not sure what floor she meant to visit. She was going, he knew,
to see a woman whose husband got drunk and beat her. She had told him
about the poor creature as they came along. She was sure Mrs. Murphy
must have known a decent life. She set her down as having been a
housekeeper or upper servant who had foolishly married a rascal. The
woman, Mrs. Fenton had added, was evidently ashamed of her present
condition, and afraid that those who had known her in her better days
should discover her.

"It is pitiful," Mrs. Fenton had said musingly, "to see how she clings
to her husband. She pulls down her sleeves to cover the bruises, and
tells how good he was to her when they were first married. She says he
doesn't mean to hurt her, but that he's the strongest man in the court,
and doesn't realize what he is doing. She's even proud of his strength."

"Strength is apt to impress women," Ashe had answered, not without a
secret sense of humiliation to lack this quality.

As he walked gropingly up the dark stairway, a man came clumsily after,
and presently stumbled past him. A strong smell of liquor enveloped the
newcomer, and he lurched heavily against Ashe without apology. Philip
heard his uneven steps mounting in the gloom, and followed almost
mechanically. He paused in one of the hallways to listen to a babble of
words in one of the rooms. It was chiefly profanity, but it hardly
seemed to be ill-natured. It was simply a family cursing each other
with well-accustomed vehemence. He grew every instant more and more
uneasy, and thought of knocking at every door until he found his
friend. What right had philanthropy to demand that a beautiful, noble
woman should be exposed to the chances of a nest of ruffianism and
vice? He was indignant at the committee for not delegating such work to
men. Then he remembered that Mrs. Fenton was herself on the committee,
and that it was by her own insistence that she was here.

"She is capable of any sacrifice to what she believes to be right," he
said to himself; "but she is too good for such work; she is too
delicate, too"--

Suddenly a noise arose on the floor above him. A man's voice, thick
with anger or drink, was pouring out a stream of words, half oaths; a
woman was shrilly entreating. Ashe sprang quickly upstairs, and as he
did so he heard Mrs. Fenton scream. The sound was behind a door, and
without stopping to deliberate he tried to open it. The latch yielded,
but he could not open.

"Let me in!" he cried fiercely. "What is the matter?"

The voice of a man who was evidently against the door answered him with
blasphemies. A woman within cried to the man to stop, while Mrs. Fenton
called to Ashe for help. Philip set his shoulder against the door and
strained with all his might to force it. He remembered then what Mrs.
Fenton had said about the strength of the husband of her pensioner.

"Go to the window, and call the police," he shouted.

"He's holding me!" Mrs. Fenton cried back pantingly.

Philip strained more desperately, and as he did so he heard the window
within flung open, and the voice of a woman yelling for the police. The
man inside sprang forward with an oath, the door yielded, and Philip
plunged headlong into the room.

As Philip fell upon his knees, he saw a man seize the woman who from
the window was calling for help, and fling her to the floor. The sound
of her fall, with her wild shriek beaten into a choking gasp by the
force with which she struck, turned his heart sick; but his fear for
Mrs. Fenton kept him up. He scrambled to his feet, and as he did so she
ran toward him.

"Your cassock is all dust!" she cried hysterically. "Oh, come away!"

The absurdity of the words made him burst into nervous laughter; yet he
saw that the drunken man was coming, and he instinctively put her
behind him and took some sort of a posture of defense.

"Save yourself," he cried hastily. "He's killed the woman."

All this passed with the quickness of thought. There seemed to Philip
hardly the time of a breath between the opening of the door and the
blow which now fell upon the side of his face. Fortunately he partly
evaded it, but he reeled and staggered, feeling the earth shake and the
air full of stinging points of fire. He saw the figure of his assailant
towering between him and the light; he had a glimpse of Mrs. Fenton
rushing to the window to call again for help; he realized with a
horrible shrinking that that hammer-like fist was again striking out
for his face; he was conscious of a sickening impulse to run, a
humiliating and overwhelming sense of his inability to cope with this
brute and of even his ignorance how to try; yet most of all he felt the
determination to defend Edith or to die in the attempt. In a wild and
futile fashion he dashed against his assailant, striking blindly and
furiously, crying with rage and weakness, but throwing all his force
into the fight. He felt crushing blows on his head and chest. Once he
was struck on the side of the throat so that he gasped for breath with
the sensation that he was drowning. Now and then he felt his own fist
strike flesh, and the sensation was to him horrible. He fought blindly,
doggedly, inwardly weeping for the shame and the pity of it, wondering
if there would never be any end, and what would happen to Mrs. Fenton
if he were beaten helpless. Surely if aid were coming it must have
arrived long ago. He had been fighting for hours. He kept striking on,
but he felt his strength failing, and he could have laughed wildly at
the pitiful feebleness of his blows. He was knocked down, and scrambled
up again, amazed that he was not killed or disabled. His one hope lay
in the fact that the man was evidently much the worse for drink, and
often struck as blindly as himself. If he could but occupy the brute's
attention until help came, Mrs. Fenton would be saved.

Suddenly he was aware that the roaring in his ears was not all from the
ringing in his head, but that heavy steps were sounding from the
stairway. In a moment more screaming women were swarming in, and the
din become intolerable as they scuttled about him, calling out to his
opponent to stop and not to do murder. Men followed, and a couple of
policemen came in their wake. Ashe saw through heavy eyelids the shine
of brass buttons, and felt that the wearers of the uniforms to which
these belonged had seized upon his assailant. He staggered against the
wall, sick, faint, and dizzy. The two policemen were having a severe
struggle to subdue their prisoner, and it seemed to Philip that all the
inhabitants of the neighborhood were crowding in at the narrow door.
The wife lay where she had been dashed to the floor, and Mrs. Fenton
bent over her.

"Oh, Mr. Ashe," the latter said, coming to him, "you must be terribly
hurt! I think Mrs. Murphy's killed."

He tried to smile, but his face was swollen and unmanageable.

"It's no matter about me," he managed with difficulty to say, "if you
are not hurt."

The realities of life came back. The whirling rush of the swift moments
of the fight seemed already far off. The crowd examined him with frank
curiosity, commenting on him as "the dude that's been scrappin' with
Mike Murphy." He saw some of the women busy over the prostrate form of
Mrs. Murphy, lifting her from the floor to the bed.

"Well, Mike," one of the policemen said, "I guess this job'll be your
last. You've done it this time."

The prisoner seemed to have become sober all at once, now that he was
in the hands of the law. He went over to the bed, between his captors,
and examined the injured woman with the air of one accustomed to such
occurrences.

"Oh, the old woman'll pull round all right," he growled. "She ain't no
flannel-mouth charity chump."

Without a word Ashe put his hand upon the arm of Mrs. Fenton, and led
her toward the door. The insult cut him more than all that had gone
before. What had passed belonged to a drunken and irrational mood. This
taunt came evidently from deliberate contempt and ingratitude. Philip
had a bewildered sense of being outside of all conditions which he
could understand. This shameless effrontery and brutality seemed to him
rather the distorted fantasy of an evil dream than anything which could
be real. His one thought now was to get his companion away before she
was exposed to fresh insult.

They were detained a little by the police; but after giving their
addresses were allowed to go. Ashe felt shaky and exhausted, but the
hand of Mrs. Fenton was on his arm, and the need of sustaining her gave
him strength. They got with some difficulty through the crowd and out
of the court, and after walking a block or two were fortunate enough to
find a carriage.

"Mr. Ashe," Mrs. Fenton said, as they drove up Hanover Street, "I'm
afraid you're terribly hurt; and it is all my fault."

"No, no," he replied with swollen lips. "The fault was mine. I
shouldn't have let you go into that place."

"But you did try to stop me; only I was obstinate. Oh, I don't know how
to thank you for coming as you did."

"But what happened before I came?"

Mrs. Fenton shuddered.

"Oh, I don't think I know very clearly. That great drunken man came in,
and asked me for money. Of course I didn't give it to him; and his wife
tried to get him to let me go. Then he struck her on the mouth!"

"The brute!" Ashe involuntarily cried, clenching his bruised fists.

"Then he caught me by the waist, and I screamed; and in another minute
I heard you at the door."

"But it was the woman that called the police."

"Yes; and when she did that I was fearfully frightened. I knew that if
she called the police against her own husband she must think that he'd
really hurt me."

Philip leaned back in the carriage, dizzy with the overwhelming sense
of the peril that had beset her,--her! Then, mastered by an
overpowering impulse, he threw himself forward and caught her hands,
covering them with kisses.

"Oh, my darling!" he gasped. "Oh, thank God you are safe!"

She dragged her hands away from him, and shrank back.

"Mr. Ashe!" she cried. "What is the matter with you? What are you
doing?"

He did not attempt to retain his hold, but drew himself back into the
darkness of his corner of the carriage. A strange calmness followed his
outbreak; a sort of joyous uplifting which made him master of himself
completely.

"I am sinning," he answered with a riotous sense of delight. "I am
laying up remorse for all my future. I am telling you I love you; that
I love you: I love you! I love you and I have saved you; and I shall
brood over that, and do penance, and brood over it again, and do
penance again, all my life long!"

"Oh, you are confused, excited, hurt," she cried. "You don't know what
you are saying!"

"I know only too well what I am saying. I am saying that I"--

"Oh, for pity's sake, don't!" she moaned, putting out her hand.

He caught her wrist, and again kissed her hand passionately.

"Yes, I know that I ought not to say this now when you have had to bear
so much already; that I ought never to say it; but it is said! It is
said! You'll forget it, but I shall remember it all my life. I shall
remember that you heard me say that I love you!"

He threw himself back into his corner, and she shrank into hers, while
the carriage went rattling over the pavement. Aching and sore, Philip
yet knew a wild exhilaration, a certain divine madness which was so
intense a delight that it almost made him weep. It was like a religious
ecstasy, recalling to his mind moments in which he had seemed to be
lifted almost to trance-like communion with holy spirits.

"I ought to ask you to forgive me, Mrs. Fenton," he said as they drew
near her house, "but I cannot. I did not mean to do this; but I can't
regret it. I am sorry for you; I am sorry--I shall be sorry, that
is--for the sin of it; but the sin is sweet."

He wondered at his own voice, so even yet so high in pitch.

"Oh, what shall I do?" Mrs. Fenton cried sobbingly. "Is it my fault
that this happened?"

"Oh, nothing can be your fault. It is all mine! But you must love me, I
love you so!"

"No, no," she exclaimed vehemently. "I don't love you! I cannot love
you! For pity's sake don't say such things!"

She buried her face in her hands and burst into sobs. Philip set his
lips together, smiling bitterly at the pain it gave him. He controlled
his voice as well as he was able.

"I beg you will forgive me," said he. "I have been out of my head.
Forget my impertinence, and"--

He could not finish, but the stopping of the carriage at her door saved
him the need of farther effort.

He assisted her to alight, rang the bell, and said goodnight in a voice
which he was sure did not betray him to the coachman.



                        XIX


                'TWAS WONDROUS PITIFUL
                          Othello, i. 3.


Poor Ashe got home more dead than alive. His passion had shaken him
like a delirium. He had been swept away by his emotion, and had thrown
to the winds past and future. He felt as the carriage drove away from
Mrs. Fenton's as if he had been swung up and down on some monstrous
wave and dashed, broken and bleeding, on a rough shore. He could not
think; and fortunately for him he was even too benumbed to feel greatly.

He reached the Hermans' in a sort of half-stupor, in which
indifference, keen joy, and bitter contrition were strangely mingled.
The contrition, however, seemed somehow to belong to the future; it was
what he must endure when the time should come for repentance; the joy
was a present blessing, tingling in his every fibre.

He met Mrs. Herman in the hall. She exclaimed when she saw him, and he
stood smiling at her, swaying as if he were intoxicated.

"What has happened?" she cried. "What have you done to your face?"

The room and his cousin swam before him in a golden mist. He felt that
he was grinning idiotically, yet he could not stop. He tried to speak,
but his lips seemed too swollen to form words. He put out his hand to
grasp a chair, and perceived that he could not reach it.

"I--fall!" he managed to ejaculate.

Mrs. Herman caught him, and supported him to a chair. He felt her arm
around him, and he wondered how he came to be thus embraced. He tried
to grope back into the dusk of his mind to tell what had happened, and
the fiery glow of the moment in which he had kissed the hand of Mrs.
Fenton came back to him. He sat suddenly erect.

"Cousin Helen," he said, with husky fervor, "I have been a wretch, and
I rejoice in it! I have found out how sweet it is to sin! I am lost,
lost, lost!"

He buried his face in his hands, almost hysterical. He felt his
cousin's hand on his shoulder.

"Philip," she said decisively, "you must stop this, and tell me what
has happened."

"I beg your pardon," he answered, dropping his hands. "Mrs. Fenton was
attacked by a drunken man in the North End, and I fought him. I am
afraid that I am pretty disreputable looking."

"Yes, you are. I hope that is the worst of it."

She took him by the arm and led him into the library, where she
established him in an easy-chair by the fire.

"I'll send for a doctor to look you over," she said, "and meanwhile you
are to take what I give you."

She left him, and Philip sat looking into the coals.

"Ah, if the glove had been off!" he murmured half aloud.

He flushed hotly, and struck his clenched hand against his breast,
rubbing it back and forth until the haircloth within stung and smarted.

"No, no," he said to himself fiercely. "I will not think about it!"

Helen came back with a tumbler of something hot and fragrant, which
made his eyes water as he drank. It sent a strange sensation of warmth
through him, and seemed to restore his energy. The doctor, who came in
soon after, found nothing serious the matter. Ashe was temporarily
disfigured, but had luckily escaped without worse injury. He was sent
to bed, and despite his expectation of passing the night in an agony of
remorse, he sank almost immediately into a dreamless sleep.

When Philip awoke his first sensation was that of stiffness and
soreness,--soreness such as he had felt once when he had slept on the
floor with his arms extended in the form of a cross. The thought of
penance performed gave him a thrill of happiness, but to this instantly
succeeded the remembrance of the events of yesterday, and his brief
satisfaction vanished.

His face was discolored, and as he set out after breakfast to seek his
spiritual adviser he felt a grim satisfaction in going abroad thus
marked. It was in the nature of a mortification and a penance. He
repeated prayers as he walked, his eyes cast down, his bosom pricked by
haircloth. He felt that he had already begun the expiation of the sin
of yesterday.

He found Father Frontford at home, but so occupied as to be unable to
listen to him. It would have been impossible for Philip to do as
Maurice had done, and go to a man like Strathmore; and indeed, he had
come to his Father Superior partly because of the sharpness with which
he felt that his offending would be judged. Where Maurice would
question, Philip would submit blindly and with ardent faith.

"Good-morning," the Father greeted Ashe kindly, holding out his left
hand, while the right held suspended the pen which had already produced
a heap of letters. "I am very glad to see you; but you find me
extremely busy. There are so many things to be thought of just now, and
so many letters to be written."

"Yes?" Philip responded absently.

"The election is so near at hand now," the other continued, "that we
cannot leave any stone unturned. I am writing to some of the country
clergy this morning. By the way, I wanted to speak to you about
Montfield."

Philip wondered at himself for the remoteness which the affairs of the
church had for him, so absorbed had he been in his own experiences.

"It seems to me," Father Frontford went on with fresh animation, "that
perhaps you can do something there. Can't you go down and talk with Mr.
Wentworth? He's inclined to support Mr. Strathmore. You should be able
to influence him; you are his spiritual son."

Mr. Wentworth was the rector in Philip's native town, and under him
both Ashe and Wynne had come from Congregationalism into the Church.

"It is possible," Philip said doubtfully. "Mr. Wentworth is, however,
rather inclined to disagree with me nowadays. He is completely carried
away by Mr. Strathmore."

A strange look came into the face of the old priest. He laid down his
pen, and pressed together the tips of his white fingers, thin with
fasting and self-denial.

"Did you not once tell me," he asked, "that Mr. Wentworth has hoped for
years that he might bring your mother also into the fold?"

"Yes."

"And you are her only child?"

"Yes."

Father Frontford cast down his eyes; then raised them to flash a glance
of vivid intelligence upon Ashe. Then again he looked down.

"I think that you had better run down and see your mother," he said.
"It is possible that she may be even now leaning toward the truth; and
in any case you might arouse Mr. Wentworth to fresh activity. It is of
much importance that the country clergy should be pledged not to
support Mr. Strathmore in the convention."

Philip went away confused and baffled. He said to himself that his
feeling was caused solely by his disappointment that he had found no
opportunity to talk with the Father Superior about his own affairs; but
it was impossible for him to put out of his mind the way in which his
mission to Montfield had been spoken of. He was willing to go down and
do what he could to arouse Mr. Wentworth to the gravity of the
situation, but he could neither forget nor endure the hint that he
should make of the hope of his mother's conversion to the church a
bribe. He could not think of this without being moved to blame Father
Frontford; and he set himself to argue his mind into the belief that
there was no harm in the suggestion. He walked along in a reverie as
deep as it was painful, trying to see that the occasion called for the
use of all lawful means, and that it was natural for the Father to
suppose that Mrs. Ashe might be influenced more readily if the rector
yielded to the wishes of her son in voting for Frontford.

"My dear Ashe, what have you been doing to yourself?" a strong voice
asked him.

He came with a start to the consciousness of where he was, and that he
had almost run into the Rev. De Lancy Candish. The thought flashed
through his mind that Father Frontford had been too deeply absorbed in
his plans to notice the bruised face of his deacon.

"How do you do?" he exclaimed impulsively. "Providence has sent you to
me. Can you spare me a little of your time?"

"Certainly," the other answered, with some appearance of surprise. "I'm
on my way home now."

They walked in silence toward the home of Mr. Candish, Ashe trying to
frame some form of words by which he could confess the sin of his heart
without betraying Mrs. Fenton. He wondered if Maurice Wynne could have
helped him, and reflected how they had been in the habit of confiding
everything to one another. Now he shrank from opening his heart to his
friend, and was almost seeking out a confidant in the highways and
hedges.

"You have not told me what sort of an accident you have had," Candish
observed, as he fitted the latch-key into the lock of his door.

"I was attacked by a man in the North End," Philip answered, obeying
the wave of the hand which invited him to enter. "He had insulted Mrs.
Fenton, and"--

"Mrs. Fenton!" echoed Candish.

The tone made Ashe turn quickly. Into his mind flashed the words of
Helen and of Mrs. Wilson connecting the name of Candish with that of
Mrs. Fenton. In his longing for comfort and advice he had seized upon
the rector of the Nativity without remembering that he was the last
person to whom he should come.

"Ah," he said, "it was true!"

Candish did not answer, and they went into the study in silence. The
host sat down in the well-worn chair by his writing-table, while Philip
took a seat facing him.

"What a foolish thing for me to say," Ashe broke out; then surprised at
the querulousness of his tone he stopped abruptly.

"Mr. Ashe," Candish said gravely, "if there is anything I can do for
you will you tell me what it is?"

Philip rose quickly, and took a step towards him, leaning down over the
thin, homely face.

"I have found you out!" he cried with exultation. "I came to confess my
sin to you, and I find that you love her too!"

"Don't be hysterical and melodramatic," was the cool response. "Sit
down, and let us talk rationally if we are to talk at all."

The manner of Candish recalled Philip to himself. He sat down heavily.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "Since that fight I have been half beside
myself. I am like a hysterical girl."

The other regarded him compassionately.

"Mr. Ashe," responded he, "there is no good in my pretending that I
didn't understand what you meant just now. You and I are both given to
the priesthood. If we both love a woman"--

"I love her," burst in Philip, half defiantly, half remorsefully, "and
I have told her so! I have condemned myself"--

"Stop," Candish interrupted. "First you have to think of her."

Philip stared in silence. It came over him how entirely he had been
thinking of himself, and how little he had considered Mrs. Fenton in
his reflections upon the events of the previous evening. Here was a man
who could love her so well as to think of her first and himself last.

"But I have given her up," Philip stammered.

"Was she yours to give up?"

There was nothing bitter or sneering in the words; they were said
simply and dispassionately.

"No," Philip answered, dropping his voice; "she was not mine."

The older man rose and walked to the fire, where he stood looking down
at the flaming coals.

"After all," he said, "we are pretty much in the same plight. I knew
her when her husband brought her here a bride, the loveliest creature
alive. Arthur Fenton was a clever, selfish, wholly irreligious man; and
I could not help seeing how completely he failed to understand or
appreciate his wife. She was kind to me, and when her trouble came she
turned to me for comfort and sympathy. It is my weakness that I love
her; but she will never know it."

"And does she love nobody?" demanded Ashe jealously.

Candish turned upon him a look of rebuke.

"What right have you or I to ask that question?" he retorted sternly.
"I do penance for loving her, and God is my witness how carefully I
have hidden it. It is not for me to question her right to love if she
please."

Philip rose, and went to the other, holding out his hand.

"Mr. Candish," said he earnestly, "you have taught me my lesson. I have
been a weak fool, and worse. I will pray for strength to lay my passion
on the altar and forget it."

The rector took the extended hand, looking into Philip's eyes with a
glance so wistful, so humble, and so tender that the remembrance went
with Ashe long.

"And forget it?" he repeated. "I do not know that I could do that!"

He dropped the hand of Ashe, and shook himself as if he would shake off
the mood which had taken possession of him.

"Come," he declared resolutely, "this will not do. This is not the sort
of mood that makes men. Let me give you a single piece of advice,--I am
older, you know; don't pity yourself, whatever else you do. In the
first place, that would be equivalent to saying that Providence doesn't
know what is best for you; and in the second, it spoils all one's sense
of values."

As Ashe that afternoon journeyed down to Montfield, he recalled all the
details of this interview. The more he considered the more he respected
Candish and the less satisfaction he found in his own conduct. Yet
perhaps the human mind cannot cease self-justification at any point
short of annihilation, and Philip still had in his secret thought a
deep feeling that the church should more absolutely settle the question
of the celibacy of its clergy, so that there might be no more doubts.
He honored the attitude of Candish, and he resolved to imitate it. He
who has never shaken hands with the devil, however, can have little
idea how hard it is to loose his grasp; and Philip groaned at the
thought of how far he was even from wishing to put his love out of its
high place in his heart.

His mind was calmer as he sat that evening talking with his mother.
Mrs. Ashe was a plain, sweet-faced woman, with gray hair brushed
smoothly under her cap of black lace. There was in her pale, faded face
little beauty of feature or coloring; yet the light of her kindly and
delicate spirit shone through. Maurice Wynne had once said that she was
like a sweet-pea,--born with wings, but tethered so that she might not
fly away. Philip, with his exquisite sensitiveness, found an
unspeakable comfort in her presence; a soothing sense of rest and peace
so blissful that it seemed almost wrong. There are even in this worldly
age many women who hide under the covering of uneventful, commonplace
lives existences full of spiritual richness,--women who find in
religion not the mechanical acceptance of form, not a mere superstition
which encrusts an outworn creed, but a vital, uplifting force; a power
which fills their souls with imaginative warmth and fervor. The worth
of an experience is to be estimated by the emotional fire which it
kindles; and to the lives of such women the dull, colorless round of
their daily existence gives no real clue. Theirs is the life of the
spirit, and for them the inner is the only true life. It is when the
sunken eye shines with a glow from deep within; when the thin cheeks
faintly warm with the ghost of a flush and the blue veins swell from
the throbbing of a heart stirred by a spiritual vision, that the
observer gets a hint of the realities of such a life.

Mrs. Ashe was a type of the saintly woman that the spirit of Puritanism
bred in rural New England. Such women are the living embodiment of the
power which has inspired whatever is best in the nation; the power
which has been a living force amid the worldliness, the materialism,
the crudity that have threatened to overwhelm the people of this yet
young land, so prematurely old. In her face was a look of high
unworldliness that marks the mystic, the inheritance from ancestors
bred in a faith impossible without mysticism in the very fibres of the
race. The heroic self-denial, the persistent belief, the noble fidelity
to the ideal which is the salvation of a nation, shine in such a
countenance, and make real the high deeds of a past generation the
narrowness of whose creeds too often blinds us to-day to the greatness
of their character.

She smiled a little on hearing the object of her son's visit.

"I am glad to see you on any terms," she observed, "but I cannot say
that I think your coming very wise."

"But, mother," he urged, "don't you see that it is a matter of so much
importance that we ought not to neglect any chance?"

"My dear boy," questioned she, "do you really think that it is of so
much importance who is bishop?"

"It is of the greatest possible importance," he returned earnestly. "Of
course you don't agree with me as to the importance of forms of
worship, but suppose that it were your own church, and the question
were of having a man put into a place so influential. Wouldn't you be
troubled if one were likely to be chosen who taught what you regarded
as heresy?"

She smiled on him still, but he saw the seriousness in her eyes.

"Yes," she said, "I suppose I should; but doesn't it ever occur to you,
Philip, that we are all too much inclined to feel that everything is
going wrong if Providence doesn't work in our way? We can't help, I
suppose, the habit of regarding our plans as somehow essential to the
proper management of the universe."

He laughed and shook his head.

"You always had a most effective way of taking down my conceit," he
responded. "I don't mean that it is necessary that Father Frontford
shall be bishop because I want him, but"--

"But because you believe in him," his mother interrupted with a little
twinkle in her eye. "Well, we cannot do better than to follow our
convictions, I suppose."

She ended with a sigh, and Philip knew that it was because into her
mind came the sadness she felt at his defection from the faith of his
fathers.

"Yes, you trained me from the cradle to do what I thought right without
considering the consequences."

They fell into more general talk after that; and after the news of the
family and the neighborhood had been pretty well exhausted, Mrs. Ashe
said:--

"I have asked Alice Singleton to make me a visit."

"Alice Singleton! Why, mother, I cannot think of a person I should have
supposed it less likely you would want to stay with you."

"I'm afraid that I don't want her very much; but she wrote me that she
was very lonely, that she hadn't any plans, and that Boston seemed to
her a very homesick place. Her mother was my nearest friend, you know;
and if Alice needs friendship it's very little for me to do for her."

"I didn't know she'd been in Boston," Philip commented thoughtfully.
"She never seemed to me honest, mother. I never could be charitable to
her at all."

The sweet face of his mother took on a curious expression of mingled
amusement and contrition.

"If I must confess it, Phil," she said, "neither could I; and I'm
afraid that there was more notion of doing penance in my asking her
than of real hospitality. She is after all not to blame for her manner,
and no doubt we do her wrong."

"If you have come to doing penance, mother, there's no knowing how soon
you will be with me."

"No, Phil," she answered softly, "do you remember what Monica told her
son? 'Not where he is, shalt thou be, but where thou art he shall be.'"

He shook his head, sighing.

"I ought not to have touched on that matter, mother. You know that I am
trying to follow my conscience."

"Yes, I cling to that. I should be miserable if I did not believe that
your way and my way will come together somewhere, on this side or the
other; and I bid you Godspeed on whatever way you go with prayerful
conviction."

A sudden impulse leaped up within him, and it was almost as if some
voice not his own spoke through his lips, so little was he conscious of
meaning to ask such a question.

"Even if the way led to Home?"

Mrs. Ashe grew paler, but her eyes steadfastly met those of her son.

"I trust you in the hands of God," she said.

Late that night Philip woke from a heavy sleep into which fatigue had
plunged him. He reached out his arm, and drew aside the curtain near
his bed, so that he might see the window of his mother's chamber. A
faint light was shining there; and he knew that the beams of the candle
fell on his mother on her knees.



                        XX


                   IN WAY OF TASTE
                          Troilus and Cressida, iii. 3.


The two deacons were together again in the Clergy House. Maurice
frankly confessed to himself that he did not like it, and he wondered
if Philip were also dissatisfied. It was a question too delicate to
ask, however; and he contented himself with watching his friend to
discover, if possible, whether the stay outside had affected Ashe as it
had him. They returned late in the afternoon, and their greeting was of
the warmest.

"Dear old boy," Maurice cried, "you don't know how glad I am to get at
you again. Where in the world have you kept yourself?"

"Just at the last," Philip responded, "I've been down to Montfield."

"Down home? Have you really? How is everybody? I hope your mother is
well."

"She is very well, and I do not remember anybody that we know who
isn't. I went down to see Mr. Wentworth, and found that he is already
pledged to Mr. Strathmore."

"Is he really? How did that happen?"

"It seems that he is a cousin of that Mrs. Gore where we heard that
heathen, and she is greatly interested in Mr. Strathmore's election.
Mr. Wentworth promised her his vote. How people are carried away by
that man. Mr. Wentworth told me that he looked upon him as the greatest
man in the church to-day."

"It is strange," Maurice assented absently; "but he is a man of great
personal fascination."

"To me," Philip retorted, "he is a whited sepulchre. His doctrine of
mental reservation amounts to nothing less than that a priest is at
liberty to believe anything he pleases if he will only conform
outwardly."

Maurice was secretly much of the same opinion, but they came now to the
dinner table, where silence was the rule. Wynne had a feeling of
dishonesty from the fact that he concealed from his friend that he had
sought an interview with Strathmore, yet he felt that he could not
confess the visit. While they sat at table a brother read aloud, and
the reading chanced to be to-night from the book of Job. The words of
the splendid poem mingled in the mind of Maurice with the most
incongruous and unpriestly thoughts. He chafed at the routine into
which he had fallen as into a pit from which he had once escaped; the
meagre repast seemed to him pitifully poor; and most of all he was
angry with himself that he could not feel joy at his return to the
house which was the symbol of the consecrated work to which he had
given his life. After dinner came an hour and a half of recreation, and
in this he was called to the study of the Father Superior.

"You returned so late in the day," the Father said with a smile, "that
you will not mind giving up recreation to-night. I wish to speak with
you on a matter of importance."

Maurice took the seat toward which the other waved his hand. He felt
alien and strange. He recalled the attitude of submission and reverence
with which he had once been accustomed to enter this room, the respect
with which he had heard every word of the Father; and he blamed himself
bitterly that he now took rather a defensive mood, and felt an
instinctive desire to escape. He reflected that he had been poisoned by
the world; yet he could not wholly shut out the consciousness that he
had no genuine desire to be freed from the sweet madness which had
seized him. He tried to put all thought of these matters by, however,
and to give his whole attention to what the priest might say to him.

"I think that you have met Mrs. Frostwinch," the Father said.

"I went to her house once," Maurice answered, surprised at the remark,
and feeling his pulse quicken at the remembrance of his first sight of
Berenice.

"I remember that you mentioned it in confession," was the grave reply.
"Satan sets his snares in the most unlikely places."

The words seemed almost a reply to Wynne's secret thought. His first
impulse was to resent this open allusion to a sacred confidence
whispered in the confessional. It was like a stab in the back, or a
trick to take unfair advantage; and the matter was made worse by this
allusion to a snare of Satan, which could mean nothing else but
Berenice herself. Maurice flushed hotly, but habit was strong in him,
and he cast down his eyes without reply.

"Have you heard that Mrs. Frostwinch is on her way home?" Father
Frontford went on.

"No."

"It is said that her faith-healing superstition has failed her, and she
is coming home to die."

"To die?" echoed Maurice.

He recalled Mrs. Frostwinch as he had seen her, gracious, high-bred,
apparently brilliantly well; and it appeared monstrously impossible
that death should be near her. She had seemed a woman who would defy
death, and live on simply by her own splendid will.

"So it is said," the Father assured him. "Do you know how important it
is to us to have her influence in the election?"

"I know that there are certain votes that she may influence, and that
she is in"--he almost said "your," but he caught himself in time--"our
interests."

"There are three and perhaps four votes which depend upon her. Three
are sure to go over to the other side if she is not able to stand
behind them. They are all dependent upon her for support in one way or
another."

"But surely," Maurice suggested, "they would not vote
unconscientiously? They wouldn't sell their convictions for her
support?"

"They would not vote unconscientiously," was the dry response, "but
they believe that the support which she gives to them and to their
missions is of more importance than that the man they really prefer
should be chosen."

"But what can be done?"

Father Frontford sat leaning back in his chair, his face in shadow, and
the tips of his thin fingers pressed together in his habitual gesture.

"Perhaps nothing," he answered.

His voice had dropped into a soft, silky half-tone, insinuating and
persuasive. Maurice began to have an uneasy feeling as if he were being
hypnotized; yet the words of the other came to him with a quality
strangely soothing and attractive.

"Perhaps," the priest went on after a pause of a second, "perhaps
everything that is necessary."

It seemed to Maurice that there was something significant in the tone
which the words did not reveal. He looked keenly at the shadowed face,
but without being able clearly to make out its expression. He could see
little but the bright eyes holding and dominating his own.

"It is for you to do this work," Father Frontford continued; "and it is
wonderful how Providence brings good out of all things. Here is an
opportunity for you not only to expiate your fault, but to serve the
cause of the church."

Without understanding, Maurice began to tremble with inner dread lest
the name of Berenice should again be brought up between himself and
this pitiless priest.

"I do not see that there is anything that I can do," he said coldly.

"On the contrary. Do you chance to know anything about the Canton
estate? I suppose you are not likely to."

"Nothing whatever. What is the Canton estate?"

"Mrs. Frostwinch was a Canton. Her father was a brother of old Mrs.
Morison."

Maurice could not see how all this involved him, but he became more and
more uneasy.

"The estate of old Mr. Canton," the Father went on in the same smooth
voice, "was, as I have just learned from Mrs. Wilson, left to his
daughter for life and to her children after her. If she died childless
it was to go to Miss Morison."

"And she is childless?"

"She is childless. If she is taken away now, the property will all be
in the hands of Miss Morison."

There was a moment of stillness in which the thought most insistent in
the mind of Maurice was that in this fortune fate had raised another
wall between himself and Berenice. He spoke to escape the reflection.

"But all this is surely not my concern."

"It is your concern if it shows you a way in which the votes of those
clergymen may be assured, although Mrs. Frostwinch should not recover."

"It shows me no way."

Maurice tried to speak naturally and without evidence of feeling, but
his throat was parched and his heart hot. He hated this inquisition.
The long reverence and admiration which had bound him to the Father
melted to nothing in the twinkling of an eye. Who was this Jesuit that
sat here making of Berenice and her fortune pawns in his game;
involving her in a web of intrigue unworthy of his sacred office; and
forcing his disciple to listen through a knowledge of facts
stammeringly poured out in the confessional? Absence from the Clergy
House and from town, and after that a growing reluctance, had prevented
Maurice from confessing anything beyond his first attraction to Miss
Morison, but he had written to the Father Superior of the accident, and
had mentioned that he was thought to have been of assistance in saving
her. It came to him now that he was being repaid for the accursed
vanity which had led him to make this boast; and he became the more
animated against his director from his anger against himself.

"Whatever Mrs. Frostwinch has done with the property," Father Frontford
said, "of course Miss Morison may do if she pleases."

"I should suppose so; but I know nothing about it."

"Then if Miss Morison will promise to continue the donations of Mrs.
Frostwinch, the position of the beneficiaries will be the same toward
her as toward Mrs. Frostwinch."

Maurice bent forward quickly, unable longer to maintain an appearance
of calm.

"Father Frontford," he exclaimed, "you certainly cannot ask this of
Miss Morison! It would be sheer impertinence! I beg your pardon, but I
cannot help saying it. Besides, there is something horribly
cold-blooded in talking about what shall be done with the property of
Mrs. Frostwinch when she is dead. Miss Morison would not listen to
anything of the sort."

"The circumstances justify what otherwise would be inadmissible. It is
necessary, Mrs. Wilson thinks, to be able to tell those men that their
situation is not changed by the death of Mrs. Frostwinch, which is
almost sure to take place before the convention. You must explain that
to Miss Morison."

"I!"

"The obligation which she is under to you," the Father said, ignoring
the exclamation, "will naturally incline her to listen."

"But I cannot"--

"I had thought that it was mine to decide what you could and should do."

"But, Father, this is so extraordinary, so impossible, so"--

"Miss Morison is to be in Boston in a couple of days. Mrs. Wilson will
let us know when she arrives. I know how strange this looks to you, and
how repugnant it must be. Do you think that it is any less hateful to
me? Do you think that it is easy for me to be working for what is to be
my own personal exaltation if we succeed? I give you my word, Wynne,
that the severest sacrifice that any one can be called on to make in
this matter is that which I make when I take these steps toward putting
myself in office. I am not naturally humble, and it humiliates me to
the very soul; but I do what seems to me to be for the good of the
church, and try to put my personal feeling entirely out of the matter.
It is for you to do the same."

It was impossible for Maurice to doubt the sincerity with which this
was said. He had no answer to give.

"Go now, my son," the Father concluded, "and do not forget to thank God
that the weakness of your heart may be turned into a means by which the
church may be served."

Maurice retired to his room in a whirl of conflicting thoughts. He was
summoned almost immediately to vespers and complines. The familiar
ritual soothed him, and he was able to join in the chants in much the
old way. His feeling was that he would gladly have had the service last
into the night. He would have liked to go on with this half emotional,
half mechanical devotion, which kept him from thinking, and which put
off the dreaded hour when he must face the proposition which had been
made to him.

It was the rule of the house that all the inmates should preserve
unbroken silence among themselves from complines until after nones the
next day. Maurice knew therefore that he was free from intrusion of
human companionship, which it seemed to him he could not have borne.
Even the talk of dear old Phil, to a chat with whom he had looked
forward as the one pleasure in coming back to the Clergy House, would
have been intolerable while this nightmarish trouble lay upon him. He
went at once to his chamber, a cell-like room, and sat down to think.
Could he do it? How would Berenice regard this impertinent interference
with her private affairs? How could he go to her and say: "It is
necessary for church politics that you assume to dispose of the
property which now your cousin holds, and over which you have no rights
until she is in her grave." He could see her eyes sparkle with
indignation and contempt, and he grew hot in anticipation. He could not
do it, he thought over and over. It was impossible that in this age of
the world anybody should dream of having such a thing done. If he were
almost a priest, he told himself fiercely, he had not yet ceased to be
a gentleman!

The stricture which this thought seemed to cast upon the priesthood
made him pause. He had not yet shaken off the dominion of old ideas and
old habits. He apologized to an unseen censor for the apparent
irreverence of his thought. It was not the priesthood, it was--He came
again to a standstill. He was not prepared to own to himself that he
disapproved of the Father Superior. He had vowed obedience, and here he
sat raging against a decree because it sacrificed his personal feelings
to the good of the church. The blame should be upon himself. There was
nothing in all this revolt except his own selfishness and wounded
vanity. He had transgressed by allowing his thoughts to be entangled in
earthly affection, and this misery and wickedness followed inevitably.
The fault was in him entirely; it was his own grievous fault. The
familiar words of the office of confession made him beat his breast,
and fall in prayer before the crucifix which seemed to waver in the
flickering candlelight. He repeated petition after petition. He would
not allow himself to think. It was his to obey, not to question. He
would regain his old tranquillity, his old docility. He would submit
passively. It was his own fault, his most grievous fault.

The ten o'clock bell rang, calling for the extinguishing of lights. He
sprang from his knees, blew out the candle, threw off his clothes in
the dark, and hurried into his hard and narrow bed. He was resolved not
to think. He said the offices of the day; he repeated psalms; and at
last, in desperate attempt to control his mind and to induce sleep, he
began to multiply large numbers. All the time he was resolutely saying
to himself: "It is my fault; my most grievous fault!" And all the time
some inner self, unsubdued, was persistently replying: "It is not! It
is not! I am right!"



                        XXI


                  THIS "WOULD" CHANGES
                          Hamlet, iv. 7.


Maurice woke next morning to a deep sadness, as if some bitter calamity
had befallen. In a moment the conversation of the previous evening
rushed to his mind, and his gloom rather deepened than grew less. The
rising-bell had rung, and he rose languidly in the cold, gray twilight.
So long had he tossed restlessly in the night unsleeping that he felt
worn out and miserable, and after the hours which he had necessarily
kept at the house of his cousin half past five seemed hardly to be day.
He shivered with a discouraged disgust as he made his toilet,
endeavoring to forget.

The routine of the morning followed: meditation, lauds and prayers;
mass; breakfast; prime; then the study hours before luncheon; and so on
to nones. All this time the rule of the house protected him from
speech, but now that the hour for recreation came he was in the midst
of questioning fellow-deacons. They had all so much to tell, however,
of the manner in which they had passed their time during their absence
from the Clergy House that Maurice was able for the most part to listen
instead of speaking. He watched with curiosity to see that they
appeared glad to return to seclusion. They had been troubled by the
sensation of finding themselves out of their accustomed groove, and had
found the world confusing. Most often they seemed to him to have been
oppressed by the need of deciding what they should do, and how they
should meet trifling unforeseen emergencies.

"It is impossible to be spiritually calm except in seclusion," one of
them said.

Involuntarily Maurice looked at the speaker, feeling that this must be
mere cant. It struck him as nonsense, yet one glance at the serene,
honest face of the deacon who spoke, with its tender, candid eyes, like
those of a pure girl, was enough to convince him of the entire
sincerity of the words. He sighed, and turned away; as he did so he
caught the eye of Philip, who was watching him with solicitous
attention. Maurice put his hand on the arm of his friend, and led him
away.

"Why did you look at me that way, Phil?" he asked. "Does it seem to you
that spiritual calm is the best thing in life?"

Ashe was silent a moment. Maurice noted that he looked thinner than of
old, and reproached himself that he had seen so little of his friend
during their absence from the Clergy House.

"I was thinking," Philip replied at length, hesitating and dropping his
voice, "that I feared both you and I had discovered that something more
than seclusion is needed to give it, however good it may be."

Maurice laid his hand on the back of Philip's, grasping it tightly.

"You too?" was his response.

They stood in silence for some moments, looking out of a window over
the dingy back yards which formed the prospect from the rear of the
house. Wynne was wondering how it was that for the first time in his
life it was impossible to be frankly confidential with Philip, and how
far it was probable that his friend would be in sympathy with him in
his trouble. He longed for counsel, and the force of old habit pressed
him to tell everything.

"Phil," he said, "will you go out with me for a walk this afternoon?"

"Of course," Ashe answered. "Don't we always go together?"

Wynne laughed, turning to look at his companion as if from afar.

"I doubt," he observed, "if anything I could tell you directly would
give you so good an idea of how upset I am, and how completely out of
the routine of our life, as the fact that I seem to have forgotten that
there ever were any walks before."

"I am afraid that I am a good deal out of touch with the life here,"
Ashe responded seriously. "I have been troubled, and tempted, and--Oh,
Maurice," he broke off suddenly, "Maynard is right: no spiritual calm
is possible in the world outside!"

"Even if that were true," returned Maurice, "I don't know that I am
prepared to agree that calm is the best thing in life."

"It is the highest thing."

"I don't believe it. It isn't growth."

The bell for study sounded, and ended their talk. Maurice went to his
work uneasy, perhaps a little irritated. He was disquieted that Philip
should be so monastically out of sympathy, and he was annoyed with
himself for being out of key with his friend. He felt as if he had
returned to his old place in the body without being here at all in the
spirit. He had while at Mrs. Staggchase's looked into many books which
in the Clergy House would never have come in his way; he had more than
once been startled to encounter thoughts which had been in his own
mind, but which he had felt it wrong to entertain. Here they were
stated coolly, dispassionately, with no consciousness, apparently, that
they should not be considered with frankness. He had heard opinions and
ideas which from the standpoint of the religious ascetic were not only
heretical but little short of blasphemous, yet they were evidently the
ordinary current thought of the time. It was impossible that these
things should not affect him; and to-day as he sat in lecture he found
himself trying all that was said by a new standard and involuntarily
taking the position of an objector. He was able to see nothing but
flaws in the logic, faults in the deduction, breaks in the argument.

"I am come to that state of mind when I should see a seam in the
seamless robe," he groaned in spirit.

Father Frontford lectured that afternoon on church history. Sometimes
in the long hour Maurice studied the priest, wondering at him, trying
to comprehend the working of his mind. Sometimes he would ask himself
whether it were possible that this man were wholly sincere, whether it
were possible that an intellect so acute could really believe the
things which were the foundation of the teaching of the day; but he
came back always to faith in the complete conviction of the Father.
Maurice, indeed, said to himself that Frontford was quite capable of
taking his spiritual self by the throat and compelling it to believe;
and then the young doubter asked himself if this were the secret of the
faith which showed in every word and look of the speaker. He told
himself that Father Frontford was his Superior, and as such to be
followed, not criticised; he resolved not to think, but endeavored to
give his whole attention to the lecture. Here however he did little
better. The glories of the church upon which the speaker dwelt seemed
to Wynne in his present mood poor and paltry triumphs of dogmatism,--or
even, why not of superstition indeed? He was startled by the sin of his
questioning, yet it seemed impossible to silence the mocking inner
voice.

"This is one of the incidents," he at last became aware that the Father
was saying to close, "which strikingly illustrate the need of implicit
obedience. If the church were a simple organization of man, if it were
for the accomplishment of worldly ends, if its object were the
aggrandizement of individuals, nothing could be more dangerous than the
establishment in it of what seems like arbitrary power. As it is
directed from above; as its aim is nothing less than the spiritual
uplifting of the race; as, indeed, upon it rests the salvation, under
God, of mankind, the case is different. It is necessary that no energy
be lost; that all the power of the church be used to the best
advantage; that the hand assist the head and the head have complete
control of the hand. Obedience is of all the lessons which you have to
learn perhaps the hardest. It is no less one of the most essential. In
an age which is lacking not only in obedience but even in that
reverence upon which obedience must rest, it is for the true priest to
be an example of reverence and obedience alike. Revere and obey, and
you have done noble service."

The deacons buzzed together as they left the lecture-room. They were
but boys after all, and some of them light-hearted enough. Maurice
heard one or two of them commenting upon the lecture or upon
indifferent things. A curly-haired young deacon, a Southerner with the
face of a cherub, was laughing lightly to himself. He was the youngest
of them all, and Maurice had for him that liking which one might have
for a pretty kitten.

"I say, Wynne," he remarked, looking up into the face of the other with
a twinkling eye, "the Dominie gave us a good preachment to-day in
support of his authority. It almost made me resolve to rebel the next
time I was told to do anything."

"Then I suppose that you don't agree with him," Maurice responded
rather absently.

"Oh, it isn't that. I do agree with him. I mean to be a bishop myself
some day, and then the doctrine will come in all right. I'll work it.
Down South we understand that sort of thing better than you do up here."

"Then what did you object to in the lecture?"

"I didn't object to anything; only when anybody proves that you ought
not to do a thing isn't it human nature to want to do it, just for the
fun of it?"

Maurice felt how far from serious was the temper of the boy, and that
it would be utterly unreasonable to expect from him anything like
reverence. "Then how do you expect anybody to hold to the doctrine of
implicit obedience?" he questioned, smiling.

"Oh, everybody expects to wield the authority sometime," was the light
answer. "Nobody'd hold to it otherwise."

Maurice instinctively glanced at Ashe. In Philip's pale, enrapt face
was an expression of self-surrender which made Wynne feel how
completely the teaching to which they had just listened must appeal to
the temperament of his friend.

"To obey for the sake of obeying is precisely what Phil would delight
in," he thought. "How entirely different we are! Yet if it hadn't been
for him I should never have come here. Haven't I strength enough to
follow my own convictions?"

The hour for walking was four, and a few minutes after the clocks had
struck, Maurice and Philip started out. It was a dull and lowering
afternoon, and the narrow, street was already gloomy with shadows. Half
unconsciously Wynne found himself casting about in his mind for topics
of conversation which should be free from the personal element. Now
that the time for confidences had come, he shrank from words. He
reproached himself, and then half peevishly thought: "I seem nowadays
to do nothing but to find fault with myself for things that I can't
help feeling!"

"I am glad Father Frontford said what he did today," Ashe remarked
after they had walked in silence for a little. "It was just what I
needed. I've got so in the habit of following my own will since we have
been out in the world that I needed to be reminded that there is
something better."

Maurice felt a faint irritation that the talk was begun in precisely
the key he would most gladly have avoided, but honesty would not let
him be silent.

"I am afraid, Phil," he said, "that I'm not entirely in sympathy with
you. I didn't like the lecture. Since we are given will and reason, I
believe that it was intended that we should use them."

"Of course. If I had no reason, how could I bring myself to give up my
own will to one that I know to be higher?"

Maurice smiled unhappily.

"Well," was his answer, "when you begin with a paradox like that it is
evident that I couldn't go on without getting into a discussion darker
than the darkness of Egypt. I'd rather just talk about common everyday
things. Where shall we go?"

"I want to go to the North End. There is an old woman there that I
thought of visiting. I had trouble with her husband the other day; he
threw her down and hurt her."

"What sort of trouble?"

"He struck me, and we had a sort of struggle. He wasn't sober."

"Were you on the street?"

"No; in his room. I--I broke in."

"Broke in?"

"Yes." Ashe hesitated, and then added: "Mrs. Fenton was there, and he
tried to rob her."

"Mrs. Fenton? Why didn't you tell me about it? When was it?"

"The day before I went down home. You weren't here, you know. There was
not much to tell."

Maurice questioned eagerly, and his friend related briefly what had
happened.

"Why, Phil, you're a hero!" Wynne exclaimed. "You've quite taken the
wind out of my sails. I counted for something of an adventurer simply
by having been in a smash-up; but you rushed in and had a real
adventure. I never thought of you as a defender of dames."

The other turned toward him a face contracted with a look of pain.

"Don't, Maurice," he protested. "I can't joke about it. It was not
anything to be proud of; and nobody knows better than I how far I am
from being a hero."

"Oh, you're modest, of course. That's like you; but I call it stunning.
Mrs. Fenton must have admired you tremendously."

"Do you suppose she did?" Philip demanded impetuously. Then his voice
altered. "Oh, she knows me too well!" he added.

The intense bitterness of his tone gave Maurice a shock.

"Phil!" cried he.

His companion apparently understood the thought which lay behind the
exclamation. He dropped his head, and for a little distance they walked
in silence.

"I may as well tell you," Ashe said in a moment. "It is true, what you
guess. I--I have been thinking of her more than was right. That is one
reason why I am glad to get back to the Clergy House."

"To give her up?"

"She was not mine to give up."

"But do you mean not to try to--Oh, Phil, doesn't it ever come to you
that all this monkish business is a mistake? We were a couple of
foolish boys that didn't know what we were about when we went into it;
and"--

Ashe turned and looked at him with eyes full of reproach, and of almost
despairing determination.

"Is that the way you help me?" he asked.

Maurice drew a long, deep breath, and set his strong jaw with a resolve
not to abandon so easily the endeavor to bring his friend out of his
trouble. It hardly occurred to him for the moment that it was his own
cause that he was defending.

"Phil," he persisted, "isn't it possible that after all we may be wrong
in making ourselves wiser than the church by taking vows that are not
required?"

"Do you suppose that the devil has forgotten to say that to me over and
over again?" was the response.

"Meaning that I am the old gentleman?" Maurice retorted, trying to be
lightsome.

"Oh, don't joke. I can't stand it. I've been through so much, and this
is so terrible a thing to bear anyway."

Wynne seized his rosary with one hand, and struck it across the other
so hard that the corner of the crucifix wounded his finger.

"Phil, old fellow," he said gravely, "I never felt less like joking. It
cuts me to the quick to see you suffer; and I know how hard you will
take this. I know what it is, for I'm going through the same thing
myself, and I've about made up my mind that we are wrong. I begin to
think that celibacy is only a device that the early church somehow got
into when it was necessary to hold complete authority over the priest,
or when men thought that it was. It belongs to the Middle Ages; not to
the nineteenth century."

"Then you don't see how marriage would be sure to interfere with a
man's zeal for his work?"

"But it would certainly bring him into closer sympathy with humanity."

Ashe shook his head.

"You don't seem to realize," he said with a certain doggedness which
Wynne had seldom seen in him, "how it must absorb a man, and take
possession of his very reason. Why, see me. I know it is a sin to think
of her, and yet"--He broke off and choked. "Besides," he resumed
presently, "you say yourself that you feel as I do, and that means that
you are not looking at the thing fairly. You are trying to make your
conscience come round to the side of your desires."

They walked on up the dingy street into which they had come, and for
some time nothing more was said. Maurice recognized that it was idle to
attempt to reply to the charge of his companion. He had made it to
himself and succumbed to it; but now that another stated it, he
instinctively found himself refusing to yield. He repeated to himself
that he was not trying to befool his conscience, but merely acting with
human sanity.

Presently they came into a dusky court, and crossing it, found
themselves at the door of an ill-smelling tenement house. Here Ashe
turned suddenly, and faced his friend, his face full of strange
excitement.

"Do you suppose," he said, in a voice which, though low, was full of
feeling, "that I do not know how absorbing a thing it is to give up
life to a woman? Here I am, when she is nothing to me, when I do not
mean ever to see her again, going into this place simply because here
she was half a minute in my arms, because here for two minutes she
looked at me as her preserver. It is sin, and I know it; but it is too
strong for me."

"But, Phil," Maurice exclaimed in astonishment, "there is surely no
harm in going to see a sick woman."

The other laughed bitterly.

"So I told myself, and so I kept saying over and over till the talk
we've had forced me to stop lying to myself. I'm not going to see a
sick woman. I'm going to stand where she stood that day."

"If you feel that way about it," Maurice said, putting his hand on the
other's arm, "you ought not to go in."

"I will go in."

"But obedience, Phil. Think what you were saying about the lecture."

"Nobody has forbidden me," Ashe responded defiantly. "I will go in. I
had made up my mind before I came. Oh, I shall do penance enough for
it; you need not be afraid of that. I shall suffer enough for it."

He started up the stairs, and Maurice followed blindly, full of
sympathy and dismay.



                        XXII


                   THE BITTER PAST
                           All's Well that Ends Well, v. 3.


They found the old woman in bed, attended by a slatternly half-grown
girl, who was reading by the dying light a torn and dirty illustrated
paper. There was little furniture in the chamber; merely the frowsy
bed, a bare table, a single broken chair besides the one in which the
girl was sitting. The floor was bare and dirty; one of the window-panes
was broken and stuffed with a bundle of paper. There were a rusty
stove, a few dishes on the shelf, a kettle and a tin tea-pot. On the
window-sill by the bed were a medicine bottle and a cup.

"How do you do, Mrs. Murphy?" Ashe asked. "Are you any better to-day?"

"No better, thank yer riverince. I'll never be better again. My back is
broke, and the pain in me is like purgatory already."

The slatternly girl laid her paper on her knees, but she neither rose
nor spoke. To Maurice she seemed to have an air of contempt.

"I am sorry to hear it, Mrs. Murphy," said Ashe. "I thought that I
would drop in and ask after you."

Maurice involuntarily glanced at him, surprised by the indifference of
the tone. Enlightened by the passionate words which had been spoken
below, he could see that Philip was preoccupied, and gave to the sick
woman no more than the barest semblance of attention. Ashe mechanically
inquired about Mrs. Murphy's wants, his thin cheeks glowing and his
eyes wandering about the room. He was apparently reacting the scene of
the fight, and presently he made a step or two backward, so that he
stood near the middle of the chamber. Here he took his stand, and
seemed to become lost in reverie.

"Might as well set," remarked the girl, looking toward the unoccupied
chair.

Maurice made a slight gesture inviting Philip to the seat; but Philip
remained where he was. Wynne realized that his companion must be
standing where he had supported Mrs. Fenton in his arms; and so
touching was the expression of Ashe's face that he felt his throat
contract. He turned away and looked out of the dim window over the
chimney-pots and the irregular roofs.

"I'm used to falls," the sick woman said. "I've had plenty of 'em. I
left a good home and them as was good to me, to be beat and starved,
and murdered in the end. Women are all like that. If a man asks 'em,
they're always ready to cut their own throats. Sorry was the day for me
I ever left old Miss Hannah."

Maurice turned toward the bed, his attention suddenly arrested. The
name was that by which his aunt had usually been called, and he seemed
to perceive in the talk of the woman something familiar. The
possibility that this battered old creature might be his nurse came to
him with a shock, so broken, so altered, so degraded was she; and as he
looked at her he rejected the idea as preposterous.

"But your husband will be punished for his brutality," Ashe remarked
absently.

He spoke like a man in a dream, as if his whole intent were fixed upon
something so widely apart from the present that he hardly knew what was
passing about him.

"Who wants him punished?" cried out the sick woman with sudden shrill
vehemence. "That's what you rich folks are always after. Who asked the
lady to come here with her purse in her hand to tempt him when he
wasn't himself to know what he was doing? First you get him into a
scrape, and then you punish him for it! What for do I want Tim shut up
and me left to starve in me bed? If Tim's a little pleasant when he's
had a drop more'n would be handy for a priest, whose business is it but
mine? It's little comfort he gets, poor man; and he only takes what he
can get to keep up his spirits in these poor times, and me sick and
can't do for him."

"That's what I say too, Mrs. Murphy," the slatternly girl aroused
herself to interpose. "Them as never had no hard times in their lives
is always ready to jump on a poor man when he's down."

Maurice began to feel as if he were entangled in a strange and uncanny
dream. Philip seemed more and more to retire within himself, and Wynne
felt that he must do something to attract attention from his friend's
conduct.

"We haven't anything to do with punishment, Mrs. Murphy," he said
soothingly, coming forward as he spoke. "We came only to see if there
is anything we can do to make you more comfortable."

The old woman answered nothing, but she stared at him with wild eyes.

"We may be able to make you more easy," he went on cheerfully, "if we
can't fix things for you just as they were at Aunt Hannah's."

He used the name half unconsciously as the result of the suggestion of
old association and half with an impulse to prove the faint possibility
that this might be Norah Dolen. As he spoke Mrs. Murphy raised herself
on one elbow, stretching out a lean hand convulsively toward him.

"Master Maurice!" she cried. "Holy Mother of Heaven, is it yourself?"

He went to her quickly, and took the outstretched hand.

"Yes, Norah. It is I."

She gazed at him a moment with haggard eyes, and then a look of deep
tenderness came into the worn old face.

"Blessed be the saints!" she murmured. "It's me own boy!"

She drew her hand out of his grasp to stroke his arm and the folds of
his cassock. He sat down by her on the bed, and she fell back upon the
dingy pillow, breaking into hysterical tears. She caught one of his
hands and carried it to her lips, kissing it in a sort of rapture.

"My own baby," she chuckled. "My Master Maurice so big and fine! I
always said you'd be taller than Master John."

The allusion to his half-brother, dead nearly a dozen years, seemed to
carry him back into a past so remote that he could hardly remember it.
He smiled at Norah's enthusiasm, more moved by it than he cared to show.

"I've had time to grow big since you deserted us, Norah."

A look of terror came into her face.

"It wasn't my fault," she gasped, sobbing between her words. "Don't
believe it against me, me darling. I never went to hurt old Miss Hannah
in me life, and the saints knows how she died."

"I never laid any blame on you," he answered. "I knew you wouldn't hurt
a fly."

She broke into painful, hysterical laughter.

"No more I wouldn't. To think it's me own baby boy that I've carried in
me arms, and him a priest!"

The attendant, who had been watching in stupid and undisguised
curiosity, gave an audible sniff.

"Oh, he ain't a real priest," she interrupted with brutal candor.
"They're just fakes. They ain't even Catholics."

A pang of irritation shot through Maurice at the girl's words, but his
sense of humor asserted itself, and helped him to smile at his own
weakness.

"But, Norah," he said, ignoring the taunt, "I want to know about
yourself. We've often tried to find you," he added, a sudden perception
of the possible importance of this recognition coming into his mind.
"You know we depended on you to tell us a lot of things at the time of
Aunt Hannah's death."

"He told me you'd be after me," Norah exclaimed with rising excitement.
"He said you'd be laying it to me; but, Master Maurice, by the Mother
of Mercy, I never"--

"I know that," he interrupted, to check her excitement; "but why did
you go off in that way?"

"She told me to go. She ordered me out of the house like a dog, just
because I wouldn't give up Tim when she'd accidentally seen him when
he'd had one drop more than the full of him,--and any poor body might
take a wee drop more'n he meant to take beforehand. She was that hot in
her way when her temper was up, rest her soul,--and that nobody knows
better than yourself,--that the devil himself couldn't hold her with a
pair of red-hot tongs,--saving the presence of your riverinces for
mentioning the Old Gentleman."

Her momentary discomposure at having mentioned the arch fiend in the
presence of those who were his professional enemies gave Wynne a chance
to interpolate a question. He could easily understand that the violent
excitement of a quarrel with her old servant might account for the
sudden death of his aunt. He perceived in a flash how Norah, terrified
by the newspaper reports which had openly accused her of making way
with her mistress, would without difficulty be induced by her husband
to conceal herself. The matter to him most important, however, had not
yet been touched upon.

"But what became of her will?" he asked. "You told me she made a new
one."

"She did that, Master Maurice. Wasn't I night and day telling her she'd
treated you scandalous, and upside down of all reason; and didn't she
send for old Burnham, with the squinchy eyes and the wife that had a
wart on her nose, and have it all writ over."

"So he said. But what became of it?"

"Ain't you ever had it?"

"No; we could never find it."

"Why didn't you look under the bottom of her little desk?" Mrs. Murphy
demanded in much excitement.

"Under the bottom of her desk?" he repeated.

"The double bottom. The little traveling-desk with the little pictures
on the corners. She was that contrary that she wasn't willing you
should find it all fair and open. She wanted to tease you a while
before you found out she'd changed her mind and give in."

"Maurice," Ashe broke in, "we have overstayed our time."

Wynne rose at once, the habit of obedience being strong. Mrs. Murphy
clung to his hand, mumbling over it with tears of delight, and could
hardly be persuaded to let them go. It was only when he had promised to
return on the next day, and the slatternly girl had peremptorily
ordered her patient to lie down and stop acting like a buzz-headed
fool, that he escaped. He hurried down the dark stairway and out of the
house with a step to which excitement lent speed, while Philip followed
in silence.

As they were leaving the court they encountered a middle-aged priest,
evidently an Irishman, with a kindly face and a bright eye.

"Can you tell me," he asked in a rich brogue, greeting them in friendly
fashion, "where Mrs. Tim Murphy lives?"

"In the house we came out of," Maurice answered. "She's on the fifth
floor, at the front."

The priest regarded him with some surprise in his look, and something,
too, of uncertainty.

"You haven't been there, have you?" he asked.

"Yes; we've just come from her place."

"Then perhaps she won't want me," the priest remarked. "It'll save me a
good bit of a climb."

"But we went only as friends," Maurice explained. "She might wish the
consolations of religion."

"Then you did not"--

"We are not of your church," Maurice interrupted, flushing.

The priest looked at them with a puzzled air.

"But surely," he said, "you are Catholic. Haven't you been to me at the
confession?"

Maurice had not at first recognized the priest to whom he had been in
the habit of confessing at St. Eulalia, but he had known him before
this announcement made Philip stare at him with a face of astonishment.

"Yes," he responded steadily. "I have confessed to you at St. Eulalia,
but I am not of your communion."

He turned, and walked away quickly, not looking at Phil. He resolved
not to bother his head about this unchancy encounter. It was awkward,
and the fact that he had never confided in Ashe seemed to give to these
visits to St. Eulalia an air almost of under-handedness; but there was
nothing wrong, he told himself, and he would not be vexed at this
moment when he was full of delight at the probability of discovering
the missing will. He was certainly in no danger of becoming a Catholic.
He smiled to think how little likely he was to exchange the too strict
rule of the Clergy House for one which might be more rigid still. The
keen thought now was the remembrance of the wealth which he hoped soon
to possess.

"Phil, old man," he said joyously, "I believe I shall get Aunt Hannah's
money after all. I always felt that it belonged to me."

"Yes," Ashe replied, so dully that Maurice turned to him quickly.

"Come, Phil, don't answer me like that. What are you moping about?"

There was no answer for a moment. Maurice, full of a fresh vigor born
of the discovery of the afternoon, was yet rebuked by the silence of
his friend.

"Of course, Phil," he went on, "you know I don't mean anything unkind.
I am no end obliged to you for taking me there this afternoon. When we
go tomorrow"--

"I shall never go there again," Ashe interrupted.

"Nonsense! Why not?"

"I went to-day to say good-by to my sinful folly. I shall not go again."

A prickling irritation began to make itself felt in the mind of
Maurice. Even so slight a contact with the material realities of life
as this interest in the will had put him completely out of tune with
the monkish mood.

"Oh, stuff, Phil!" he exclaimed. "For heaven's sake don't be so morbid.
You talk like a mediæval anchorite."

Ashe regarded him with a look of pain.

"It doesn't seem possible that this is you, Maurice."

"It is I," was the sturdy answer; "and it is I in a sane frame of mind,
old fellow. Come, it's no sin to be human; and as far as I can see
that's the only fault you've committed."

"Maurice," Ashe retorted in a voice of intense feeling, "have you
thrown away everything that we believe? Aren't you with us any more?"

The pronoun which seemed to separate him from the company to which his
friend belonged struck harshly on Maurice's ear. He felt himself being
forced to define for Philip thoughts which he had thus far declined to
define for himself.

"Phil," he said determinedly, "I insist that your way of looking at
this whole matter is morbid; and I won't get into a discussion with
you. I'm in too good spirits to let you upset them. To think I shall
get my property after all."

"But our lives are devoted to poverty."

Maurice turned upon his friend, more exasperated than he had ever been
with him before in the whole course of their lives.

"Look here, Phil," he declared, "if you want to be as mopish as a
mildewed owl yourself, that is no reason why you should try to make me
so too."

There was no response to this, and in silence they went toward the
Clergy House. Just as they reached the door, Maurice turned quickly and
held out his hand to his friend. Ashe grasped it so hard that it ached;
and Maurice went to his room with a sigh on his lips, while in his
heart he said to himself, "Poor Philip!"

Maurice went next day to see Mrs. Murphy, and for a number of days
thereafter. Norah was sinking, and clung to him with pathetic
tenderness. He learned not much more about the will. She was sure that
it had been concealed under the false bottom of a little traveling-desk
which he remembered, but beyond that she knew nothing. Maurice wrote to
Mr. Burnham, the family lawyer, and the question now was, what had
become of the desk? The effects of the testator had been sold at
auction, but as they had been largely bought by relatives, Maurice
believed that it would not be difficult to trace the missing document.

The interest and excitement of this new business so occupied the
thoughts of Maurice that he almost ceased to think of religious
matters. Perhaps there was more danger to his monastic profession in
this indifference than in the most poignant doubt. He went through his
duties at the Clergy House cheerfully because he thought little about
them. They were part of the routine of life, and when the hour for
recreation came he laid all that aside. He even on one occasion wrote a
hurried note to Mr. Burnham in the hour for meditation, and it amazed
him when he thought of it that his conscience did not protest. He
reflected with a certain naive pleasure that it was possible after all
to modify the strict rules of the house without suffering undue
contrition afterward. The discovery might have seemed to Father
Frontford a dangerous one.



                     XXIII


                       THIS DEED UNSHAPES ME
                        Measure for Measure, iv. 4.


So much was Maurice absorbed in his thought of the will and his
inquiries after it that he gave little consideration to the disquieting
plan of Father Frontford for the securing of Miss Morison's cooperation
in the election schemes. Several days having gone by without farther
allusion to the matter, he decided that his remonstrances had been
effective, and was greatly relieved to be freed from a task so
repugnant under any circumstances and made intolerable by his feeling
for Berenice. It was with a most painful shock, therefore, that he one
day received from the Father the information that Miss Morison had
returned to Boston. He met the Father Superior in the hall one morning
after matins, and although it was a silent hour the latter spoke.

"It is better to see her at once," he added. "Mrs. Frostwinch is very
low, and the sooner the thing is settled the better."

"But," stammered Maurice, "I"--

"I think," the other went on, ignoring the interruption, "that it will
be best for you to call on her this afternoon at exercise hour. She is
likely to be at home then, and it will be rather early for other
visitors."

Maurice struggled with himself, endeavoring to shake off the influence
which this man always exercised over him. He determined to speak, and
to decline the hateful errand.

"Father Frontford," he said with an effort, "I cannot undertake this."

"My son," the other responded with gentle severity, "you forget that
this is a silent hour. Although I may speak to you on affairs
concerning the church, that does not give you the right to answer
irrelevantly."

"It is not irrelevantly," Maurice protested, feeling his growing
irritation strengthen his resolve. "I"--

The voice of the old priest was more stern as he interrupted.

"You seem to forget entirely your vow of obedience. There is little
merit," he added, his tone softening persuasively, "in service which is
easy and pleasant. It is in the sacrifice of self and our own
inclinations that we gain the conquest of self. Go, my son, and pray to
be forgiven for pride and insubordination. Do you think that you would
be objecting if it were not for the wound to your vanity which this
work inflicts? You may repeat ten _paters_ for having violated the rule
of silence."

Maurice moved away, feeling that he dared not trust himself to speak
again. To be thus treated like a willful child galled his pride and
quickened all the obstinacy of his nature.

"The rule of silence!" he said to himself angrily as he went. "Are we
in the Middle Ages?"

It came to him as a sort of jeer from an outside intelligence that
after all they were trying to ape mediaeval discipline. He had been for
weeks coming to the point where the whole monastic life seemed to him
fantastic and theatrical; and now that his personal liberty was so
sharply assailed, his self-respect so threatened, he was prepared to
see everything in the most unfavorable light. He laughed bitterly in
his mind at the tangle he was in, and contempt for himself and for the
community took hold of his very soul.

Yet he was not ready to throw off allegiance. The bonds of habit are
strong; the power of old belief is stronger; and strongest of all is
that vanity which holds a man back from the avowal that he has been
mistaken in his most ardent professions. It is one thing to change a
conviction; it is quite another to acknowledge that a belief formerly
upheld with ardor is now outgrown. It is not simply the ignoble shame
of fearing the opinion of others that is involved in such a case, but
that of losing confidence in one's own judgment, of standing convicted
of error in that inner court of consciousness where all disguises are
stripped away and all excuses vain. To see that even the most
passionate conviction may have been mistaken is to feel profound and
disquieting doubt of all that human faith may compass; it is to seem to
be helpless in the midst of baffling and sphinx-like perplexities.
Maurice was already at the point where he could hardly be regarded as
holding his old opinions, but he had not reached that of being ready to
confess that he had been wrong in a matter so vital that error in it
would involve the whole reordering of his life and leave him with no
standards of faith.

He was, moreover, noble in his impulses, and he had too long been bred
in introspection not to perceive now that he was greatly influenced by
his inclinations. He was too honest not to be aware that there was as
much passion as reason in his revulsion from the monastic life, and
that Berenice Morison's perfections weighed as heavily in the scale as
any shortcomings of theology. He reproached himself stoutly, in
thoroughly monkish fashion, and ended by resolving that obedience was a
duty; that the errand on which he was sent was one which would abase
his sinful pride and must be executed for the benefiting of his
spiritual condition.

He said this to himself sincerely, yet he was human, and behind all was
the consciousness that in this bad business there was at least the
consolation that he should be face to face with Berenice. If
humiliation was doubly bitter by being wrought through his love, at
least his love might find some scanty comfort in the very means of his
humiliation.

When the hour for exercise, four in the afternoon, came, Maurice set
out on his mission. He had blushed at himself in the mirror for the
solicitude with which he regarded his image, but he had tried to
believe that this arose only from a disinterested anxiety to appear at
his best in behalf of the object which he was sent to accomplish.

Miss Morison was living with Mrs. Frostwinch, and as Maurice walked
buoyantly along, forgetting his errand and only remembering that he was
to see her, he recalled how on the day when they had first met he had
walked home with her from Mrs. Gore's. He recalled the pretty, willful
turn of her head and the saucy side-glance of her eyes, the proud curve
of her neck, the color on her cheeks delicate as the first
peach-blossom in spring. That he had no right thus to be thinking of a
woman perhaps added a certain piquancy to his thought; but he quieted
his conscience with the reflection that he was in the path of duty, and
of a duty, moreover, which was likely to prove sufficiently hard and
humiliating.

Miss Morison was at home, and would see Mr. Wynne.

The high reception room in which he waited for her had a gloomy
formality, a sort of petrified respectability, most discouraging. On
the wall was a large painting, evidently a copy from some famous
original, although Maurice did not know what. The picture represented a
painter with a model in the dress of a nun. The artist was evidently
engaged in painting a saint for some convent, a beautiful sister had
been chosen as his model, and he was improving the opportunity to make
love to her. Her reluctant and remorseful yielding was evident in every
line of her figure as she allowed the painter to steal his arm around
her waist and bend his lips toward hers. Wynne looked at the picture
with vague disquiet. Here was the struggle of the natural human impulse
against the constraint of ascetic vows; the irresistible yielding to
nature and to the call of a passion interwoven with the very fibres of
humanity. The sombre Boston parlor vanished, and he seemed to be in
some old-world nunnery with the unknown lovers. He felt all their
guilty bliss and their scalding remorse. He sighed so deeply that the
soft laugh behind him seemed almost an echo. Turning quickly, he found
Berenice watching him with a teasing smile on her lips.

"I beg your pardon for startling you," she said, holding out her hand,
"but you were so absorbed in Filippo and his Lucretia that you paid no
attention to me."

"I beg your pardon," he responded, taking her hand cordially. "I was
looking at the picture and wondering what it represented."

"It is that reprobate Filippo Lippi and Lucretia Buti, the nun that he
ran away with. Why it pleased the fancy of my grandfather, I'm sure I
can't imagine. Sit down, please. It is a long time since I have seen
you, and now that Lent is coming, I suppose that you will be lost to
the world altogether."

He sat down facing her, but he did not answer. His voice had deserted
him, and his ideas had vexatiously scattered like frightened wild
geese. He looked at her, beautiful, witching, full of smiles; then
without knowing exactly why he did so, he turned and looked again at
the Lucretia. Berenice laughed frankly.

"Are you comparing us?" she asked gayly. "Or are you trying to decide
what I would have done in her case? I can tell you that."

"What would you have done?"

"Done? I would have run away from him and the convent both! Do you
think I was made to be cooped up in a nunnery if I could escape?"

"No," he answered with fervor, "you were certainly not made for that."

"That is an unclerical answer from a monk."

"I am not a monk."

She put her head a little on one side with delicious coquetry.

"Would it be rude to ask what you are, then?"

He regarded her a moment, and then with explosive vehemence he broke
out:--

"I am a deacon who has not taken the vows, and I am a man who loves you
with his whole soul!"

She paled, and then flushed to her temples. She cast her eyes down, and
seemed to be struggling for self-control. He did not offer to touch
her, although his throat contracted with the intensity of his effort to
maintain his outward calm. Then she looked up with a smile light and
cold.

"We are not called upon to play Filippo and Lucretia in reversed
parts," she said. "I am not trying to tempt you away from your calling.
Wouldn't it be better to talk about the weather?"

He was unable to answer her, but sat staring with hot eyes into her
face, feeling its beauty like a pain.

"It has been very cold for the season during the past week," she went
on.

"Miss Morison," he retorted hotly, "I had no right to say that, but you
needn't insult me. It is cruel enough as it is."

Her face softened a little, but she ignored his words.

"Tell me," she remarked, as if more personal subjects had not come into
the conversation, "what are the chances of the election? I hear so many
things said that I have ceased to have any clear ideas on the subject
at all."

Maurice sat upright, throwing back his shoulders. This girl should not
get the better of him. He lifted his head, his nostrils distending.

"It is too soon to speak with certainty," he responded; "but it is in
regard to that that I came--that I was sent to see you this afternoon.
We are under vows of obedience at the Clergy House."

He said this defiantly, fancying he saw in her face a smile at the idea
of his servitude.

"You will regard what I say as the words of a messenger."

"All?" she interrupted.

He flushed with confusion, but he was determined that he would not
again lose control of himself.

"All that I _shall_ say," he responded. "What I have said is to be
forgotten."

"By me or by you?" she asked, dimpling into a smile so provoking that
he had to look away from her or he should have given in.

"By you," was his reply; but he could not help adding under his breath:
"If you wish to forget it."

She laughed outright.

"I will consider the matter. But this errand from the powers that be at
the Clergy House; I am curious about that."

"You will remember," he urged, his face falling, "that it is only a
message for which I have no responsibility."

"Certainly; although you would of course bring no message of which you
didn't approve."

"I am not asked whether I approve or disapprove. It is the decision of
the Father Superior that it should be said; and that is the whole of
it."

"Well," she inquired, as he paused, unable to go on, "after this
tremendous preamble, what is it?"

It seemed to Maurice that he could not say it; but he cleared his
throat, and forced himself to look her in the face.

"It has to do with your inheritance of the--your inheritance through
Mrs. Frostwinch."

"My inheritance? What do you mean?" she demanded, suddenly becoming
grave.

As briefly as possible he explained to her the errand which had been
given to him. He could see indignation gathering in her look.

"But who has told Father Frontford that Mrs. Frostwinch is so ill?" she
broke out at last. "Cousin Anna is not so well since she came from the
South, but that is all. It is shameful to be speculating on her death
and disposing of her property as if she were buried already! I wonder
at you!"

Wynne smiled bitterly.

"I have already said that I had nothing whatever to do with the
matter," he answered.

"You had no right to come to me with such a message. It puts me in the
position of waiting for her death! Oh, it's an insult! It's an insult
to me and to Cousin Anna! What will she think?"

"She will think nothing," he said, roused by a sense of her injustice,
"because she will never know."

"Why will she not?"

"Because if it is cruel for me to say a thing which harms nobody except
me for bringing the message, it would be a thousand times more cruel
for you to tell your cousin that her death was counted on."

He rose as he spoke, and stood looking down on her with the full
purpose of constraining her to his will. She sprang up in her turn.

"Very well; I will not tell her. You may say to Father Frontford from
me that it will be time enough for him to undertake the disposal of my
property when it is mine. I thank him for his officiousness!"

"You are unjust to Father Frontford. I have made his wish seem
offensive by the way I have put it, I suppose. At any rate, he is
simply seeking the good of the church."

"And to have himself made bishop."

"He would vote to-morrow for any man that he thought would do better
than he can do. He would support Mr. Strathmore himself if he believed
it well for the church. I do not find myself in sympathy with
everything that he does, but I know him, and of one thing I am sure: he
would be burned alive in slow fires to advance the good of the church."

She looked at him curiously. Then she turned away in seeming
carelessness, and began to arrange some pink roses which stood in a big
vase on a table near at hand.

"Good-by," he said. "I am sorry to have offended you."

"Must you go?" responded she with a society manner which cut him to the
quick. "Let me give you a rose."

She broke one off, and handed it to him. He took it awkwardly, wholly
at a loss to understand her.

"They are lovely, aren't they?" she said. "Mr. Stanford sent them to me
this morning."

He looked at her until her eyes fell. Then he laid the rose on the
table near the hand which had given it to him, and without further
speech went out.



                      XXIV


     FAREWELL AT ONCE, FOR ONCE, FOR ALL, AND EVER
                         Richard II., ii. 2.


Although Ashe had said that he should not go again to the
poverty-stricken dwelling of Mrs. Murphy, he found himself a few days
later beside her bed. Word had been brought to him that she was dying,
and that she begged to see him before her death. There was no resisting
a call like this, and on a gloomy afternoon he had gone down to the
dingy court, torn by memories and worn with inward struggles.

He found the old woman almost speechless with weakness. The room was
more comfortable, and he knew that Maurice had been at work. The
slatternly girl was in attendance, and there was also the
pleasant-faced priest whom Philip and Maurice had encountered in the
court. The priest had come with an acolyte to administer the last
rites, and the woman had made her confession. So intent, however, was
Mrs. Murphy upon the purpose for which she had summoned Ashe that she
cried out to him as he entered, and apparently for the moment forgot
all else.

Ashe looked at the priest in apology, but the latter said kindly:--

"Let her speak to you, and then she will be done with things of this
earth."

It was the safety of her husband for which the poor creature was
concerned. It was on her mind that Ashe and Mrs. Fenton could save him
from punishment if they chose. She pleaded piteously with Philip to
have the prisoner set free.

"He'll be all alone of me," she moaned. "That'll be more punishment
than you're thinking, your riverince. He'll come out of jail sober, and
he'll remember how he had me to do for him night and day these long
years. He'll not be liking that, your riverince; and he'll be uneasy to
think maybe he had some small thing to do with it himself. Not that I
say he did," she added hastily. "His little fun wouldn't be the cause
of harm to me as is used to his ways, but maybe he'll be after thinking
so. It's the fever I have, from poor living, and maybe from being so
long without Tim and worrying the heart out of my body for him, and he
there in jail. Only if you'll promise to let him go, you and the sweet
lady that very likely didn't know his pleasant ways when he had a drop
too much, you'd make it easier dying without him."

She gasped out her words as if every syllable were an effort, her eyes
appealing with a wildness which touched his heart. The girl went to the
bed and leaned over, taking in hers the thin, withered hand.

"There, there, Mrs. Murphy," she said, "of course the gentleman'll do
it. He couldn't have the heart to resist your dying prayer."

"I am ready to do all I can, Mrs. Murphy," Philip stammered, struggling
with his conscience to promise as much as he could; "and I'll see Mrs.
Fenton. I'm sure she won't wish to have anything done that you would
not like."

The sick woman burst into weak tears, stammering half inarticulate
blessings.

"I don't know," Philip began, feeling that it was not honest to give
her the impression that he could set her husband free, "how much"--

The priest crossed to him and laid a hand quickly on his shoulder.

"Whist!" he said in Philip's ear. "There's no need of troubling her
with that. You'll do what you can, and the rest's with heaven that is
good to the poor."

Mrs. Murphy had not heard or heeded what Ashe said, and still mumbled
her thanks while the Father prepared to administer the viaticum. The
acolyte and the girl looked at Ashe as if expecting him to withdraw.

"May I remain?" Philip asked, looking at the priest with deep feeling.

The other regarded him benignly.

"Remain, my brother; and may the Holy Virgin bless the sacrament to
your soul as well as to hers."

Ashe could not have told why he had yielded to the impulse to stay. He
had for months been coming more and more to feel that the church of
Rome was his true refuge, yet he hardly now dared confess this to
himself. He had been deeply affected by the discovery that Maurice had
been to confession at St. Eulalia, and he longed himself to follow the
example of his friend. To Ashe, however, it seemed like trifling with
sacred things, and he could not do it. Now as he knelt on the unclean
and uneven floor of that sordid chamber he experienced a peace and a
security such as he had never before known. He was moved almost to
tears; yet he would not yield.

"It is not Rome," he insisted to himself. "It is the simple faith of
these poor souls. That is beautiful and holy. It would be easy for me
to think that I was becoming a Catholic."

He left as soon as the rite was concluded, but the memory of it
remained.

He saw Mrs. Fenton on the afternoon following. He had not been alone
with her since his mad declaration of love. He wished now to meet her
calmly, yet the moment he entered her house his heart quickened its
beating. He was no longer a priest bent on an errand of mercy; he was
an ardent lover, acutely conscious that he was in the rooms through
which she passed day by day, that in a moment he should see her, hear
her voice, perhaps touch her hand. He was shown into the library where
she was sitting, and she rose to greet him frankly and simply.

"She was not touched by what happened in the carriage," Philip said to
himself, with the woeful wisdom of love, "or she could not so
completely ignore it."

"How do you do, Mr. Ashe?" she said with perfect calmness. "You are
just in time for a cup of tea. I am having mine early, because I came
in a little chilled."

He was too confused with the joy of her presence to decline.

"I have come on an errand which is not over pleasant," he remarked,
watching her handling the cups, "and I am afraid that it is useless
too."

"Does that mean that it is something you wish me to do but think I'm
too hard-hearted or selfish to agree to?"

"It is not a question of willingness so much as of power. Mrs. Murphy
is dying,--very likely by this time she is not living,--and she begs us
to save her husband from being punished."

"But how could that be done?"

"I doubt if it could be done; but I promised her that I would speak to
you. I suppose that if we did not give evidence there would not be much
that could be told; but I hardly think that we have the right not to."

Mrs. Fenton thoughtfully regarded the fire a moment; then seemed to be
recalled to the present by the active boiling of the little silver
teakettle.

"I'm afraid women would drive justice out of the world if they had
their way," she said with a smile.

He smiled in reply, full of delight in her mere presence. They talked
the matter over, arriving at some sort of a compromise between their
sympathy for the dying woman and their feeling that a man like Murphy
should be dealt with by the law. They came for the moment to seem to be
on the old footing of simple friendliness, while she made the tea and
they discussed the situation.

"One lump or two?" Mrs. Fenton asked, pausing with tongs suspended over
the sugar.

"Two," answered he. "I am afraid I am self-indulgent in my tea, but
then I very seldom take it."

"So small an indulgence," she said, handing him his cup, "does not seem
to me to indicate any great moral laxity."

"It is the principle of the thing," Philip returned, smiling because
she smiled.

Mrs. Fenton shook her head.

"Come," she said, "this is a good time for me to say something that has
been in my mind for a long time. You may think that it isn't my affair,
but I can't help saying that it seems to me you have allowed yourself
to get into a frame of mind that is rather--well, that isn't entirely
healthy. I hope you don't think me too presuming."

"You could not be," was his reply; "but I do not understand what you
mean."

She had grown graver, and leaned back in her chair with downcast eyes.

"I hardly know how to say it," she began slowly, "but you seem to me to
be feeling rather morbidly about the virtue of personal discomfort. If
you will pardon me, I can't think that you really believe it to be any
merit in the sight of heaven that a man should make himself needlessly
uncomfortable."

"But if the mortification of the flesh helps us to"--

She put up her hand and interrupted him.

"I am a good churchwoman, but I am not able to believe in scoring off
the sins of the soul by abusing the body. The old monks scourging
themselves and the Hindus swinging by hooks in their backs seem to me
both pathetically mistaken, and both to be moved by the same feelings."

"Then you do not believe in asceticism at all?"

"Mr. Fenton used to say that asceticism was the most insolent insult to
Heaven that human vanity ever invented."

"But if we are to follow the devices and desires of our own hearts,"
Ashe broke out, his inner excitement bursting forth through his
calmness, "if we are to give way to the joys of this life, if--Do you
not see, Mrs. Fenton, that this covers so much? It goes down into the
depths of a man's heart. It comes almost at once, for instance, to the
question of the marriage of priests."

She flushed, and her manner grew perceptibly colder.

"That is naturally not a subject that I care to go into," she said;
"but I have no scruple against saying that I do not believe in a
celibate priesthood. In our church and our time, it is out of place."

"But it is the supreme test whether a man is willing to give up all his
earthly joy for the service of Heaven."

She frowned slightly, and he realized how significant his manner must
have been.

"The marriage of the clergy is not a subject that it seems to me
necessary for us to discuss," she said.

"Mrs. Fenton," Philip said, "I have given you too good a right to be
offended with me once, but I must say something that I fear may offend
you again. It is not about myself. It is about a better man."

She looked at him in evident surprise and disquiet.

"I asked what you think of the marriage of the clergy," he went on,
"because it seems to me right to tell you that Mr. Candish loves you."

She flushed to her temples, starting impulsively in her seat.

"Mr. Ashe," she said vehemently, "what right have you to talk to me of
such subjects at all?"

"None," he answered, "none at all,--unless--None that you would
recognize; but I wish to atone for the wrong I did in speaking to you,
and to say what he would never say. If it were possible that you cared
for him, I should perhaps help you both."

"You forget, I think, that I have been married."

"I do not forget anything," Philip returned desperately. "It is only
that he is a good man, a noble man, a man that would never have fallen
under his weakness as I did, and if you cared for him, he is too fine
to be allowed to suffer. He loved you long before I ever saw you."

"He has never given me any sign of it."

Her flushed cheeks and something in the way in which she said this
seemed to him to indicate that she did love Candish. He had been moved
by the most sincere desire to sacrifice his own will and happiness to
the well-being of the woman he loved, and if it were that she loved his
rival he had been ready to forget everything but that. Now by a quick
revulsion it seemed to him that he could not endure the success of this
man whose cause he had been pleading.

"Ah!" he cried, bending toward her, "you love him!"

She rose indignantly to her feet.

"Your impertinence is amazing!" she exclaimed. "It is time that
somebody told you the truth. It is hard for me to say unkind things to
one who has saved my life, but you ought to know how you appear. You
have got yourself into a thoroughly unwholesome state of mind and body;
and unless you get out of it you will ruin your whole career. Does it
seem to you that a man who has so little control over himself is a fit
leader for others? Can't you see that you have brooded over this
question of celibacy until you are completely morbid? Find some
wholesome, right-minded woman, Mr. Ashe; love her and marry her, and be
done with all this wretched, unwholesome mawkishness. As for me, when I
married once, I married for life. My son will never be given a second
father."

He had risen also, and his self-possession had returned to him.

"I have annoyed you," he said with a new dignity. "You are perhaps
right in saying that I am morbid, but in what I said to-day I was
trying to put self entirely out of the question. There is only one
thing more that I want to say; and that is that it is not fair to judge
our order by me. I know only too well how natural it is that you should
think all the men at the Clergy House weak and despicable like me; but
that is not so. They are sincere, self-forgetful fellows. You have seen
my friend Wynne. He, for instance, is as manly and fine and honest as
any man alive."

"I do not misjudge them or you, Mr. Ashe. I only feel that in these
past weeks you have not been yourself. We will forget it all, and I
hope that you will forgive me if I have hurt you."

"I have nothing to forgive. It is you who must do that. Good-by."

He went away with the remembrance of her beautiful eyes looking in pity
into his, and once more the phrase of the Persian came into his mind
like a refrain: "O thou, to the arch of whose eyebrow the new moon is a
slave!"



                        XXV


             WHOM THE FATES HAVE MARKED
                          Comedy of Errors, i. I


Maurice soon heard from his lawyer that the missing desk had passed
into the hands of his sister-in-law, Mrs. Singleton, and that that lady
was staying at Montfield as the guest of Mrs. Ashe. He determined to go
down himself, feeling unwilling to trust business so important to any
other. In order to leave the Clergy House, it was necessary to have
permission from the Father Superior, and on Monday of Shrove week Wynne
requested what the deacons jestingly called among themselves a
dispensation. He did not think it honest to conceal the reason for his
wishing leave of absence, and briefly related the story of his finding
his old nurse and of her revelation.

"Poor old Norah is dead," he concluded, "but I had her affidavit taken,
and if the will can be found there should be no difficulty in
establishing it. The other witnesses are alive." They were sitting in
the Father's study, a room severely plain in its furnishings, like all
the apartments in the Clergy House. The table by which the Superior sat
was covered with papers and letters, the signs of the large
correspondence which Wynne knew Frontford to keep up with members of
his order in England and this country. The furniture was stiff and
uncompromising, the windows covered only by plain shades, while the
bookshelves took an austere air from the dull leather of the bindings
of their tall, formal volumes. Father Frontford leaned back in his
uncushioned chair and pressed together his thin finger-tips in the
gesture which was habitual with him, regarding the young man with keen
eyes.

"This property, if I understand you rightly, is now in the possession
of the church?"

"It was given by the will that was found to the church and to missions.
Some of it went to the founding of a home for invalid priests. My aunt
was the one of my relatives who was a churchwoman."

"And if you succeed in finding and establishing this new will, you mean
to divert the money to your own use?"

"If the will is valid, is not the money mine?"

The Father looked at him a moment before he answered. Then he sighed.

"My son," he asked, "would you have put that question six months ago?"

Maurice flushed, but he did not wish to show that he understood.

"Why not?" he demanded.

"There was not then in your heart a wish to wrest property from the
church that you might enjoy it yourself."

"I haven't any wish now to take from the church anything which is not
mine already."

"By divine right or by human?" the Father inquired with cold
inflexibility.

Maurice began to be irritated. He felt that he was being treated with
too high a hand.

"Have I no rights as a man?" demanded he warmly.

The other sighed once more, and a look of genuine pain came into his
face.

"My son," he said with a gentleness which touched Maurice in spite of
himself, "when you gave yourself to the church, did you keep back part
of the price? Was not your gift all you were and all you might possess?"

Maurice was silent. He could not for shame answer, that he did not then
know that he had so much to give, and he realized too that this would
then have made no difference. He felt as if he were now being held to a
pledge which he had never meant to make, yet he could not see what
reply there was to the words of the Superior. He cast down his eyes,
but he said in his heart that he would not yield his claim; that the
demand was unjust.

"I have for some time," Father Frontford went on, "in fact ever since
your return, seen with pain that your heart is no longer single to the
good of the church. An earthly passion has eaten into your soul. Your
confessions are evidently attempts to satisfy your own conscience by
telling as little as possible of the doubts which you have been
harboring in your heart. Now there is given you an opportunity to see
for yourself, without the possibility of disguise, what your true
feeling is. The question now is whether you are seeking your own will
or the good of religion. Will you fail us and yourself?"

Maurice was touched by the tone in which this was said. While he had
been growing to be less and less in sympathy with Father Frontford and
with the ideals which the brotherhood represented, he had never for an
instant ceased to believe in the sincerity of the Superior. He might
think him narrow, mistaken, even at times so blinded by desire for the
success of the brotherhood as to become almost Jesuitical in method;
but he felt that the Father lived faithful to his belief, ready, if the
cause required, to sacrifice himself utterly. He could not but be moved
by the appeal which the priest made, and by the genuine feeling which
rang through every word.

"Father," he said, raising his eyes to the face of the other, "I cannot
deny that I am less satisfied about our faith than I used to be. I can
see now that I perhaps have not been entirely frank in confession,
though I hadn't recognized it before. I cannot go into a discussion of
my doubts now. I am not in a mood to talk with you when we must look at
so many things from different points of view. I haven't hidden from you
anything that has happened, and you could not be persuaded that all the
change in me has not come from the fact that I--has not come from my
feeling toward--my feeling about marriage. This is not true. Everything
has changed; and while I may be wrong, I have been trying to act
conscientiously. I feel that it is right for me to follow up this
matter of my aunt's will; and if I cannot make you share my feeling, I
can only say that I don't wish to do anything that seems to me wrong."

The other smiled sadly.

"What does that mean in plainer words?" asked he. "It means that you do
not wish to do wrong because whatever you desire will seem to you
right."

"You are unjust!" Maurice retorted, flushing.

The face of the Father grew stern. "Since when did the rule of the
order allow you to use such language to your superiors? If you are not
thinking of evading your vows, you do evade them daily; and the
throwing them off can be nothing but an affair of time."

Maurice felt that he could not endure this longer without breaking out
into words which he should afterward repent. He rose at once.

"Will you permit me to retire?" he said. "I shall be glad of your
answer to my request for leave of absence, but I cannot go on with this
conversation."

The other stretched out his hand with a gesture infinitely tender.

"My son!" he entreated. "Do not stray into the wilderness!"

Maurice looked at the outstretched hand. His eyes moistened, but he
could not yield. He felt tenderness for Father Frontford, but he was
more and more at war with the Father Superior. For an instant they
remained thus, and then the thin hand dropped.

"You are then still resolute in asking leave?" the Father said, in his
coldest voice.

"It seems to me my duty to see that if possible the last wishes of my
aunt be carried out."

"Is that your only motive?"

Maurice flushed hotly, but he looked the other boldly in the face.

"I must allow you to impute to me any motive you please. The point is
whether I am to have your permission."

"Under the circumstances I do not feel justified in granting it. We
will speak of the matter again, when you have examined your heart more
carefully."

Maurice bowed and left the room in silence, his spirit hot within him.
That he should be denied had not entered his mind. He was now confused
by the conflict in his thoughts. To disobey would be equivalent to
nothing less than a defiance of the authority of the Father Superior.
To assert his right to decide this matter could only mean a resolve to
break away from the brotherhood altogether. He was hardly prepared for
a step so extreme; yet he could not but ask himself whether he were
willing to accept the conditions involved in remaining. He realized for
the first time what the vow of obedience meant. He had received the
slight sacrifices involved thus far in his novitiate as right and
proper; simple things which had marked his willingness to yield to the
authority which by his own choice was above him. Now he said to himself
that to continue this life was to become a mere puppet; to give up
independence and manhood itself.

On the other hand, he had not been bred in theological subtilties
without having come to see that the act cannot be judged without the
motive, and he had been more nearly touched by the words of Father
Frontford than he would have been willing to confess. He knew that he
had been hiding from his confessor the extent to which a longing for
the world had taken possession of him; that there was in this wish to
secure the will and through it the property an eagerness to be
independent of control and to take his place in the world as a man
among men. The thought that the money was now in the hands of the
church to which he had pledged himself tormented him. There came into
his mind the question what he would do with the wealth if he obtained
it. He had vowed himself to poverty, at least in his intention. If he
had this fortune and became a priest, he would be pledged to endow the
church with all his worldly goods.

He faced his inner self with sudden defiance, as if he had thrown off a
disguise cunningly but weakly worn. He confessed with frankness that he
had secretly desired this money that he might be in a position to gain
Berenice. He pleaded with himself that he did not mean to abandon the
priesthood; that he had simply discovered that he had not a vocation
for the existence he had contemplated. He tried to see some way in
which he might gain the end he desired without giving up the faith he
professed; and in the end he succeeded only in getting his mind into a
confusion so great that it seemed impossible to think of anything
clearly.

He had an errand at Mrs. Wilson's on Shrove Tuesday, and she invited
him to accompany her to midnight service at the Church of the Nativity.
When he repeated the request to Father Frontford, he was given
permission to go.

"It is an unusual, and even an extraordinary request," the Superior
said; "but Mrs. Wilson is so deeply interested in the welfare of the
brotherhood that it is better to make a concession. What time are you
to meet her?"

"She is to send her carriage for me at half past eleven. She was so
sure that you would not object that she told me not to send any word."

"It is not well to have her treat so great a departure from rules as a
matter of course," the Father answered gravely. "I will send her a note
which will show her this. You have permission not to retire at the
usual hour."

The carnival season was celebrated at the Clergy House with a meal
better than usual, and with some gayety on the part of the young
deacons. The light-hearted Southerner improved to the full the
permission to talk at dinner, and chatted away with a volubility which
seemed to Maurice to indicate a nature too buoyant or too shallow to be
deeply stirred. Father Frontford was absent, and there was nothing to
throw a shadow of restraint over the feast, the other priests being
almost as boyish as the deacons.

"Here's Wynne," the Southerner said laughing, "is as glum as if he were
Lent incarnate, come six hours too soon. You must have a good deal on
your conscience to be so solemn."

Maurice smiled, trying to shake off his depression.

"It isn't always what is on one's conscience," he retorted, "so much as
how tender the conscience is."

"Good! He has you there, Ballentyne," one of the deacons cried.

"Oh, not at all. If a conscience is tender, it must be because it is
harrowed up. Now Wynne has probably vexed his so that it is habitually
sore."

Maurice was out of the mood of the company, but he tried to answer with
a light word. The jesting seemed to him trifling; and his companions,
compared to the men he had seen during his stay with Mrs. Staggchase,
appeared like boys chattering at boarding-school. He wondered where
they had been for their absence; then he remembered that they had all
told him, and that he had forgotten. He had had no real interest in
them after all, he reflected; and at the thought he reproached himself
with egotism and a lack of brotherliness. He glanced at Ashe, and was
struck by the paleness of his friend. His look was perhaps followed by
Ballentyne, for the latter commented on the downcast aspect of Philip.

"Ashe," the young man said, "looks ten times more doleful than Wynne.
What have you fellows been doing? One would think that you had been
eating the bitterest of all the apples of Sodom."

"They have been in the gay world," another rejoined.

"Then they might be set up as a warning against it," was the retort.

Laughter that one cannot share is more nauseous than sweets to the
sick; and this harmless trifling was intolerable to Maurice. He got
away from it as soon as it was possible, and passed the heavy hours in
his chamber, waiting for the coming of the carriage. He tried at first
to read and then to pray; but in the end he abandoned himself to bitter
reverie.

He did not attempt to reason, he merely gave way to gloomy retrospect,
without sequence or order. Seen in the light of his experiences during
the past weeks, his life looked poor, and dull, and misdirected. It was
little comfort to assert that he had at least been true to ideals high,
no matter how mistaken.

"It is not what one does," he thought, "but the intention with which he
does it. Only that does not excuse one for being stupid, and raw, and
ignorant. When a man is a weakling and a fool, he always takes refuge
in the excuse that he is at least fine in his intentions. Bah! No
wonder she laughed at me! I have shut myself up with ideas as mouldy as
a mediaeval skeleton, and when I come to daylight all that I can say is
that I meant well. I suppose an idiot means well from his point of
view!"

He looked about for something which should divert him from thoughts so
tormenting. His eye fell upon his Bible, and he took it up half
mechanically. On the title page was written the name of his aunt, to
whom it had once belonged. The name brought back the interview with
Father Frontford, and the refusal of his request for leave of absence.

"Nothing belongs to me," he said to himself. "I am a thing, a sort of
thing like a numbered prisoner. How could she care for a chattel, a
creature without even identity! I will go down to Montfield. I am not
yet so completely out of the world that I can't have a word in the
disposition of my own property."

He threw himself on the bed and tried to sleep, but sleep was
impossible. He only thought the more hotly and wildly. The hours
stretched on and on interminably before he heard the bell ring, and
knew that the carriage had come. Rising hastily, he adjusted his
cassock and his tumbled hair, and went down.

"Perhaps I may find peace at the mass," he sighed with a great
wistfulness.

The fresh, cool air of night was grateful, and as he was driven along
the quiet streets, a new hopefulness came to him. He had supposed that
he was to be taken to Mrs. Wilson's, and when the carriage stopped was
surprised to find himself before a large building which he did not
recognize.

"But I was to meet Mrs. Wilson," he said doubtfully to the footman who
opened the carriage door.

"Mrs. Wilson is here, sir," was the answer. "She said to carry you
here. James is inside to tell you what to do."

A footman was indeed within, waiting for him.

"Mrs. Wilson says will you please come to her, sir," the man said, and
led the way upstairs.

The sound of gay music, growing louder as he advanced, filled Wynne's
ears. He began to feel disquieted, and once half halted.

"Are you sure there is no mistake?" he asked.

"Oh, no mistake at all, sir," his guide answered. "Mrs. Wilson has
arranged everything. Leave your hat and cloak here, sir, if you please."

Maurice mechanically did as requested, but as he threw off his outer
garment the opening of a door let in a burst of music which seemed so
close at hand that he was startled. He was in what was evidently a
coat-room, the attendant of which regarded him with open curiosity; and
he realized suddenly that he must be near a ball-room.

"Where am I?" he demanded.

"It's the ball, sir, that they has to end the season before Lent. It's
Lent to-morrow, sir, as I thought you'd know."

Maurice stared at him in amazement and anger.

"There is a mistake," he said. "Give me my cloak."

"Indeed, sir," the man said, holding back the garment he had taken,
"Mrs. Wilson said, sir, that I was to say that she particular wanted
you to come fetch her in the ball-room, sir; and I was to bring you
without fail."

"You may send her word that I am here."

"Please, sir," the man returned, in a voice which struck Maurice as
absurdly pleading, "she was very particular, and it's no hurt to go in,
sir. She'll blame me, sir."

Maurice looked at him, and laughed at the solemnity of the man's homely
face. A spirit of recklessness leaped up within him. He said to himself
that at least Mrs. Wilson should not think that he dared not come.

"Very well," he said. "Show me the way."

"Thank you, sir," the servant said, as if he had received a great
favor. "It's not easy to bear blame that don't belong to you."

He opened a door into an anteroom thronged with people laughing and
chatting. The sound of the music was clear and loud, with the voices
striking through its cadences. Across this he led Wynne, to the wide
door of a ball-room flooded with light and full of moving figures.



                        XXVI


                O WICKED WIT AND GIFT
                          Hamlet, i. 5.


The brilliant glare of lights, the strident sound of dance-music, the
enlivening sense of a living, vivaciously stirring company of gayly
dressed merrymakers, assailed Maurice as he followed his guide across
the anteroom. At the door of the ball-room he was for a moment hindered
by a group of men who were lounging and chatting there. All his senses
were keenly alert, and he perhaps unconsciously listened to hear if
there were any comment on his appearance in such a place. He had not
realized what he was coming into, and now that it was too late for him
to withdraw without sacrificing his pride, he saw how incongruous his
presence really was. Almost instantly he caught a name.

"By Jove!" one of the men said. "Isn't the Wilson in great form
to-night! That diamond on her toe must be worth a fortune."

"She saves the price in the materials of her gowns," another responded
lightly. "I never saw her with quite so little on."

"No material is allowed to go to waist there," put in a third.

"She has two straps and a rosebud," yet another voice laughed; "and
nothing else above the belt but diamonds."

"Her very smile is décolleté" some one commented. "This is one of her
nights. When I see Mrs. Wilson with that expression, I am prepared for
anything."

Maurice felt his cheeks burn at this light talk. It seemed to him
ribald, and he was outraged that the name of a woman should be bandied
about so carelessly. He raised his head and set his square jaw
defiantly; then began to push his way through the group, keenly
conscious of the stare which greeted him.

"Hallo! What the devil's that?" he heard behind him.

"The skeleton at the feast," responded one voice.

"Oh, it's some devilish trick of Mrs. Wilson's, of course," put in
another.

All this Maurice heard with an outraged sense that there was no attempt
to prevent him from hearing. He might have been a servant or a piece of
furniture for any restraint these men put upon their speech. He was
troubled with the fear of what absurdity Mrs. Wilson might intend. Now
that he was here, however, he would go on. The natural obstinacy of his
temper asserted itself, and if there was little pious meekness in his
spirit at that moment, there was plenty of grit.

The ball-room was garlanded with wreaths of laurel stuck thickly with
red roses; women in white and in bright-hued gowns, with fair shoulders
and arms, were floating about in the embraces of men; the music set
everything to a rhythmic pulse, and gaily quickened the blood in the
veins of the young deacon as he looked. The throbbing of the violins
made him quiver with an excitement joyous and bewildering. He was
dazzled by the bright, moving figures, the shining colors, the
sparkling of gems, the lovely faces, the alluring creamy necks and
arms; a sweet intoxication began to creep over him, despite the
defiance of his feelings toward the men he had passed in the doorway.
Half blinded by the glare, dazed and fascinated by the sights, the
sounds, the perfumes, he followed the footman down the hall.

He was obliged to skirt the room, even then hardly evading the dancers.
His progress was necessarily slow. The footman so continually paused to
apologize for having brushed against some lady in his anxiety to avoid
a whirling pair of dancers, that it began to seem to Maurice that they
should never reach Mrs. Wilson. He cast his eyes to the floor, resolved
not to look at the worldly sights around him. Country bred and trained
in the asceticism of the Clergy House, he could not see these women
without blushing; and more than ever he wondered that he had been so
blindly obedient as to allow himself to be brought to such a place.

He heard a man clap his hands. He looked up to see a flock of dancers
hurrying to the upper end of the room. Among them, with a shock so
violent that his heart seemed to stand still, he recognized Berenice
Morison. He saw her go to a table and pick up something; then she and
her companions turned and came glancing and gleaming down the hall like
a flock of pigeons which fly and shine in the sun. Fair, flushed
softly, more beautiful than all the rest in his eyes, Berenice came on,
her hair curling about her forehead, her eyes shining with laughter and
pleasure. She was dressed in white, and at one shoulder, crushed
against her bare, creamy neck, was a bunch of crimson roses. Maurice
trembled at the sight of her beauty; he reddened at the consciousness
of her dress; over him came some inexplicable sense of fear.

Suddenly he perceived that she had caught sight of him. He could see
the look of amazement rise in her face, give place to one of amusement,
then change instantly into sparkling mischievousness. He moved on
toward her, abashed, bewildered, feeling as if he were running a
gauntlet. He could not withdraw his gaze from her, as she came quickly
onward, dimpling, smiling, her face overflowing with saucy fun, her
glance holding his.

"Good-evening, Mr. Wynne," she said lightly, coming up to him. "This is
an unexpected pleasure."

"Good-evening," Maurice responded, hardly able to drag the words out of
his parched throat.

"Of course you came for the german," Miss Morison went on, more
mockingly than before. "I am so glad that I happen to have a favor for
you."

She leaned forward, swaying toward him her white shoulders, dazzling
him with the hint of the swell of her bosom, bewildering him with the
perfume of her dark hair, the alluring feminine presence which brought
the hot blood to his face. Before he guessed her intention, she had
pinned to his cassock a grotesque little dangling mask which swung from
a bright ribbon.

"There," she commented, drawing back as if critically to observe. "The
effect is novel, but striking."

A burst of amusement, light and blinding as the spray from a whirlpool,
went up from the women around. The music, the voices, the laughter,
seemed to Maurice so many insults flung at him in idle contempt. He
looked around him with a bitter anger which could almost have smitten
these laughing women on their red mouths. Then he turned back to
Berenice. He saw that she shrank before the wrath of his look; he felt
with a thrill that he had at least power to make her fear him. He bent
toward her full of rage made the wilder by the impulse to catch her in
his arms and cover her beautiful neck with kisses.

"Shameless!" he hissed into her ear.

He saw her turn pale and then flush burning red; but he hastened on
after the footman without waiting for more. Presently he reached the
head of the hall, where Mrs. Wilson stood laughing and talking with
several men. Her dress was of alternate stripes of crimson silk and
tissue of gold, and since it had excited comment from the loungers at
the door, it is small wonder that to the unsophisticated deacon, almost
convent bred, it appeared no less than horribly indecent. He cast down
his eyes; but his glance fell upon the foot which just then she thrust
laughingly forward, evidently in answer to some remark from Stanford,
who stood at her right hand. Upon the toe of her exquisite little shoe
sparkled a great diamond like a fountain of flame.

"It gives light to my steps," she laughed.

"The service is worthy of it," Stanford returned with a half-mocking
bow.

"Thank you," Mrs. Wilson retorted, sweeping him a satirical courtesy.
"If you say such nice things to me, what must you say to Berenice!"

It seemed to Maurice that the devil was exerting all his infernal
ingenuity that night to have him tormented at every turn. He came
forward hastily, eager to stop the talk.

"Ah," cried Mrs. Wilson, "have you come, ghostly father?"

The men stared at him in careless surprise and open amusement. Maurice
could not trust himself to speak, but only bowed in silence.

"I am called, you see," Mrs. Wilson said gayly. "Now I must go to
penance and confession."

"Surely you will need so little time for confession," one of the men
said, "that there's no necessity of going so early."

"You must have been more wicked this winter than I ever suspected,
Elsie," put in the even voice of Mrs. Staggchase. "Or is it that you
only mean to be?"

Maurice turned quickly, and found that his cousin was sitting behind
the table near which he stood. In front of her were heaps of trinkets
of all sorts of fantastic devices.

"Good evening, Cousin Maurice," she greeted him. "Are you dancing? What
sort of a favor ought I to give you?"

"Mrs. Wilson's wickedness," Stanford answered Mrs. Staggchase, "is of
the sort so original that I'm sure the recording angel must always be
too surprised to put it down."

"What a premium you put on originality!" responded Mrs. Staggchase.
"That is all very well for her, but how is it for her victims?"

"Oh, the honor of being her victim is compensation enough for them."

Mrs. Wilson laughed, and shook her head, twinkling with diamonds which
dazzled the eyes of the young deacon.

"You are all worldly," she retorted. "Brother Martin and I are too
unsophisticated to understand you."

Maurice winced at the name. He felt that he must be a picture of
confusion. To stand here among these sumptuously dressed women, to
endure the glances which he knew were watching him from all parts of
the room, to be pricked with this monkish title by a woman who was
making of him and of the whole incident a sport and a spectacle, stung
him to the quick. He thought of Berenice, and he cast at Mrs.
Staggchase a look of defiance, lifting his head proudly in assertion of
his hurt dignity.

"I am at your service, Mrs. Wilson," he said with cold sternness.

"Well, we will go then. Unless, that is, you are dancing, Mr. Wynne. I
see that you have a favor."

He glanced down at the grotesque little mask, dangling by its red
ribbon. With unbroken gravity he detached and laid it upon the table in
silence. He would have given much to hide it in his pocket, since it
came from Berenice; but even as he put it down a bevy of girls swept up
for favors, and one of them bore it away.

"He has abandoned his opportunity," Mrs. Staggchase observed. "The
favor goes to Mr. Stanford."

The girl who had taken up the mask was indeed pinning it to the coat of
that gentleman, with whom she quickly danced away. Maurice felt his
heart grow hot, but he looked at his cousin with face hard and
determined.

"It was never mine," he said, "except by the chance of a
misunderstanding."

A maid now came forward with a black domino, which Mrs. Wilson slipped
into gracefully, drawing up her glittering draperies. The big diamond
on the toe of her slipper glowed fantastically, peeping from beneath
the penitential robe.

"Hallo," Dr. Wilson exclaimed, coming up at this moment, "what's in the
wind now? Is this turning into a masquerade?"

"Your wife is about to retire from the world," Mrs. Hubbard answered,
laughing.

"With a man," Mrs. Staggchase added, her eyes shining on her cousin.

Wynne stabbed her with a glance of indignation.

"No, with a priest," corrected Mrs. Wilson, adjusting her domino about
her face.

"Elsie, how devilishly fond you are of making a fool of yourself," Dr.
Wilson observed jovially. "Well, good-night."

Mrs. Wilson swept him a profound courtesy, with her hands crossed on
her bosom.

"My lord and master, good-night. Ladies, remember that it will be Lent
in ten minutes."

She took Wynne's arm, and together the black-robed figures went down
the length of the room. The music had for the moment stopped, and it
seemed to Maurice as if his presence had brought a chill to the whole
gay scene. He was inwardly raging, angry to have been used by Mrs.
Wilson as an actor in her outrageous comedy, furious with Berenice for
her part in the play, full of rage against the men who stood around
grinning and laughing at the whole performance. Most of all, he assured
himself, he was righteously indignant at the trifling with sacred
things. He looked neither to the left nor to the right, but with Mrs.
Wilson sweeping along by his side he strode toward the door.

"He looks as if he belonged to the church militant," he heard one of
the men say as he passed out.

"Even the church militant is nothing against a woman," another replied,
catching the eye of Mrs. Wilson, and laughing.

In the vestibule stood a footman bearing Maurice's cloak, and a maid
with fur over-shoes and an ermine-lined wrap for Mrs. Wilson. Maurice
said not a word except to reply in monosyllables to the questions of
his companion, and almost in silence they drove to the Church of the
Nativity.



                     XXVII


                UPON A CHURCH BENCH
                        Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 3.


The music of the Church of the Nativity was most elaborate, the very
French millinery of sacred music. The selection of a new singer was
debated with a zeal which spoke volumes for the interest in the service
of the sanctuary, and the money expended in this part of the worship
would have supported two or three poorer congregations. The church,
moreover, was appointed with a richness beautiful to see. The vestments
might have moved the envy of high Roman prelates, and the altar plate
shone in gold and precious stones.

It was no wonder, then, that a midnight service at the Nativity
attracted a crowd. Mrs. Wilson and Wynne had to force a path between
ranks of curious sight-seers in order to make their way to the guarded
pew of the former, which was well up the main aisle. It came to Maurice
suddenly that in his angry mood he was pushing against these worshipers
rudely, and that he was venting upon them a fury which had rather
increased than diminished in his ride to the church. He was seething
with anger; anger against Mrs. Wilson for having put him in a ludicrous
position, at Berenice for her mockery, at Mrs. Staggchase for her
satire, and at all the frivolous fools who had stood around, grinning
to see him made ridiculous. His hurt vanity throbbed with an ache
intolerable, and as he forced his way between the crowding spectators
he felt a certain ugly joy in thrusting them aside.

He was recalled to self-control by the expression in the face of a girl
whom he pressed back to give Mrs. Wilson passage. She turned to him
with a look of surprise and pain, and to his excited fancy her hair in
the half shadow was like that of Berenice.

"You hurt me!" she exclaimed.

"I beg your pardon," he answered with instant compunction. "I did not
mean to. Come with me."

He yielded to the sudden impulse, and then reflected as they passed
down the aisle that he had no right to bring a stranger into Mrs.
Wilson's pew. Having invited her, however, it was impossible to
retract, and he showed her into the slip after Mrs. Wilson. As the
latter turned to sit down, she became aware of the stranger. She
paused, and looked at her with haughty surprise.

"I beg pardon," she said, "this is a private pew."

The girl flushed, looking inquiringly at Maurice. His masculine nature
resented the insolence of the glance with which Mrs. Wilson had swept
the stranger, and he came instantly to the rescue.

"I invited her," he said, leaning forward, speaking with a
determination at which his hostess raised her eyebrows.

"Oh, very well then," Mrs. Wilson murmured.

She sank into her seat, and inclined her head on the rail before her.
As Maurice did the same there shot through his mind a wonder at the
change there must be in the mental attitude of the woman who spoke with
haughtiness almost insulting to the stranger, and the penitent who bent
to ask pity and forgiveness from heaven. He tried to fix his thoughts
on his own prayer, but the words ran on as mechanically as might water
flow over a stone. The serious danger of a ritualistic religion must
always be that the mere repetition of words shall come to answer for an
act of worship; and to-night Maurice might have exclaimed with King
Claudius:--

      "My words fly up; my thoughts remain below."

The service went on with its deep, appealing prayers for pardon, for
help, for uplifting, and Maurice followed it only half consciously. It
was as if he were drugged, so that only now and then a phrase
penetrated to his real consciousness,--words which in their instant and
particular application were so poignant that he could not avoid their
force.

"'From all inordinate and sinful affections,'" repeated the rich voice
of Mr. Candish, thrilling the church from floor to vaulted, roof, "'and
from the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil.'"

"'Good Lord, deliver us!'" swelled the response of the congregation;
and on the lips of the deacon the words were almost a groan.

He lost himself then in a flood of bitter repentance and prayer, hardly
realizing where he was or what was passing around him. The music
swelled and eddied; there was a genuine "Kyrie," wherein a single
voice, a rich contralto, wailed and implored in a passion of
supplication until the whole congregation quivered with the fervor of
the music. Maurice felt himself swayed and lifted upon the rising tide
of emotion. He lost his anger, he swam in billows of celestial delight;
a blessed peace soothed his troubled soul; he knew again some of the
old-time ecstasy. Yet in all this religious fervor there was some
subtle consciousness that it was unreal. He was not able so completely
to give himself up to it as to fail to watch its growth, its progress,
its intensity; he was vexed that he should trap himself, as it were,
glorying in the susceptibility to religious influences which such
excitement showed. He had even a whimsical, momentary irritation that
the part of his mind which was acting the devotee could not do it so
well that his other consciousness could not detect the unreality of it
all. Then he struggled to forget everything in the service; to steep
himself in the spiritual intoxication of the hour.

The girl whom he had introduced into the pew dropped her prayer-book.
He turned, startled by the sound, and saw her sway toward him. He
realized that the crowd, the heat, the excitement, the odor of incense
with which the air was heavy, had overcome her, and that she was
fainting. He rose instantly, and, lifting her, assisted her into the
aisle. She was half in his arms as he led her down the nave, and her
hair, the hair which had seemed to him like that of Berenice, brushed
now and again against his shoulder. He recalled the wreck, when
Berenice had been in his arms, and his religious mood vanished as if it
had never been. His cheek flushed; he thrilled with anger at himself.
He had been playing a part here in the church. He had never for an
instant wished to be set free from his bondage to Berenice,--Berenice
who had to-night mocked him and his profession in the eyes of all the
world.

The way to the door seemed interminable. He was eager to get rid of
this stranger and escape. Fortunately the party to which the fainting
girl belonged were at hand to take charge of her; and presently Maurice
had made his way out of the church. He hardly gave a thought to Mrs.
Wilson. She was abundantly able to take care of herself, he reflected
with angry amusement; or, if not, the very pavement would spring up
with troops of men to assist her. She was the sort of woman whose mere
presence creates cavaliers, even in the most unlikely places.

The cool outer air seemed to wake him from a bad dream. He walked
hastily through the quiet streets toward the Clergy House, full of
disordered thoughts, wondering whether the ball were yet over, or if
Berenice were still dancing in the arms of other men. The blood flushed
into his cheeks at the thought. He hated furiously the partner against
whose shoulder her white, bare arm might be resting. He looked back
with ever growing anger to the scene at the dance, tingling with shame
at the humiliation, at the thought of standing before the women who had
laughed when Berenice had fastened upon his breast the tawdry trinket
which seemed chosen purposely to mock him. He wished that he had kept
the toy, that he might now throw it down into the mire and tread on it.
Yet grotesque and insulting as the thing had been, he was conscious
that if the little mask were still in his possession he should not have
been able to trample on it, but should have taken it to his lips
instead. He remembered that now Stanford wore it. He looked up to the
shining stars and felt the overwhelming presence of night like a child;
his helplessness, his misery, his hopelessness swept over him in bitter
waves.

Late as it was when he reached his room he did not at once undress. He
sat down heavily, staring with hot eyes at the crucifix opposite. From
black and unknown depths of his heart welled up rage against life and
its perplexities. He threw upon his faith the blame of his suffering.
What was this religion which made of all human joys, of all human
instincts only devilish devices for the torture of the very soul? Why
should the world be filled only with temptations, with humiliations,
with desires which burned into the very heart yet which must be denied?
Was any future bliss worth the struggle? He realized with a shudder
that he might be arraigning the Maker of the world; then he assured
himself that he was but raging against those who misunderstood and
misinterpreted the purposes of life.

He flung himself down on his knees before the crucifix in a quick
reaction of mood, extending his hands and trying to pray; but he found
himself repeating over and over: "For Thine is the kingdom and the
power and the glory." He felt with the whole strength of his soul the
force of the words. This deity to whom he knelt might in a breath
change all his agony; might out of overflowing power and dominion and
splendor spill but one unnoted drop, yet flood all his tortured being
with richest happiness. The contrast between his weakness, his
helplessness, his insignificance, and the superabundant resources of
the Infinite crushed him. He was transported with aching pity for
himself and for all poor mortals. He repeated, no longer in entreaty
but with passionate reproach: "For _Thine_ is the kingdom and the power
and the glory." It seemed an insult to the clemency of Heaven to call
so piteously when it were a thing lighter than the puffing away of a
flake of swan's down for One with all power to help and to comfort. If
he were in the hands of a God to whom belonged the universe, why this
agony of doubt? Then he cried out to himself that this was the
temptation of the devil. He cast himself upon the ground, beating his
breast and moaning wildly: "Mea culpa! Mea culpa!" With quick
histrionic perception he was affected by the intensity and the
effectiveness of his penitence, and redoubled his fervor.

Then in a flash came over him the sickening realization that this
devotion was a sham; that it was hysteria, simple pretense. He ceased
to writhe on the floor. It was like coming to consciousness in a
humiliating situation. He blushed at his folly, and rose hastily from
before the crucifix.

"I have been acting private theatricals," he muttered scornfully; "and
for what audience?"

He threw himself again into his chair, burying his face in his hands.
He plunged into a reverie so deep and so self-searching that it could
have been fathomed by no plummet.

"I do not believe," he said at last aloud, raising his face as if to
address the crucifix. "I have never believed. I have simply bejuggled
myself. I have been a contemptible lie in the sight of men, not even
knowing enough to be honest to myself."

He was silent a moment, a smile of bitter contempt curling his lip.

"I have not even been a man," he added.

Then he rose with a spring to his feet, and looked about him,
stretching out his arms as if to embrace all the world.

"But now," he exclaimed with gladness bursting through every syllable,
"at last I am free!"



                        XXVIII


             BEDECKING ORNAMENTS OF PRAISE
                            Love's Labor's Lost, ii. 1.


When Maurice Wynne's bitter word stung her, Berenice Morison stood for
a second too overwhelmed to speak or move. She felt the blood mount to
her temples, and she could see reflected in the eyes of acquaintances
around a mingled curiosity and amusement. Wynne passed on, and she
shrank into her seat, which fortunately was near.

"Who in the world is that, and what did he say to you when you gave him
that favor?" exclaimed her neighbor. "I don't see how you dared to do
it!"

A gentleman took the speaker away, so that Berenice was spared the
necessity of answering. She watched Wynne advance to the group of which
Mrs. Wilson was the centre, and she understood well enough that his
being here was some contrivance of the latter's. She was angry with
Wynne and humiliated by the insult that he had flung at her, yet she
had room in her heart for rage against the woman who had brought him
there. She looked at Mrs. Wilson laughing and jesting, she watched the
comedy proceed as the black domino covered the white shoulders and the
gown of gold and crimson, yet most of all was she conscious of how
straight and strong Maurice stood among the gay group which surrounded
him. The sternness of his mouth, the gravity and indignation of his
look, seemed to her most manly and noble. She felt that he had by his
bearing mastered the absurd circumstances in which he was placed; she
smiled bitterly to think how poor and flippant had been her own
thoughtless jest. When Maurice threw the favor on the table, Berenice
saw Clara Carstair take it up and give it to Parker Stanford. She
watched Wynne and Mrs. Wilson leave the hall, two solemn, black-robed
figures passing like shadows among the dancers. When they had
disappeared she sat with eyes cast down, her thoughts in a whirl of
regret, anger, and confusion.

"Well, did you ever know Mrs. Wilson to get up a circus equal to that
before?" queried her partner, coming back to his place beside her. "She
gets more amazing every day."

"She certainly gets to be worse form every day. It's outrageous that
everybody lets Mrs. Wilson do anything she chooses, no matter how bad
taste it is."

"Oh, she amuses folks," Mr. Van Sandt said. "Nobody takes her
seriously."

"It is time that they did," answered Berenice rather sharply. "Such a
performance as this to-night makes us all seem vulgar,--as if we were
her accomplices."

"Oh, you take it too seriously; besides, I thought that you helped it
on a bit."

Berenice was silenced, but she was none the happier for that. She was
vexed with herself for having any feeling about the incident; but the
word of Wynne came afresh into her mind, and brought the blood anew to
her cheek. She said to herself that she hoped that she should meet him
soon again, that she might wither him with a glance of burning
contempt, ever after to ignore him.

"You think I wouldn't do it," she sneered to some inner doubt; "but I
would!"

She was interrupted by a partner, and went whirling down the bright
hall to the tingling measures of a new waltz; yet all the while she was
thinking of the moment she had stood face to face with Maurice. She
scoffed at herself for giving so much weight to a thing so trifling;
she made a strong effort to appear gay, only the more keenly to realize
that at heart she was miserable.

Mrs. Staggchase, on her way out of the hall a little later, stopped and
spoke to her.

"Come, Bee, it is time for you to go home. You don't seem to profit by
the godly example of Elsie Wilson at all."

"Heaven forbid that I should take her as my exemplar!" Berenice flung
back with unnecessary fervor.

"Well," Mrs. Staggchase observed good-humoredly, "there are things in
which it is conceivable that you might find a better model. By the way,
what did Cousin Maurice say to you when you gave him that german favor?
Of course I haven't any right to ask, but you see I am interested in
bringing the boy up properly."

Berenice flushed with confusion and vexation.

"It was something no gentleman would have said!"

"Ah," the other returned with perfect calmness, "that is the danger of
doing an unladylike thing. It is so apt to provoke an ungentlemanly
return. Men, you know, my dear, haven't the fine instincts that we
have. However, I'm sorry that Maurice didn't behave better than you
did. Good-night, dear."

Mrs. Staggchase had hardly gone when Parker Stanford came up with a
favor.

"I am tired, Mr. Stanford," Berenice said. "Thank you, but you had
better ask some one else."

"I'd rather sit it out with you," he answered.

"Nonsense; one doesn't sit out turns in the german."

"They do if they wish."

"Well, instead of sitting it out," she said, rising, "let us go and get
a cup of bouillon. I feel the need of something to hold me up."

"Here is your favor," remarked Stanford, as they passed down the hall.

It was an absurd Japanese monster, with eyes goggling out of its head.

"How horrible!" cried Berenice. "It looks exactly like old Christopher
Plant when he is talking about his last invention in sauces. Don't you
know the way in which he sticks out his eyes, and says: 'It is the
greatest misfortune in nature that the nerves of taste do not extend
all the way down to the stomach!'"

Stanford laughed gleefully.

"Jove, I don't know but he's right. Think of tasting a cocktail all the
way down to the stomach!"

"Or a quinine pill!" returned she with a grimace. "Thank you, no.
Things are bad enough as they are."

At the door of the supper-room they encountered Dr. Wilson, with a bud
on his arm.

"Well, Miss Morison," he exclaimed, with his usual jovial brusqueness,
"I thought that my wife was the cheekiest woman in Boston, but you ran
her hard to-night."

"Oh, even if I surpassed her," Berenice retorted in sudden anger, yet
forcing herself to speak laughingly, "she is entirely safe to leave the
reputation of the family in the hands of her husband."

Dr. Wilson chuckled with perfect good-nature.

"Oh, we men are not in it with the women," laughed he.

He passed on with his companion, and Berenice, with feminine
perversity, avenged herself upon the girl he was escorting.

"How stout Miss Harding is," she commented. "It is such a pity for a
bud."

"But she is pretty," Stanford returned.

"Oh, yes, in a way. She has the face of an overripe cherub."

He laughed and led her to a seat.

"Take your picture of Mr. Plant," said he, "and I will get you the
bouillon."

"No, I can't have anything so hideous. Give me one of yours instead.
I'll have that little fat monk."

"All that I have is at your service," he responded with seriousness
sounding through the mock gravity, as he unpinned the little mask and
put it into her hand.

"Thank you, but I don't ask your all. I hope that you didn't value this
especially."

"Not that I remember. I haven't an idea who gave it to me."

"You don't seem to value a gift on account of the giver."

"That depends," returned he. "Now there are some givers whose favors I
cherish most carefully."

He took from his breast-pocket a little Greek flag of silk, neatly
folded. Berenice flushed, recognizing a favor which she had given him
early in the evening.

"Now this," he said, "I put away next to my heart, you observe."

"The giver would be flattered," Berenice observed. "Was it Clare
Tophaven?"

He looked at her, laughing; then seemed to reflect.

"I don't know that it is right to tell you," he returned; "but if you
won't mention it, I'll confide to you that it must have been Miss
Tophaven. Sweet girl."

"Very. Are congratulations in order?" Berenice inquired.

She was pleased that the talk had taken this bantering tone, and
secretly determined to keep it away from dangerous seriousness.

"Somewhat premature, I should say," Stanford replied. "You see she has
no suspicion of my devotion, and her engagement to Fred Springer is to
come out next week."

The bit of gossip served Berenice well. She had heard it already, but
it was easy to feign surprise, and to chat lightly about the match, as
if she had not a thought beyond it in her mind. To her amazement and
disconcerting Stanford cut through the light talk to demand with sudden
gravity:--

"And when may our engagement be announced, Berenice?"

She regarded him with startled eyes, but she held herself well in hand,
managing to use the same jesting tone in which she had been speaking.

"Certainly not before it exists," was her answer.

He leaned toward her eagerly. The room was almost deserted, and they
sat in the shelter of a great palm, so that she felt herself to be
alone with him.

"Don't try to put me off," he pleaded. "I am in earnest."

She rose quickly, setting her cup down in the tub of the palm.

"Come," she said, "you forget that I am dancing the german with Mr. Van
Sandt. He will have no idea what has become of me."

Stanford stood before her, barring her way.

"Hang Van Sandt! You should be dancing with me, only I had to do the
polite to this everlasting English girl. I wish she was in Australia. I
wonder why in the world an English girl is never able to learn to
dance."

"That I cannot answer. Perhaps their feet are too big; but you must go
back to her all the same, whether she can dance or not."

"Not until you answer me. You know you are keeping me on hot coals,
Berenice. You know I love you."

She flushed, drew back, grew pale.

"I have answered you already," she replied, hurriedly but firmly. "Why
must you make me say it again? I don't love you, and that is reason
enough why you shouldn't care for me."

"It isn't any reason at all. I should be fond of you anyway. Why, even
if you made a guy of me before everybody as you did to-night of that
clerical thing"--

"Stop!" Berenice interrupted, her color rising and her eyes shining. "I
will not have you speak of Mr. Wynne in that way. What I did was bad
enough."

"Berenice," demanded Stanford, regarding her keenly, "do you mean to
marry _him_?"

"You have no right to ask me whom I mean to marry! I am not going to
marry you, at least!"

"A clergyman. A man in petticoats! Well, I must say"--

She drew herself up to her full height, looking at him with anger and
excitement in her heart so great that they seemed to choke her.

"Do you see this?" she asked, holding up the little mask dangling from
her finger. "I fastened this to his cassock to-night. I insulted him in
the sight of everybody. Does that look as if"--

"Is that the same mask?" broke in Stanford. "You begged it of me
afterward!"

She could not command her voice to reply. Shame, grief, indignation,
struggled in her heart; yet her strongest conscious feeling was a
determination that the tears in her eyes should not fall. She slipped
past him, and moved toward the ball-room. With a quick step he gained
her side.

"I beg your pardon," he said contritely. "I didn't mean to hurt you.
You used to be nice to me, but lately"--

She mastered herself by a strong effort. She was fully aware that there
were too many curious eyes about her to make any demonstration safe.

"Let me take your arm," she answered. "Folks are watching. We need not
make a spectacle of ourselves. I haven't meant to treat you badly. A
girl never knows how a man is going to take things, and I only meant to
be pleasant. As soon as you began to show that you were in earnest"--

She was so conscious that her words were not entirely frank that she
instinctively hesitated.

"I have always been in earnest," interpolated he.

"But you will get over it," murmured she, desperately.

They had come to a group of palms, where they paused to let a bevy of
dancers pass.

"Do you really mean," Stanford asked, in a hard voice, "that there is
really no hope for me?"

"There is no hope that I shall ever feel differently about this."

"Then I shall certainly get over it," returned he with a touch of anger
in his voice. "I don't propose to go through life wearing the willow
for anybody."

She raised to his her eyes shining with shy but irresistible light.

"Ah," she half whispered, "that is the difference. I know he wouldn't
get over it."

"He!"

The monosyllable brought to her an overwhelming sense of the confession
which her words had carried. She pressed the arm upon which her
finger-tips rested.

"I have trusted you," she whispered hurriedly. "Be generous. Ah, Mr.
Van Sandt," she went on aloud, "I hope you didn't think I had deserted
you. Mr. Stanford found me incapable of dancing, and had to revive me
with bouillon."



                        XXIX


              WEIGHING DELIGHT AND DOLE
                           Hamlet, i. 2.


Strangely enough the thought which most strongly impressed Maurice
Wynne on the morning following the Mardi Gras ball was the simplicity
of life. He had heard in the early dawn the bell for rising; he had
started up, then upon his elbow realized that he had freed himself from
its tyranny. He had slidden back into his warm place, smiling to
himself, and fallen into a sleep as quiet as that of a child. About
eight he was roused by a brother sent to see if he was ill, his absence
from early mass having been noted. Maurice sent the messenger away with
the explanation that having been out to the midnight service he had
slept late; then, being left alone, he made his toilet with
deliberation. He seemed to himself a new man. There appeared to be no
longer any difficulty in life. He reflected that one had but to follow
common sense, to live sincerely up to what commended itself to his
reason, and existence became wonderfully simplified. He no longer
experienced any of the confusing doubts and perplexities which had of
late made him so thoroughly miserable.

He hesitated to don again the dress of a deacon, but he reflected that
to do otherwise would be to expose himself to the curiosity and comment
of his fellows. With a smile and a sigh he put on for the last time the
cassock, recalling the contemptuous terms in which at the time of the
accident Mehitabel Durgin had referred to the garment. He wondered at
himself for ever finding it possible to appear before the eyes of men
in such a dress, and blushed to think how incongruous the clerical
livery must have looked in the ballroom.

Breakfast was already half over when he appeared, and the reading of
Lamentations was accompanying the frugal meal. He sank into his seat in
silence, casting his eyes down upon his plate lest they should betray
the joy he felt. He knew that he could have no talk with Philip until
after nones, and he was not willing to leave the house without bidding
his friend good-by. While he went on with his breakfast he was busy
planning what he would do when he had left the routine of the Clergy
House behind him. He determined to go to Mrs. Staggchase for advice,
and to ask her to direct him to some quiet boarding-place where he
might reorganize his scheme of life.

In the study hour which followed breakfast Wynne went boldly to the
room of Father Frontford, and knocked at the door. When he heard the
voice of the Father Superior bidding him enter he was for the first
time seized with an unpleasant doubt. The long habit of obedience half
asserted itself, so that for an instant he was almost minded to turn
back. With a smile of self-scorn he shook off the feeling, and opened
the door.

The Father looked up in evident surprise at sight of the deacon who
came unsummoned at such an hour. He was alone, a fact which Maurice
noted with satisfaction.

 "Good morning, Wynne," he said. "Did you wish to see me?"

"Yes, sir," Maurice answered, closing the door, and standing before it.
"I came to tell you that I have decided to leave the Clergy House."

The abruptness of the communication evidently startled the Superior.
Wynne watched him as he laid down his pen, the lines about his thin
lips growing tense.

"Sit down," he said gravely.

Maurice obeyed unwillingly. He would have been glad to retreat at once,
his errand being done; but he knew this to be of course impossible. He
sat down facing the other, meeting with steadfast eyes the searching
look fastened upon him.

"Since when," Father Frontford asked, "have you held this
determination?"

"Since last night."

"Is it founded upon any especial circumstance connected with your going
with Mrs. Wilson to midnight service?"

Maurice looked down for a moment in thought, then he met the eyes of
the other frankly.

"Father," he said, "I don't think that I could tell you all that has
led to this decision if I would; and I do not see that it would be wise
for us to go into the matter in any case. It seems to me that the fact
that I have decided, and decided absolutely, is enough."

The face before him grew a shade sterner.

"You seem to forget that you are speaking to your Superior."

"Perhaps," the young man returned with calmness, "it is you who forget
that I have ended that relation."

Father Frontford's face darkened.

"I do not recognize that you have authority to end it."

Maurice tried to repress the irritation which he could not but feel;
and forced himself to speak as civilly as before.

"Will you pardon me," he said; "I do not wish that our last talk should
be bitter. I owe you much, and I shall never cease to respect the
unselfishness with which you have tried to help me. That I cannot
follow your path does not blind me to the fact that you have worked so
untiringly to make the way plain and attractive to me."

He was not without a secret feeling that he was speaking with some
magnanimity, yet he was entirely sincere. He realized with thorough
respect, even at the moment of breaking away, how complete was the
devotion of the Father. There was in his mind, too, some satisfaction
at the tone he had unconsciously adopted. It flattered him to find that
he should be almost patronizing his Superior.

Father Frontford regarded Maurice with a look in which were mingled
surprise, disapprobation, and regret. As the two sat holding each
other's eyes, the face of the older man changed and softened. Into it
came a smile of high and spiritual beauty, of nobility and
unworldliness, of tenderness most touching. All that was most winning
in the character of the man was embodied in the look which he fixed
upon his recreant disciple, a look pleading and wistful, yet full of
dignity and strength. He leaned forward, laying the tips of his thin
fingers almost caressingly on the arm of the other.

"My son," he said, "it is not what I have done that you remember; it is
what I represent. The truth and sweetness of religion is what has
touched you. I am only the representative; and no one knows better how
unworthy I am to be so looked on. If the grace of divine love seems to
you good shining through me, think what it is in itself. Oh, my son,"
he went on, the tears coming into his eyes, "I have loved you, and I
love you more now that I see you tempted and bewildered. Turn back to
the bosom of the church before it is too late."

Maurice sat silent with look downcast. His firmness was not shaken; he
had no inclination to reconsider his decision, but he was deeply moved
by the emotion of the other. He could not bear to meet pleading so
affectionate with a cold negative.

"It is for yourself that I appeal to you," the priest went on. "It is
for the good of your own soul, and for your happiness in this world and
the world to come. Think of your mission. Think how men need you; of
the sin and the error that cry out to Heaven, and of how few there are
to do the Lord's work. You have been confused by the temptations of the
world, and in all of us there is a selfish spirit that may lead us to
do in a moment of madness what we shall repent with tears of blood all
our lives."

Still Maurice could not answer; and the Father, bending still nearer,
taking one of the young man's hands in both his own, still pleaded.

"You have said that you felt my interest in you. Do not give me the
bitterness of feeling that I am a careless shepherd who has lost a lamb
to the wolves. If you have gone astray it must be in part my fault; it
must be my negligence. Oh, my son, don't force me to stand guilty
before God to answer for your lost soul."

It seemed to Maurice that he was being swept away by the simple power
of the emotion of Frontford. He felt the tears in his eyes, and almost
without his volition his hand responded to the pressure of the hand
that clasped it. He made a strong effort to call back his will.

"Father," he responded, "we must each stand or fall alone. It is not
your fault that I can't see things as you do, or that I can't any
longer remain here. I am changed. If I stayed, it would be against my
convictions."

"Ah," was the eager reply, "but you could submit your convictions to
the church."

Maurice drew back.

"I am a man, to think for myself. I must be honest with my reason. The
church cannot take for me the place of honesty and conviction."

The Father Superior dropped the hand he held.

"Then you insist on putting your own will and your own wisdom above
that of the church?"

"I must do the thing that seems to me right."

The priest's face hardened. It was as if over the surface of a pool a
film of ice formed. He sank back in his chair, and when he spoke again
it was in a voice so hard and cold that the young man started.

"When do you leave?" the Father Superior asked.

"I meant to wait until after nones so as to say good-by to Philip."

"I prefer that you should go at once."

"You mean that you prefer that I should not see him?" Maurice demanded
quickly.

"I merely said that I prefer that you should go at once," was the cold
reply.

Maurice rose briskly. His impulse was to retort sharply, but he held
himself in check.

"Very well," he answered. "I shall take it as a favor if you will let
Philip know that I did not willingly leave him without a word. It would
hurt him to think that."

"The wounds of earth," the Father Superior said gravely, "are the joys
of heaven."

Maurice stood an instant with a keen desire to reply, to break down
this icy statue of religion; then he drew back.

"I will not trouble you longer," he said. "Good-by."

"Good-by, Mr. Wynne," the other responded with the manner of one
addressing a stranger.

Maurice went to his chamber thoroughly aroused and excited. The
restraint which he had put on himself during the talk with Father
Frontford brought now its reaction. He rehearsed in his mind the
telling and caustic things which he might have said, then laughed at
himself for his unnecessary fervor. He packed his belongings, and,
leaving them to be called for, set out for the house of his cousin. To
go out from the Clergy House seemed to him like the ending of a life.

Mrs. Staggchase was fortunately at home. It seemed to Maurice that her
keen eyes took in the whole story from his secular dress. He blushed as
she gave him her hand.

"Well, my dear boy," she observed, "you have come to luncheon, I
suppose, because the fare at the Clergy House is so poor in Lent. Sit
down, and give me an account of your doings last night. I trust that
you saw Mrs. Wilson safe home."

"I left her in the church."

"Ah! And what did you do then?"

"I went home and fought it out with myself. You were right in saying
that things were not concluded when I became a deacon. I have given up
the whole thing."

"What do you mean by the whole thing?"

"I mean," he returned earnestly, "that I found out that I was acting a
part. That I didn't believe even the first principles of the religion I
was getting ready to teach. I have broken down in the temptation,
Cousin Diana."

She looked at him closely. The buoyancy of his morning mood was gone,
and it was hard for him to endure her searching look. It came over him
that he was an apostate; one who had abandoned all that he had vowed to
uphold; his vanity smarted at the thought that she must think him weak
and unstable as water.

"I am only what I was," he went on. "The difference is that I have
discovered what you probably saw all the time, that I don't believe the
things I have been taught. I am as free from the old creeds as you are.
I don't even pretend to know that there is a God."

"My dear boy," she responded, shrugging her shoulders, "you run into
extremes like a schoolgirl. I beg you won't talk as if I could be so
vulgar as not to believe in a deity. Don't rank me with the crowd of
common folk that try to increase their own importance by insisting that
there's nothing above them. Really, an atheist seems to me as bad as a
man who eats with his knife."

He changed countenance, but her words left him speechless. He could not
hear her speak in this way without being shocked. He might be without
creed, but his temper was still devout.

"If you've thrown overboard all your old dogmas," she went on with
unruffled face, "you'd better go to work to get a new set. I've just
heard of some sort of a society got up by women out in Cambridge, where
they deduce the ethnic sources of prophetic inspiration--whatever that
means!--from the 'Arabian Nights' and 'Mother Goose.' You might find
something there to suit you."

He could not answer her; he could only wonder whether she disapproved
of what he had done, or if she were vexed with him for coming to her.

"It's possible," she went on mercilessly, a fresh note of mockery in
her voice, "that Berenice might help you. Very often a woman wins
converts where a priest fails. After last night"--

He came to his feet with a spring.

"Don't!" he exclaimed. "I can't stand any more. Do you think that it's
been easy for me to find out the truth about myself; to have to own
that I've been a cheating fool, without honesty enough to know my own
mind? As for Miss Morison"--

His voice failed him. He was unnerved; the reaction from his long
vigil, from his interview with Father Frontford, overcame him. The
simple mention of the name of Berenice made him choke, and he stood
there speechless. His cousin rose and came to him softly. Before he
knew what she was doing, she bent forward and kissed his forehead.

"You poor boy," she said in a voice half laughing, yet so gentle that
he hardly recognized it, "don't take my teasing so much to heart. You
are only finding out like the rest of us that it is impossible not to
be human."

He could answer only by grasping her hand, ashamed of the weakness
which had betrayed him, and touched deeply by her kindness.

"Come," Mrs. Staggchase said, moving to the bell, and speaking in her
natural tone. "I have helped you to break your life into bits; I must
try to help you to put the pieces together into something better. You
must stay here for a while, and we'll consider what is to be done next.
Will you tell Patrick how to get your things from the Clergy House?
Take your old room. I'll see you at luncheon."

And as the servant appeared at one door she withdrew by another.



                        XXX


                 PARTED OUR FELLOWSHIP
                          Othello, ii. 1.


Berenice had abundant leisure to reflect upon her attitude toward her
lovers, for Mrs. Frostwinch was soon so seriously ill that it was
evident to all that the end was at hand. Berenice devoted herself to
the invalid, although there was little that she could do. The sick
woman did not suffer; she seemed merely to be fading out of life; to
have lost her hold upon something which was slipping from her loosened
grasp.

"The fact is, Bee," Mrs. Frostwinch said one day, "that the doctors say
I'm dead. I'm beginning to believe it myself, and when I'm fully
convinced, I suppose that that'll be the end."

"Oh, don't joke about it, Cousin Anna," cried Bee. "It is too dreadful."

"It won't make it any less dreadful to be solemn over it," the other
answered. "However, death should be spoken of with respect; even one's
own."

Berenice longed to know what had taken place between her cousin and
Mrs. Crapps, but she hardly liked to ask. That there had been a
disagreement of some kind, and that Mrs. Frostwinch had lost faith in
the woman, she knew; but beyond this she was in the dark. One
afternoon, however, her cousin explained matters.

"It is so humiliating, Bee, that I can hardly bear to think of it, the
way things turned out. My conscience will be easier, though, if I tell
you the whole of it. It is so vulgar that it makes me creep. We were at
Jekyll's Island, and she had an ulcerated tooth."

"I thought she couldn't have such things?"

"She thought or pretended that she couldn't. I must say that she fought
against it with tremendous pluck; but the face kept swelling, and the
pain got to be more than she could bear. When she gave out she went to
pieces completely. She literally rolled on the floor and howled. I
couldn't go on believing in her after that. She'd actually made herself
ridiculous."

"But," began Berenice, "I should think"--

"If it had been something dangerous, so that I had had to think of her
life," went on her cousin, not heeding, "I could have borne it; but
that common thing! Why, her face looked like a drunken cook's! I can't
tell you the humiliation of it!"

"But if she could help you, why not herself?"

Mrs. Frostwinch smiled wanly.

"I've tried to think that out," answered she. "It was always said of
the old witches, you know, that they couldn't help themselves. It is
faith in somebody else that is behind the wonders they do. I've grown
very wise in the last few weeks, Bee. I don't pretend that I understand
all the facts, but I do know pretty well what the facts are. I believed
in Mrs. Crapps, and that belief kept me up. When I couldn't believe in
her, that was the end of it."

There seemed to Berenice something uncanny and monstrous in this calm
acquiescence. She could not comprehend how her cousin could give up the
struggle for life in this fashion, after having succeeded so long in
holding death at bay.

"But surely," she protested, "you can't be willing to let everything
depend upon her. You've proved the possibility"--

"I've proved the possibility of depending upon somebody else; that's
all."

"Then find another woman that you can believe in."

"It is too late. I can't have the faith over again. I should always be
expecting another humiliating downfall of my prophetess."

She was silent a moment, and then continued:--

"Do you know, Bee, it seems to me after all that my experience is like
almost all religion. There are a few men and women who believe in
themselves in that self-poised way that makes it possible for them to
get on with just ethics; and there are those who can take hold of
unseen things; but for the rest of us it's necessary to have some human
being to lean on. I hope I don't shock you. I lie awake in the night a
good deal, and my mind seems clearer than it used to be. All the
religions seem to have a real, tangible human centre, a personality
that human beings can appreciate and believe in. Mrs. Crapps was so
real and so near at hand that I could have faith in her; now that that
is gone there isn't anything left for me. I can't believe in her, and
she has destroyed the Possibility of my believing in anybody else."

Berenice put out her hand in the growing dusk, caressing the thin
fingers of the sick woman.

"But--but," she hesitated, "she hasn't destroyed your faith in--in
everything, has she?"

"No, dear; she hasn't touched my belief in God; but it makes me ashamed
to see how different a thing it is to believe in what we see and touch,
from having a genuine faith in what we do not see. I have a faith in my
soul still; the other was only a faith of the body. Perhaps it had only
to do with the body, and it is not so bad to have lost it."

"Oh, Cousin Anna," Berenice murmured, tears choking her voice, "I can't
bear to see you getting farther and farther off every day, and to feel
so helpless."

"There, there, Bee," responded the other with tender cheerfulness, "you
are not to agitate yourself or to excite me. I've lived half a year
more now than the doctors allowed me, and I've enjoyed it too. Besides,
think of the blessedness of not having any pain. Do you know, the night
after Mrs. Crapps had that scene in the hotel, I was in a panic of
terror lest my old agony should come back; but it didn't. Then I said
to myself: 'Of course I couldn't suffer; I'm really dead!' You can't
think what a comfort it was."

"Oh, don't, don't!" cried Bee. "I can't bear to have you talk like
that."

"Well, then, we won't. There's something else I want to speak to you
about while I am strong enough. Do you realize that when I am gone
you'll be a rich woman?"

"I haven't thought about it. I've hated to think."

"Yes, dear, I understand; but when you are older you'll come to realize
that half of the duty of life is to think of things which one would
rather forget."

"But it could do no good to think of this."

"Perhaps not; but I want to ask you something. I know you'll forgive
me. It's about Parker Stanford."

"You may ask me anything you like, of course, Cousin Anna. As for
Parker Stanford, he's nothing more than the rest of the men I know,
only he's been more polite. We are very good friends."

"No more?"

"No more; and we never shall be."

"But he surely wished to be?" The day had darkened until the room was
lighted only by the flames of the soft coal fire which sputtered in the
grate. The cousins could hardly see each other's faces; but in the dim
light Berenice turned frankly toward Mrs. Frostwinch.

"That is all over now," responded she. "Of course to anybody else I
shouldn't own that there ever was anything; but whatever there may have
been is ended. He understands that perfectly."

For some minutes Berenice sat smoothing the invalid's hand, the
firelight glancing on her face and hair.

"How pretty you are, Bee," Mrs. Frostwinch said at length. Then without
pause she added: "Is there anybody else?"

Bee sank backward into the shadow with a quick, instinctive movement,
dropping the hand she held.

"Who should there be?" she returned.

Her cousin laughed softly.

"You are as transparent as glass," she said. "Come, who is it?"

Berenice hesitated an instant, then threw herself forward, bending over
the hand of her companion until her face was hidden.

"There isn't really anybody; and besides I've insulted him so that he
never could help hating me. No, there isn't anybody, Cousin Anna; and
there never will be. I know I should despise him if he wasn't angry;
and besides," she added with the air of suddenly recollecting herself,
"I hate him for what he said."

"That is evident," the other assented smilingly. "I could see at once
that you hated him. But who is it?"

"Why, there isn't anybody, I tell you. Of course I thought about him
after he saved my life, but"--

"Oh," interrupted Mrs. Frostwinch. "Then it is Mr. Wynne. But I
thought"--

"He isn't a priest any more," Berenice struck in, replying to the
unspoken doubt as if it had been in her own mind. "I heard yesterday
that he has left the Clergy House for good, and is staying with Mrs.
Staggchase."

"Have you seen him lately?"

"He overtook me on the street yesterday."

Mrs. Frostwinch put out her hand with a loving gesture.

"Bee," said she tenderly, "I want you to be happy. You've been like a
daughter to me ever since your mother died, and I've thought of you
almost as if you were my own child. If this is the man to make you
happy"--

But Bee stooped forward and stopped the words with kisses.

"I can't talk of him," she said, "and he will never be anything to me.
He is angry, and he has a right to be. He"--

The entrance of the nurse interrupted them, and Berenice made haste to
get away before there was opportunity for further question. In her
anxiety to know something more of Mr. Wynne, Mrs. Frostwinch sent for
Mrs. Staggchase, who came in the next day.

Mrs. Staggchase found her friend weak and frightfully changed. The
high-bred face was haggard, the nostrils thin, while beneath the eyes
were heavy purple shadows. A ghost of the old smile lighted her face,
making it more ghastly yet, like the gleaming of a candle through a
death-mask. The hand extended to the visitor was so transparent that it
might almost have belonged to a spirit.

"My dear Anna," Mrs. Staggchase exclaimed, "I hadn't an idea"--

"That I was so near dying, my dear," interrupted the other. "I am worse
than that, I am dead, really; but it doesn't matter. I want to talk to
you about Bee."

"About Bee?" echoed the other, seating herself beside the bed. "What
about her?"

"I should have said that I want to ask you about Mr. Wynne. Do you know
anything about his relations to her?"

"The only relation that he has is that of a perfectly desperate adorer.
He worships the ground she walks on, but he doesn't cherish anything
that could be decently called hope."

"Then he does care for her?"

"My dear Anna, it almost makes me weep for my lost youth to see him. He
has so wrought upon my glands of sentiment that this morning I actually
examined my husband's wardrobe to see if the maid darns his stockings
properly. Fred would be perfectly amazed if he knew how sentimental I
feel. I even thought of sitting up last night to welcome him home from
the club, but about half past one I came to the end of my novel and
felt sleepy, so I gave that up."

Mrs. Frostwinch smiled with the air of one who understands that the
visitor is endeavoring to furnish a diversion from the dull sadness of
the sick chamber.

"But Bee said he was angry with her."

"The anger of lovers, my dear, is legitimate fuel for the flame. That's
nothing. She's been amusing herself with him, and if she thinks he
resents it, so much the better for him."

"But is he"--

She hesitated as if not knowing how best to frame her question.

"He is a handsome creature, as you know if you remember him," the
visitor said, taking up the word. "He is well born, he is well bred, if
a little countrified. He's been shut up with monks and other mouldy
things, and needs a little knocking about in the world; but I am very
fond of him."

"Then you think"--

"I think that whoever gets Bee will get a treasure; but I am not sure
that she is any too good for my cousin. He hasn't much money, unless he
gets a little fortune that ought to have been his, and which he has
some hope of. I mean to give him something myself one of these days, if
he behaves himself; but of course he hasn't any idea of that."

"Bee will have all the Canton money, and can do as she likes."

Mrs. Staggchase looked down at the carpet as if studying the pattern.

"Perhaps," she returned.

"What do you mean by that?"

"If I know Maurice Wynne, the fact that she has money will make him
very slow to speak. Besides, he has a silly crotchet in his head now.
He thinks that if he tried to marry her it would look as if he had
given up his religion for her."

"Did he?"

"Bless you, no. He was simply led into the Clergy House by being fond
of a friend; one of those men that young men and old women fall in love
with. Maurice never belonged there at all. I saw that the first day he
came to stay with me at the beginning of the winter. I was abroad while
he was in college, so I never knew him except most casually before."

"But if he really cares for her he'll get over those obstacles."

"If she cares for him, he must be made to."

"I am convinced that she does," Mrs. Frostwinch said. "I am so glad you
speak well of him. I do so want Bee to be happy."

There was a long silence in the chamber. The two friends sat wrapped in
thought. They had seen so much of life, they had had so many blessings
of fortune, culture, position, wealth, that there was a grim irony in
their sitting here helpless in the face of coming death. To their
reverie, moreover, the mention of love could not but give color. No
woman has ever come to speak of love entirely unmoved, though her heart
may have been deadened or crushed beyond the power of thrilling or
quickening at any other thought. These two, who had led lives so happy,
so protected, so rich, sat there silent before the possibilities which
lay in the love of a girl; until at last both sighed, whether with
regret or tenderness perhaps they could not themselves have told.
Perhaps both remembered their youthful days; remembered how one had
lost her first love by death and the other parted from hers in anger,
making a marriage which seemed more a matter of affronting the man
discarded than of affection for the man she chose. They knew each
other's history so completely that there could be no disguise between
them. Their eyes met, and for an instant there was a suspicion of
wistfulness in the glance. Then Mrs. Frostwinch shook her head, and
smiled sadly.

"At least," she said, "I shall be spared the pain of growing old."

"After all," the other responded, "the bitterness of growing old is to
feel that one has never completely been young."

The sick woman regarded her with burning eyes.

"But we have been young, Di," she said eagerly. "Surely we had all that
there was."

"Anna," Mrs. Staggchase murmured, leaning toward her, "we know each
other too well not to say things that most women are afraid to say. We
both married well, and we have cared for our husbands and been happy.
But we both know that there was deep down a memory"--

"No, no, Di," her friend interrupted excitedly, "you shall not make me
think of that! I have forgotten all that; and I am dying comfortably.
You shall not make me think of him! Only, dear Di, I want you to help
Bee to marry the man she loves with her whole heart; that she loves as
we might have loved if"--

Mrs. Staggchase kissed her solemnly.

"I promise, Anna."

Then she rose, her whole manner changing.

"Do you know, my dear," she observed, in a tone gayly satirical, "that
I believe that Elsie Wilson is going to be beaten in her bishop
steeplechase?"

"Do you mean that Father Frontford won't be elected?"

"I mean just that. However, things are still uncertain. It will be
amusing to see what Elsie will do if she is defeated. She is capable of
setting up a church of her own."

"There are two or three men with whom I have some influence that will
go over to Mr. Strathmore if I am not here to look after them. I must
write to them to-morrow and get them to promise to hold by our side."

But that night Mrs. Frostwinch died quietly in her sleep, and the
letters were not written.



                        XXXI


                   HOW CHANCES MOCK
                           2 Henry IV., iii. 1.


Maurice had seen Berenice only once since his encounter at the ball. He
had hoped and dreaded to meet her, but for more than a week after his
leaving the Clergy House he had failed. One morning he saw her walking
before him on Beacon Street; and while he instantly said to himself
that he trusted that she would not discover him, he hurried forward to
overtake her. His feet carried him forward even while he told himself
that he did not wish to go. He was beside her in a moment, and as he
spoke she raised those rich, dark eyes with a glance which made him
thrill.

"Good-morning," he said with his heart beating as absurdly as if the
encounter were of the highest consequence.

"Good-morning, Mr. Wynne," she responded, with a manner entirely
abstract.

She had started and blushed, he was sure, on perceiving him; but if so
she had instantly recovered her self-possession. He was disconcerted by
the coldness of her manner, and began to wish in complete earnest that
he had not overtaken her.

"I beg your pardon for intruding," he said, his voice hardening, "but"--

"The public street is free to anybody, I suppose," she returned, with
an air of studied politeness. "I don't claim any exclusive right to it."

"I didn't apologize for being on the street, but for speaking to you."

"Oh, that," answered Berenice carelessly, although he thought that he
detected a spark of mischief in her eye, "is a thing of so little
consequence that it isn't worth mentioning."

"I venture to speak to you," he said, ignoring the thrust, "because I
have wanted to beg your pardon for my rudeness when I saw you last."

She turned upon him quickly, her cheeks aflame.

"Your rudeness?" she exclaimed. "Your brutality, I think you mean!"

It was his turn to grow red.

"My brutality, if you choose. I beg your pardon for whatever offended."

"It was unpardonable! It was a thing no woman could ever forgive!"

Maurice turned pale. He stopped where he stood.

"In that case," he said, bowing with formality, "I have no business to
be speaking to you now."

He turned and was gone before she could add a word.

This interview probably made neither of the young persons happy; and
Maurice it left entirely miserable. He was not without a proper pride,
however, and in his present frame of mind was ready to call it to his
aid. He bore a brave outward front. He resolved not to think of his
love; yet he was not without the hardly confessed hope that if he could
find the lost will he might be taking a step in the direction of the
realization of his desires. He tried to forget Berenice in the very
means he was taking to bring himself nearer to her.

He set out for Montfield one bright February day, amused at himself for
the difference in his attitude toward the world from the mere fact that
he had discarded the ecclesiastical garb. It gave him a fresh and
delightful sensation to be traveling on business in clothing like that
of other men. He had no longer any wish to be separated by his dress,
and thought with contemptuous amusement of the lurking
self-consciousness which had always attached itself in his mind to the
fact that he was in a costume apart. He realized now that he had from
this derived a certain satisfaction, half simple vanity and half the
gratification of his histrionic instinct. He felt as if he had been
like a child pleased to attract attention by a feather stuck in his
cap, or a toy sword girt at his side. Now that the whole experience was
past he could smile at it, but he had small patience with those who
still retained the clerical garb. Men have usually little tolerance for
the fault which they have but newly outgrown; and Maurice thought with
a sort of amazement of his late fellows at the Clergy House, and of
their manifest satisfaction in the dress they wore. It was almost with
a sensation of self-righteousness that he enjoyed the habiliments of
ordinary civilized man.

As the train sped on, and the scenery became more familiar as he
approached nearer to Montfield, Maurice naturally fell to thinking, in
an irregular, detached fashion, of his youth. Both Wynne's parents had
died in his childhood, and there had been little to keep firm the bonds
of family. Alice Singleton he had known, however, both as a girl and as
the wife of his half brother, but he had known only to dislike and
avoid her. He began now to wonder how she would receive him, and
whether she would allude to the scene at Mrs. Rangely's when he had
broken up her spiritualistic deception.

The train of thought into which reminiscence had plunged him carried
him over his whole life. He realized for the first time that his
religious experiences had been little more than a reflection of those
of Philip. It was Ashe who had interested him in spiritual things, who
had led him into the church, who had practically determined for him
that he should become a priest. For the first time, and with profound
amazement, Maurice realized how completely his theological life had
been the growth of the mind of Ashe rather than of his own. The thought
brought with it a sense of weakness and self-contempt.

"Haven't I any strength of character?" he asked himself. "In everything
practical Phil has always relied on me. It was always Phil I cared for,
not the church."

Imperfectly as he was able to phrase it, Maurice was not in the end
without some reasonably clear conception of the fact that in his life
Philip had represented the feminine element. It was by love for his
friend that he had been led on. Now that his reason was fully awake
this emotional yielding to the thought of another was no longer
possible; now that his heart was filled with a passion for Berenice his
nature no longer responded to the appeal of the feminine in Ashe.

Maurice was half aware that his was a character sure to be influenced
greatly by affection; but he felt that it would never again be possible
for him so to give up to another the guidance of his life as he now saw
that he had yielded it to his friend. He had learned his weakness, and
the lesson had been enforced too sharply ever to be forgotten.

He was coming now into the region of his old home. The forests were
beginning faintly to show the approach of spring; the treetops were
dimly warming in color, the branches thickening against the sky. Here
and there Maurice looked down on a brook black with the late rains and
with the floods from the snow-drifts still melting on the distant
hills. Now he caught a far flash of the river where he had skated in
winters almost forgotten, so fast does time move, where he had fished
and bathed in summers so long gone that they seemed to belong to the
life of some other. Yet once more and a distant hill, duskily blue
against the bluer heavens, wakened for him some memory of his boyhood,
seeming to challenge him to renew the old joys and to revel in the
by-gone fervors.

All these things softened the mood in which Maurice came back to the
old town, and as he walked up the village street, so well remembered
yet so strange, he had a sense of unreality. The very homely
familiarity of it all made it appear the more like a dream. He felt his
heart-beats quicken as he approached the Ashe place, wondering if he
should see Mrs. Ashe. He had always, with all his affection, felt for
Philip's mother a sort of awe, as if she were more than a simple human
creature. He found it difficult to understand that Mrs. Singleton
should be staying with her, so incongruous was the association in his
mind of two such women. With Mrs. Ashe, Alice must at least be at her
best.

He walked up to the house, passing under the leafless lilac bushes with
a keen remembrance of how they were laden with odors in June. He
wondered if the tansy still grew under the sitting-room window, and if
the lilies-of-the-valley flourished on the north side of the house as
of old. Then he knocked with the quaint old black knocker, and with the
sound came back the present and the thought that he had before him an
interview which might be neither pleasant nor easy.

Mrs. Singleton herself opened the door.

"I saw you coming," she greeted him, "and there is nobody at home but
me."

Maurice tried not to look disappointed.

"Then Mrs. Ashe is not at home?"

"No; she is out, and the girl is out. Will you come in? You probably
didn't come to see me."

"But I did come to see you."

She led the way into the long, low sitting-room, with its many doors
and its wide fireplace, so familiar that he might have left it
yesterday.

"I can't imagine what you want of me," Mrs. Singleton said, waving her
hand toward a chair. "The last time I saw you you didn't seem very fond
of me."

She seated herself by the side of the fire in a great old-fashioned
chair covered with chintz and spreading out wings on either side of her
head.

"You are still angry, Alice, I see," he rejoined. "Well, I can't help
that. I did what was right. How in the world could you make up your
mind to fool those people so?"

"They wanted to be fooled; why not oblige them?"

He regarded her with astonishment. He had expected her to deny that her
deception was deliberate, to claim that the manifestations were real.
Her frank and cynical speech disconcerted him. He had no reply. She
broke into a sneering laugh.

"There," she said, "you didn't come here to talk about that séance.
What did you come for?"

"I came to ask you if you still have Aunt Hannah's desk."

She regarded him keenly.

"The little traveling desk?"

"Yes."

"What if I have?"

"But have you?"

"Oh, I don't mind telling you that. I don't see that it can do you any
good to know that I have it. I always carry it round with me. It's so
convenient."

"Will you sell it to me?"

"Certainly not. If you didn't want it, I might give it to you; but if
you do you can't have it."

Maurice began to feel his anger rising. He felt helpless before this
woman, with her innocent, baby face, this woman with the guileless look
of a child and a child's freedom from moral scruples, who faced him
with a smile of pleased malice. It might be unwise to tell his real
errand, but she surely could not do any harm greater than to be
disagreeable. There must be some method, he reflected, of getting at
the thing legally; but what it was he was entirely ignorant; and now
that he had shown a desire for the desk he was confident that Mrs.
Singleton would persist until she had discovered the truth. He could
think of nothing to do but to make a clean breast of the whole matter.
He nerved himself to the task, and told her of the finding of Norah and
of what followed.

"Have you ever discovered that the desk had a false bottom?" he asked
in conclusion.

"No, brother Maurice. The spirits hadn't revealed it to me. But then I
never asked them about that."

There was an air of triumphant glee in her manner, an open and mocking
sneer, which dismayed him. He was sure that he had erred in telling her
his secret; yet he reflected that he could hardly have done otherwise,
and that she surely would not dare to refuse to give up a legal
document so important.

"Will you let me examine the desk?"

"I am so happy to oblige you," she returned. "Though whether your story
is true or not must depend, you know, upon the unsupported testimony of
the medium--I mean of the speaker."

Maurice rose and went toward her, facing her squarely.

"I understand, Alice," he said, "that you don't love me, and I haven't
come to ask favors. This is a matter of simple honesty. I certainly
don't think you would willfully keep me out of my property."

"Thank you for drawing the line somewhere. It was so noble of you to
interfere at Mrs. Rangely's! You didn't in the least mind robbing me of
my good name, and them of the comfort of believing it was real.
Besides, I did see things! I swear to you that I did! I am a medium in
spite of whatever you say. I can call up spirits!"

Her voice rose as she went on, and he feared lest she should work
herself into one of her furies of excitement and temper which he had
seen of old.

"Why should we go back to that?" he said, as gently as he could. "That
is past, and I only did what I thought was my duty."

"Oh, you did your duty, did you?" she sneered.

"Well, I'll do mine now. Stay here, while I go and empty that old desk.
I'll match you in doing my duty!"

She hurried tumultuously from the room, leaving Maurice in anything but
an enviable frame of mind. He began to walk up and down, assailed by
old memories at every turn, yet so disturbed by Mrs. Singleton's words
and manner that he could not heed the recollections. The minutes
passed, and Alice did not return. It seemed to him that she took a long
time to remove her papers from the desk. Then he smiled to himself in
bitter amusement and impatience. Of course his sister-in-law was trying
to discover the secret of the double bottom. She would probably
persevere until she had gained the precious document of which he had
come in search. She would read it, and then--He broke off in his
reverie with an exclamation of impatience. What a fool he had been to
attempt to deal with this woman alone! He had, it was true, expected to
find Mrs. Ashe, but he should have sent a lawyer. What did he, a puppet
from the Clergy House, know of managing the affairs of life? He felt
that he had failed in his match with Mrs. Singleton; and he had almost
made up his mind to go in search of her, when he heard her returning.

She came in with her face flushed, her eyes shining, and an air of
triumph which struck dismay to the heart of Maurice.

"I am sorry to have kept you waiting so long," she said, "but I had to
light a fire in the parlor, I was so cold. However, I have something to
show you that will interest you."

"Is it the will?" he asked eagerly.

She answered with a laugh, but led the way across the narrow front
entry into the parlor. The pleasant noise of a crackling fire sounded
within, and as he entered the room he saw that the fireplace was filled
with a ruddy blaze. Then he rushed forward with a cry. There on the top
of the blazing logs were the unmistakable remains of the desk, eaten
through and through by tongues of red flame. He seized the tongs, and
dragged the burning mass to the hearth, but even as he did so he saw
that he was too late.

"It is kind of you to want to save my old desk, Maurice," jeered his
companion; "but I had the misfortune to put the poker through the
bottom of it before I called you, so that I'm afraid it really isn't
worth saving."

He saw that the wood had indeed been punched through and through, and
that it was reduced almost to a cinder. It was easy to see that the
bottom had been double, and burned flakes of paper were visible among
the remains; whether of the will or not it was obviously impossible now
to discover. He looked at the burned bits of board falling into ashes
and cinders at his feet, realizing that here was an end to all his
dreams of regaining his aunt's fortune; that with this dream ended,
too, his visions of being in a position to offer Berenice--His wrath
blazed up in an uncontrollable force.

"You are a fiend!" he cried, facing the woman who smiled beside him.
"You are a thief, a shameless, deliberate thief!"

She stood the image of mirthful, innocent girlhood, her smooth forehead
unclouded, her eyes gleaming as if with the merriment of a child.

"It is a pretty fire, isn't it, Maurice?"

Then her whole expression changed. Into her dark, dewy eyes came a look
of rage, visible murder in a glance.

"You called me a liar, there in Boston," she said hissingly. "I am not
surprised to have you add thief now. I have only done what I chose with
my own property; but I would have been cut into little bits before you
should have had that will through me!"

He could not trust himself to reply. He felt that if he spoke he might
break out into curses, and he was conscious of an unmanly longing to
strike her, to mar that beautiful, false face, childlike and pure in
every line,--for the expression of rage had melted as quickly as it had
come,--to feel the joy of seeing her limbs slacken and her red lips
grow white. He clinched his hands and turned resolutely away.

"I'm sure I don't know that there was anything there that you had any
interest in," she pursued lightly. "I tried as long as I dared to get
the bottom open, and I couldn't, so I decided that it wasn't any of my
business. Only when I put the poker through there seemed to be papers
there."

Maurice could endure no more. He started toward her so fiercely that
she recoiled, a sudden pallor blanching her rosy loveliness. Then he
turned abruptly away again, and got out of the house.



                        XXXII


               NOW HE IS FOR THE NUMBERS
                           Romeo and Juliet, ii. 4.


Interest in the question who would be bishop increased as Lent waned
and the time for the meeting of the convention approached. The general
public could not be expected to be greatly concerned about a matter so
purely ecclesiastical, but the wide popularity of Mr. Strathmore gave
to the election a character of its own. The question was generally held
to be that of the prevalence of liberal views. Many who cared nothing
about the church were interested in seeing whether new or old ideas
would prevail. The age is one in which there is a keen curiosity to see
what course the church will take. It is partly due, undoubtedly, to the
inherited habit of being concerned in theology; it is perhaps more
largely the result of unconscious desire for a liberalism so great that
it shall justify those who have been so liberal as to lay aside all
religion whatever.

The papers had entered into the discussion with an alacrity quickened
by the fact that at this especial season there was not much else in the
way of news. Rangely wrote for the "Daily Eagle" a glowing editorial in
which he urged the choice of Strathmore on the ground that the new
bishop should be not the representative of a faction, but of the whole
church, and as far as possible of the people. It insisted that only a
man liberal himself could have breadth to understand and sympathize
with all shades of feeling. Others of the secular press had taken up
the discussion, and Mrs. Wilson declared that the devil was
contributing editorials to the papers in his keen fear that Father
Frontford would be elected.

Lent wore at last to an end, and the festivities which follow Easter
came in with all their usual gayety. One evening, about a week before
the election, a musicale was given at the house of Mrs. Gore. Mr. and
Mrs. Strathmore were present, the tall figure of the former being
conspicuous in the crowd which after the music surged toward the
supper-room and later eddied through the parlors. Fred Rangely came
upon the clergyman at a moment when he had detached himself from the
admiring women who usually surrounded him, and taken refuge in the
shadow of a deep window.

"Good-evening, Mr. Strathmore," Rangely said. "Are you making a
retreat? I thought Lent was the time for that."

The other smiled with that kindly benevolence which was characteristic.

"Ah, Mr. Rangely," he responded, extending his hand. "I am glad to see
you. Will you share my retirement?"

"Thank you," Rangely answered, stepping into the recess. "A retreat is
especially grateful to a journalist. We get so tired that even a moment
of respite is welcome."

Mr. Strathmore smiled more genially than ever.

"Yes; you journalists are expected to know everything, and it must be
wearing to have to learn all that there is to know."

"Oh, it's easy enough to learn instead how to appear to know."

The clergyman regarded him with a quizzical look.

"Is that the way it is done? I've often wondered at the infallibility
of your guild."

"A trick, of the trade, I assure you. We have to seem to be infallible
to secure any attention at all, you see; and we soon learn the knack of
it."

The clergyman, as if unconsciously, drew back a little farther into the
shadow of the heavy draperies veiling the nook in which they stood.

"I dare say," he observed, as if speaking at random, "that one of your
clever professional writers would be able, for instance, to give the
reader quite an inside view even in church matters."

Rangely's face changed, and he in turn altered his position by leaning
his elbow against the heavy middle sash of the window. The two men were
thus not only concealed from the passing crowd, but stood with faces
screened from each other by the shadow.

"Oh, even that might be possible," Rangely returned lightly.

"There is so much interest in church matters now," the other continued
dispassionately. "I noticed that the 'Churchman' had rather a striking
article two or three weeks ago on a layman's point of view of the
bishop question. Did you see it?"

"I seldom see the 'Churchman,'" Rangely replied in a voice not wholly
free from constraint.

"It is a pity you didn't see this, it was so well done. It is true that
it proved me to be all sorts of a heretic; but if I am, of course it
should be known."

There was a pause of a moment. Outside in the drawing-room rose the
constant babble of speech, unintelligible and confusing. Then above it
Rangely laughed softly.

"The wisdom of the journalist," he remarked, "is as nothing compared to
that of the clergy. How did you discover that I wrote it?"

"Discover? Isn't that a word applied to finding things by seeking?"

"What of that?"

"I was merely thinking that you give me credit for more leisure and
more curiosity than I possess if you suppose me to have tried to find
out about that article."

Rangely laughed again.

"Mr. Strathmore," he said with a new resolution in his tone, "will you
pardon me if I am frank? I want to ask you what I can do to help you to
secure the election."

"Don't think I am given to word-splitting, Mr. Rangely, but I've no
wish to _secure_ it. If the church needs me--but, after all, we need
not quibble. Will you pardon me if I say that your question is rather
remarkable coming from the author of the 'Churchman' paper."

"Although I wrote the 'Churchman' article, I wrote also the 'Eagle'
editorial," was the reply. "I see things in a different light. The fact
is that I was trapped into writing that stuff for the 'Churchman,' and
now I'm anxious to undo any harm I may have done."

"I am glad that you do not really think me as bad as that article made
me out," Strathmore said. "There have been some queer things about this
election. Mrs. Gore has a letter that a woman has written which
illustrates how injudicious some of those interested have been."

"What sort of a letter?"

"A letter that is amusing in a way. Of course I only mention the thing
confidentially. Very likely, though, Mrs. Gore might be willing to let
you see it if you are interested. It was written to a clergyman in the
western part of the State by Mrs. Wilson."

"Mrs. Wilson?"

"Mrs. Chauncy Wilson. Of course you know that she is much interested in
the matter. It isn't a very discreet document. I shall be much relieved
when the whole thing is settled. It causes too much excitement,
especially for us who have been named in connection with the office."

"It can't be pleasant," Rangely assented.

"It is not, I assure you. Now it is my duty to be talking to ladies and
helping Mrs. Gore. She told me that she depended on me."

He moved forward as he spoke, and the two were soon in the company
again. Rangely weltered through the crowd to Mrs. Gore and asked about
the letter.

"It is a trump card," she said. "I am glad you spoke about it. I was
wondering how it could be used to the best advantage. Mr. Strathmore
talks about its being a private letter, but I have a shrewd suspicion
that he wouldn't mind if somebody else used it. Come in to-morrow about
five, and we'll talk it over."

Maurice Wynne was naturally not entirely at home in this sort of a
gathering. He had not overcome his shyness and want of familiarity with
social usages, so that he was especially relieved when he found himself
comfortably seated in a corner with Mrs. Herman, to whom he could talk
freely.

"Isn't there something that can be done for Phil, Mrs. Herman?" he
asked earnestly. "I haven't seen him since I left the Clergy House. I
had to come away without saying good-by to him, and in answer to my
letter he says that Father Frontford advises him not to see me for the
present."

Mrs. Herman sighed, playing with her fan.

"Life is hard for a nature like his," answered she. "He is born to be a
martyr. He has the martyr temperament. It's part of our inheritance
from Puritanism, I suppose."

Maurice smiled, looking up impulsively.

"I can't see why you lay so much stress on Puritanism," he said. "What
has Puritanism resulted in? Its whole struggle has come to an end in
doubt and agnosticism and flippancy. Intellectual curiosity has taken
the place of spiritual stress; ethical casuistry or theological
amusements seem to me to stand instead of religious conviction."

Mrs. Herman regarded him with an inquiring smile.

"You make me feel old," she interposed; "it is so long since I went
through that stage. Will you pardon me for saying that you are not
quite a disinterested observer?"

"It is the eyes newly open that see most clearly," he responded,
throwing back his head with a little laugh. "The Puritan came into the
wilderness to establish a city of God. Time has shown that he dreamed
an impossible dream. The result of that effort has been the
establishment of a religious liberty"--

"One might almost say a religious license, I own," she interpolated.

"A religious liberty or license as you like, but at any rate something
that would have seemed to them appallingly wicked,--a thousand times
worse than anything they fled from into the desert."

Mrs. Herman was silent a moment while he waited for her answer. Her
eyes grew darker, and the color flushed in her cheeks.

"It is odd enough for me to be the champion of Puritanism," she said at
length, "and yet it seems to me that after all they did their work
well, and that it was permanent. They left on the land the stress of
sincerity and earnestness. Creeds fall away just as leaves drop from
the trees, but each leaf has helped. Religions decay, but the salvation
of the race must depend upon human steadfastness to conviction."

"Then I suppose that you think Phil is nearer to the heart of things
than I am."

"Not in the least. The difference between you is superficial rather
than real so long as you are both true to your convictions."

"But it seems to me," Maurice objected, "that Phil is looking at truth
as a sort of fetish. He seems to feel that the root of the matter is in
a dogma, and a dogma is only the fossil remains of a truth that is gone
by."

She laughed appreciatively.

"Have you caught the fever for making epigrams? I'm afraid there's a
good deal of truth in what you say about Cousin Philip. He can't help
looking at religion as an end rather than a means."

"Has it ever struck you that he might finish by going over to the
Catholics?"

"No," she answered, "I confess I'd never thought of it; but I see what
you mean."

"It will seem to him a moral catastrophe, a sort of ecclesiastical
cataclysm," Maurice continued, "if Father Frontford isn't elected; and
as far as I can judge there isn't much chance of that."

"No," she assented, "I don't think there is much chance."

"He said to me one day," added Maurice thoughtfully, "that in the
Catholic Church there never could have been any danger of the election
of a heretic bishop. I am afraid this will decide him."

Mrs. Herman regarded him with a smile, studying him as if she were
reading the working of his mind.

"You think that a misfortune," she commented. "You feel that it is a
step farther into the darkness."

"It is to narrow rather than to broaden his horizon, is it not?"

She played with her fan a moment, smiling to herself in a way which he
did not understand, and looking down as if considering some old memory.
Then she met his glance with a look at once kind and wistful.

"It isn't of much use to argue the matter, I suppose," were her words.
"It seems to me as if in talking to you I see my old mental self in a
mirror, if you'll pardon me for saying so. When we come out from any
conviction, and most of all from a religious belief, it seems to us a
profound misfortune that any man should still believe what we have
decided is false. By and by I think you will see that the chief point
is that a man shall believe. What he believes doesn't so much matter.
It must be the thing that best suits his temperament."

"Then to outgrow a dogma is to weaken our power. It certainly weakens
our faith in general."

"Yes," she assented, "that is the price we must pay for freedom; but if
Philip can still believe, I have long ago passed the place where I
should regret it. Perhaps he is to be envied."

Maurice shook his head.

"We may feel like that in some moods," he concluded with a smile, "but
certainly nothing would induce you to change places with him." "Oh,
no," she cried; "certainly not. But that is mere womanly lack of logic!"



                        XXXIII


             A MINT OF PHRASES IN HIS BRAIN
                            Love's Labor's Lost, i. 1.


The disappointment of Maurice at the failure of his effort to secure
his aunt's fortune was perhaps rather more than less keen because the
property had never tangibly been his. The title of the fancy is that of
which men are most tenacious, and the thing which has been held in fee
of the imagination is precisely that which it is most grievous to lose.
Maurice returned to Boston completely overcome by the result of his
expedition, his mind overflowing with chagrin and anger.

It was not only the money which he had missed, but he had to his
thinking lost also the hope of being in a position to press his suit
with Berenice. However intangible might be his plans for winning her,
they none the less filled his mind. He refused to regard her coldness
as enduring. He had in his thoughts imagined so many tender scenes of
reconciliation in which he magnanimously forgave her for the sharpness
of the repulse of their last meeting or humbly besought pardon for his
own offenses, that he came to feel as if all misunderstanding had
really been done away with. It had been in his mind that if he were but
in a position to meet Berenice on equal terms in regard to fortune all
might be well; and to be deprived of this hope was infinitely bitter.

Meanwhile he had before him the problem of reshaping his life. It was
necessary that he decide what should take the place of the profession
which he had laid down. Fortunately the decision was not difficult, as
former inclination had practically settled the matter. The definite
shaping of his plans came one day in a talk which he had with his
cousin.

"It isn't exactly my affair, Maurice," Mrs. Staggchase said, "but I
want to know, and that always makes a thing her affair with a
woman,--what are you going to do with your life now that you have
pulled it out of the mouth of the church?"

"It is good of you to care to ask," he answered. "I suppose I shall
study law."

"May I talk with you quite frankly?" she asked. "Fred does me the honor
to say that for a woman I have a reasonably clear head."

"You may say whatever you like, Cousin Diana. I shall only be grateful."

"Well, then, in the first place, how much have you to live on?"

"I've about a thousand dollars a year. What was left of the estate at
mother's death amounts to about that. I wanted to give it all to the
church when I went into the Clergy House."

"Why didn't you?"

"Father Frontford wouldn't allow it. He said that a continual sacrifice
meant more than an act that stripped me of power to decide, and which
might be regretted."

"That was a noble temper," Mrs. Staggchase remarked thoughtfully. "A
priest is a strange being. As for you, you say you have never believed,
and yet you would have given up everything you possessed."

Maurice flushed, and looked a little shamefaced.

"I never did believe, so far as I can see now; but I thought I did, if
you see the difference. My wanting to give up everything wasn't belief;
it was a sort of instinctive desire to play fair. If I were to do the
thing at all, my impulse was to do it thoroughly. It isn't in my blood
to do a thing half way. I'm afraid the explanation doesn't speak very
well for my common sense; but so far as I can understand myself that's
the way of it."

"But if you didn't believe what were you there for?"

"I was there because Phil was. I don't pretend to understand why I, who
led Phil in everything else, who did all sorts of things that he
couldn't and had to decide everything else for him, should have
followed his lead so in religion; but I did. It was part of my caring
for him. It would have hurt him so much if I hadn't, that of course I
had to."

Mrs. Staggchase regarded him keenly. He turned away his eyes, thinking
of his friend and of the wide gulf which had opened between them, so
that he but half heard and did not understand the comment she made
softly.

"The _ewigweibliche_ in masculine shape," she murmured, smiling to
herself. "When the real came, it couldn't hold its power any longer."

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing. I was speaking in riddles. To come back to business,--you say
you've decided upon the law."

"Yes. That was always my choice. I read a good deal of law while I was
in college. It wasn't till I graduated two years ago that I fell into
theology. It's two years wasted."

"Oh, perhaps, and perhaps not. After all, experience in youth is
generally worth what it costs, little as we think so when we pay the
price. Well, then, you can easily live on your income if you choose.
Mr. Staggchase and I will be glad to have you make this your home,
and"--

"But, Cousin Diana," he interrupted in astonishment, "there is
certainly no reason why you should burden yourself with me. Not that I
am not a thousand times obliged to you, but"--

"Be as obliged as you like," interrupted she in turn, "only don't be
foolish. Fred and I are not exactly sentimentalists, and we both know
what we wish. He likes to have you to talk with, and when you have
learned to smoke you will find him a very clever and agreeable
companion after dinner. He knows the world, and he'll teach you a great
many things that you'd be slow to find out for yourself. As for me, you
amuse me, let us say. The gods have spared us the bother of children;
but the gifts of the gods are always to be paid for, and we begin to
feel as if there were a sort of loneliness ahead of us with nobody to
be especially interested in. To have somebody younger to care for is a
luxury when you are young yourself, but it's a necessity to age. I
assure you that we shouldn't have you here if we didn't want you, and
that we shall turn you out without scruple when we are tired of you."

"Very well, then," he responded with a laugh, "I am rejoiced to remain
to be a blessing."

They looked into the fire a little time as if they were considering
what effect upon the future this new arrangement would have; then Mrs.
Staggchase glanced up with a smile.

"Just now," she remarked, "before you are plunged in the study of the
law, you may do escort duty for me. I am going to call on Berenice
Morison."

"On Miss Morison?"

"Yes. Her grandmother is staying with her. Mr. Frostwinch has gone
abroad, you know, and as the old house belongs to Bee, she is staying
on there."

"But--but she won't care to see me."

"Very likely not," assented his cousin coolly, "but she'll endure you
for my sake."

"I don't like being endured," he retorted, between fun and earnest.
"Besides, she's so much money"--

"You are not such a cad as to be afraid of her money, I hope."

"Not in one way, but don't you see now that she has so much, and I have
lost Aunt Hannah's"--

"Really, Maurice," she interrupted brusquely, "you must learn not to
speak your thoughts out like that! I'm not asking you to go to propose
to Bee. You have the theological habit of taking things with too
dreadful seriousness. Come with me for a call, and don't bother about
consequences and possibilities."

Maurice blushed at his own folly in betraying his secret scruples, but
his cousin spared him any farther teasing, and they went on their way
peacefully. It seemed to him when he entered the stately Frostwinch
house that it had somehow been transformed. Everything was much as it
had been in the lifetime of Mrs. Frostwinch, yet to his fancy all
looked fresher and more cheerful. He smiled to himself, feeling that
the change must simply be the result of his knowledge that this was now
the home of Berenice; yet even so he could not persuade himself that
the alteration was not actual. He felt joyously alert as he followed
Mrs. Staggchase to the library, where Bee was sitting with old Mrs.
Morison.

He had never been in this apartment before. It was high, and heavily
made, with an open fire on the hearth, and enough books to justify its
name. Berenice came forward to meet them, and Mrs. Morison remained
seated near the fire.

"I am so glad to see you, Mrs. Staggchase," Bee said cordially. "It is
just one of those dreary days when it proves true courage to come out."

"And true friendship, I hope," the other answered, passing on to Mrs.
Morison. "My dear old friend, I wish I could believe you are as glad to
see me as I am to see you."

Berenice in the mean time gave her hand to Maurice graciously, but with
a certain grave courtesy which he felt to put them upon a purely
ceremonious footing.

"It is kind of you to come," she said. "Grandmother will be glad to see
you."

Maurice tried hard to look unconscious, but he could not help
questioning her with his eyes. She flushed under his eager regard, and
drew back a little.

"I am very glad of the chance to see--Mrs. Morison," he answered.

Bee flushed more deeply yet. Then she turned mischievously to Mrs.
Morison.

"Grandmother," she said, "it seems that Mr. Wynne came to see you and
not me."

The old lady greeted him kindly.

"I am glad to see you looking so well, Mr. Wynne," she said. "I hope
that your arm does not trouble you at all."

"Not at all. I was too well taken care of at Brookfield."

Mrs. Staggchase laughed, spreading out her hands.

"There," said she gayly, "you see! He has only been in my hands a few
weeks, but I call that a very pretty speech."

"He probably has a natural gift for pleasing speeches," Berenice
remarked meaningly.

Maurice crimsoned, but his education had not proceeded far enough for
him to have any reply.

"Well, take him away, Bee, and give him tea or gossip. I want to talk
to your grandmother about old friends, and you young people won't
understand."

"He may have tea if he is tractable," responded Bee. "We are evidently
not appreciated, Mr. Wynne. Will you ring the bell over there, please."

He did as he was directed, and then followed her to the tea-table at a
little distance from the fire. He was full of a troubled joy, the
mingled delight of being with her and the consciousness that he had
firmly determined in his own mind that he had no right to show her his
feelings. He said to himself that he could bear anything else better
than that she should think of him as a fortune-hunter. Her wealth
loomed between them as a wall which it were dishonorable even to
attempt to scale. His brain was busy phrasing things which he longed to
say to her, words seemed to seethe in his head, yet he found himself
strangely tongue-tied and awkward. When most of all he desired to
appear at his ease, he was most completely uncomfortable and
self-conscious.

A servant came with the tea, and he was able to cover to some extent
his uneasiness by serving the ladies. When this was done, and he sat
nervously stirring his own cup, he found himself searching his mind in
vain for those things which it would be safe to say. His brain was full
of things which must not be said. He could think only of things which
it was not safe to utter; and his discomfiture increased as he saw Miss
Morison watching him with a half-veiled smile.

"By the way," she said at length, when the silence was becoming too
marked, "I fulfilled your request."

"My request?" he echoed, unable to remember that he had made any.

"Yes. Have you forgotten that you came to ask me"--

He put out his hand impulsively.

"Please don't!" he interrupted. "It is bad enough to remember what an
unmitigated idiot I was without the humiliation of thinking that you
remember it too."

"I remember," she responded, with a sparkle in her eye, "that you did
not seem to relish the mission on which you were sent. However, I
accepted the intention, and I have promised the men a continuance of
their stipends." Her face grew suddenly grave, and she added: "I can't
joke about it, though. I really did it because Cousin Anna would have
wished it."

They were silent now because they had come so near a solemn subject
that neither of them cared to speak. The thoughts of Maurice went back
to the day he had come to do the errand of Father Frontford, and his
cheek grew hot.

"I hope you will believe," he said eagerly, "that I had really no idea
of how very ill your cousin was. She seemed so well when I saw her that
it was all unreal to me. I wish I could tell you how sorry I have been
for you. I have thought of you."

She raised her eyes to his, and they exchanged a look in which there
was more than sympathy. Maurice felt her glance so deeply that for the
moment he forgot all else. Obstacles no longer existed. He was looking
into the eyes of the woman he loved, and thrilling as if her heart was
questioning his. It seemed to him that her very self was demanding how
deep and how true had been his thought of her in her time of sorrow. He
bent forward, sounding her gaze with his, trying to convey all the
unspoken words which jostled in his brain. Her eyes fell before his
burning look, and her head drooped. The room was darkening with the
coming dusk, and they sat at some distance from the others. He laid his
hand on hers.

"Berenice!" he whispered.

She rose as if she had not noted.

"Don't you think it is time for lights, grandmother?" she said in a
voice so unemotional that it sent a chill to his heart.

"It is certainly time for us to be going home," Mrs. Staggchase
interposed, rising in her turn.

And far into the night Maurice Wynne vexed his soul with vain endeavors
to decide what Berenice meant by her treatment of him.



                        XXXIV


                 WHAT TIME SHE CHANTED
                            Hamlet, iv. 7.


The grief which Philip felt over the apostasy of Maurice overshadowed
for a time every other feeling. He sorrowed for his friend, praying and
yearning, searching his heart to discover whether his own influence or
example had helped to bring about this lamentable fall; he turned over
in his mind plans for bringing the wanderer back to the fold; he ceased
to think about the coming election, and thought of his ill-starred love
hardly otherwise than as a possible sin which had helped perhaps to
lead to this catastrophe.

Affection between two men is much more likely to be mutual than that
between two women. Men are more generally frank in their likes and
dislikes, they are as a rule more accustomed to feel at liberty to be
open and to please themselves in their familiarities; and it seems to
be true that men are more constant in friendship, as women are said to
be more constant in love. Affection between women, moreover, is apt to
be founded upon circumstance, while that between men is more often a
matter of character.

The fondness of Philip and Maurice for each other was of long standing;
it had arisen out of the mutual needs of their natures, and was part of
their growth. Philip was the one most dependent upon his friend,
however, and now he felt as if he were torn away from his chief
support. He reasoned with himself that he had been letting affection
for his friend come between him and Heaven; he tried to feel that
Providence had interfered to break down his idol; yet to all this he
could not but answer that Maurice had been always a help, and that it
was impossible to believe that Providence would accomplish his good by
the hurt of his benefactor. He did assure himself that his suffering
was the will of a higher power, and as such to be acquiesced in and
improved to his spiritual good. If the voice of his secret heart, that
inner self from which we hide our faces and whose words we so
obstinately refuse to hear, cried out against the cruelty of this
discipline, he but closed his ears more resolutely. To listen would be
to yield to temptation. He would not see Maurice; he hardly permitted
himself to read his friend's letters. He answered these notes by fervid
appeals to the wanderer to return to the fold, to be reconciled with
the church, to take up again the priesthood he had discarded. Hard as
it was, he still strove for what he felt to be the other's lasting good.

Lent ended, and the gladness of Easter came upon the land; the spring
showed traces of its secret presence by a thousand intangible and
delicate signs in sky, and air, and earth: there was everywhere a stir
and a quickening, a blitheness which belongs to the vernal season only.
Philip felt all these things by the growing sharpness of the contrast
between his mood and that of the world without. His melancholy and
unrest seemed to him to grow every day more intense and unbearable.

That Father Frontford did not more fully realize Philip's condition was
probably due to the near approach of the election. As the time for the
convention drew near, the supporters of the rival candidates redoubled
their exertions; there was hurrying to and fro, writing of letters and
continued consultation, all of which inevitably distracted the
attention of the Father. He did perceive, however, that Philip was
troubled, and nothing could have been more tender or considerate than
his attitude. He did not talk to Ashe about Maurice, but he contrived
to make his deacon understand that no blame was attached to him for the
apostasy of Wynne. Philip found a new affection for the Father
springing in his heart, so soothing, so winning was the sympathy of the
Superior.

The days passed on until the convention actually assembled. Philip was
feverishly anxious; yet he persistently assured himself that he had no
doubt in regard to the result. He felt that the end had been
accomplished by the work which had already been done; and the
convention itself seemed to him somewhat unreal and unmeaning. It had
in his mind not much more than the function of announcing a result
which he felt to have been arrived at already in the canvassing of
lists of delegates in which he had taken part at Mrs. Wilson's. Until
the thing was formally announced, however, it was impossible to be at
ease.

The first day of the convention was mainly one of organization and of
preparation. Business was disposed of and all made ready for the
election of the morrow. Philip went into the convention in the hour of
recreation. He tried to be interested in matters which he assured
himself were of real importance; yet he found his memory dwelling on
Maurice and the times they had talked of this convention. Even his
efforts to fix his thoughts on the election itself could not drive his
friend from his mind. He walked home at last, saying passionately that
he had ceased to care for the church, for its welfare, its fate; that
he had cared only for his own selfish desires and interests. He looked
back upon the convention which he had left, and saw mentally a picture
of men who seemed strange and remote, concerned with matters which he
did not understand, in which he had no interest. He felt completely out
of key with everything; he longed for Maurice with unspeakable pain. He
had rested on Maurice. In every mental crisis he had depended upon
finding his friend at hand, sympathetic, strong, responsive; he had
come to be as one unable to stand alone. It seemed impossible for him
to go on longer without seeing his fellow, his friend, his confidant,
his support. The convention and the Clergy House alike became misty and
accidental in comparison with his own desperate need of Maurice.

A couple of blocks from the House he was joined by a fellow deacon.

"I say, Ashe," was the other's greeting, "did you ever know anything so
unfortunate as that Wilson letter?"

Philip turned upon him an uncomprehending face.

"What is the Wilson letter?" he inquired absently.

"What? Don't you know about it? I saw you at the convention."

"I was there a little while; but there was nothing said about a letter,
that I heard."

"Oh, there has been nothing said about it in the convention, but they
say it will turn the scale."

"But what is it?"

"It's a letter Mrs. Wilson--Mrs. Chauncy Wilson, you know--you must
know who she is?"

"Yes; I know her."

"Well, this is a letter that she wrote to a rector in the western part
of the State,--his name was Briggs or Biggs, or something of that kind.
She said that if he didn't vote for Father Frontford she could get him
out of his parish."

"What!" exclaimed Philip. "She couldn't have written such a thing!"

"There's a fac-simile of it in the hands of every member of the
convention."

"But how did it get out?"

"They say," answered the other, eager to impart his information, "that
a man named Rangely had it printed, and sent it around. I don't know
who he is, but he's a newspaper man, I believe."

"I know who he is," Philip returned, "but I thought he was a friend of
Mrs. Wilson. I've seen him at her house. How did he get the letter?"

"I'm sure I don't know; but he had it. He's written a circular to go
with it. He says that that is the way the friends of Father Frontford
are trying to secure the election. There is a great deal of feeling
about it."

"But will it make much difference?"

"They say that it will turn the scale. There are a number of men who
were in doubt, and this is likely to be enough to insure Mr.
Strathmore's election."

"What a disgraceful trick!" Philip cried indignantly. "Father Frontford
isn't responsible for what Mrs. Wilson did. Besides, it doesn't change
the real facts of the case. It doesn't make Father Frontford any the
less the right man."

"Of course it doesn't," was the reply. "But I've been talking with my
uncle. He's a delegate from Springfield. He says that he's sure it will
get Mr. Strathmore elected."

The news gave Philip a shock, but it seemed impossible that a trivial,
outside trick like this could alter the conscientious vote of the
candidates. He was uneasy, but he seemed to have lost all vital care
about the election, and even this disconcerting event did not greatly
change his feeling. He reproached himself that he cared so little; yet
his personal misery so absorbed him that his thoughts wandered even
from this new cause for self-reproach.

After supper that night he was summoned to the Father Superior.

"I wish you to do an errand for me," Father Frontford said. "I presume
that you have heard of the publication of Mrs. Wilson's letter. It may
do harm, and whatever happens I want her to know that I do not blame
her. She acted unwisely, no doubt; but her intention was good. Besides,
I really became responsible when I trusted so much to her judgment. I
shall be happier if I know that she is not thinking that I feel
disposed to be vexed with her."

The tone in which this was said was too sincere for Philip to doubt
that the Father uttered his true feeling. He looked into the face of
the other, and was struck by the complete weariness, almost exhaustion,
which marked it. He went on his way haunted by those deep-set eyes, so
full of pain, of fatigue, and, it seemed to Philip, of self-reproach.

Mrs. Wilson was not at home, so that Philip had only to leave the note.
He turned back, crossing the Public Garden in the soft evening.
Overhead was the mysterious darkness, quivering with stars. The air was
full of suggestions of advancing spring. He felt in his veins an
unreasonable restlessness, a stirring as of sap in the tree, a longing
for that which he could not define. He heard around him gay voices and
laughter, for the night was warm, and people were sitting about on the
benches or strolling along the walks. He began to examine the groups he
passed, looking with a curious eye at the couples sitting side by side
in friendly or in loving companionship. He felt so utterly alone, and
all these about him were mated. The tones of women sounded soft and
sweet in his ear. Stray verses of Canticles began to float through his
mind as wisps of vapor drift across the sky before the fog comes in
from the sea. He repeated the collect for the day, and through it all
he was thinking that it was possible to walk past the house of Mrs.
Fenton. The difference in the time of his reaching the Clergy House
would not be so great as to attract notice; he might see her shadow on
the curtain; it was not probable, of course, but it was possible; in
any case, he should feel near to her. He walked more quickly, and as he
did so he heard the notes of a guitar, and then the sound of a girl
singing. It was only the hard, coarse voice of a street-singer, and the
language was Italian. He did not understand the words, but the music
was seductive, the night of spring, star-lit and fragrant with
intangible odors, quickened his sense. Constantly recurring in the
song, as if set there for his ear, he understood the magic word
"_amóre, amóre_" strung like beads down the necklace warm on a girl's
bosom. Surely he had a right to be human. All the world had leave to
love. He had given Mrs. Fenton up; she was only a memory; he should
never speak to her again; it could not be wrong simply to walk past her
house. He had lost even his friend; if this poor act were a comfort, it
surely was not sin. "_Amóre--amóre_," sang the Italian girl over there
in the warm, palpitating night. He had consecrated his love as an
offering on the altar; surely he need not therefore deny it.

He had gained Beacon Street, and was walking rapidly, his cheeks hot
and flushed, his heart on fire. Far down a neighboring street he heard
the approach of a band of the Salvation Army. They were singing
shrilly, with beating of tambourines and clanging of cymbals, a vulgar,
raucous tune, redolent of animal vigor and of coarse passions, a tune
as unholy as the rites of a pagan festival. Ashe stood still as with
flaring torches they drew nearer. The blare of the brass, the vibrant,
tingling clangor of the cymbals, the high, penetrating voices of the
women, the barbaric rhythm of the air, made him in his sensitive mood
tremble like a tense string. He shivered with excitement, nervous tears
coming into his eyes so thickly that he turned away blinded, and
stumbled against a man who was passing.

"My good brother," exclaimed a rich, Irish voice, jovial, yet not
without dignity, "you don't see where you are going."

Philip recognized instantly the tones of the priest whom he had met at
the North End; and without even apologizing he answered with an
overwhelming sense of how true were the words in a figurative sense:--

"No, I cannot see."

The other was evidently impressed by the manner in which the reply was
given, for instead of passing on he stopped and examined Ashe closely.

"Can I do anything for you?" he asked.

"Providence has sent you to me, I think," Philip returned. Then he put
his hand on the arm of the stranger, bending forward in his eagerness.
"Where do you live?" he asked. "May I come to see you to-morrow
afternoon? It may be that you can tell me where I am going."



                        XXXV


             THE WORLD IS STILL DECEIVED
                           Merchant of Venice, iii. 2.


However much or little the ill-starred letter of Mrs. Wilson may have
had to do with it, the fact was that both houses of the convention
elected Mr. Strathmore by majorities sufficiently large to satisfy even
his friends. The lay delegates were more generally in his favor than
the clergy, which circumstance gave for a time some shadowy hope to the
high-church party that the House of Bishops might refuse to confirm the
election; but whatever consolation was derived from such an expectation
was of short duration. The election was ratified, and almost
immediately preparations were begun for the consecration of the new
bishop.

Father Frontford remarked to an interviewer at the close of the
convention that "it was not the least happy of the incidents of the
election that Mr. Strathmore had been chosen by a majority so decided,
since it indicated clearly the wishes of the church;" and he used his
influence to prevent any attempt to induce the House of Bishops to
oppose the choice of the convention. As soon as the matter was settled
he called upon Mr. Strathmore and offered his congratulations in person.

"It is true that I would have prevented your election had I been able,"
he said frankly; "but that was entirely a question of church polity. I
hardly need say how complete is my confidence in your sincerity and
your ability."

"Brother," Mr. Strathmore replied, with that smile whose charm no man
could resist, "I thank you for coming, and I thank you for your
generous words. One thing we may be sure of and be grateful to God for.
The church is certainly too great and too stable to be shaken by the
mistakes of any one man. If we differ sometimes about the best way of
showing it outwardly, we at least are one in wishing the best interests
of religion and of humanity."

Father Frontford had had some difficulty in soothing Mrs. Wilson after
the election. She declared vehemently that the House of Bishops should
not confirm Mr. Strathmore.

"I will go to New York myself," she announced. "I know I can manage the
Metropolitan. If he's on our side we can prevent that infidel
Strathmore from getting a majority."

It is possible that Father Frontford, with all his decision, might have
been unable to prevent some demonstration, but Dr. Wilson quietly
remarked to his wife:--

"Elsie, we've had enough of this bishop racket. I'm devilish tired of
the whole thing, and I wish you'd find a new amusement."

"But, Chauncy," she responded, "think how maddening it is to be beaten!
And as for that Fred Rangely, I could dig out his eyes and pour in hot
lead!"

Wilson chuckled gleefully.

"You played your private theatricals just a little prematurely. It was
devilish clever of him to get back at you that way; but that letter has
made newspaper talk enough about you, and you'd better drop church
politics. Isn't it time to get your stud into shape for the summer?"

Elsie shrugged her shoulders.

"I don't know. I hate to give it up while there's a fighting chance.
The campaign has been a lot of fun. However, I suppose you are right.
You have a dreadfully aggravating way of being. Besides, I am pretty
tired of parsons, and horses wear better."

She therefore managed to secure a visiting English duke with a
characteristically shady reputation, gave the most brilliant dinner of
the season in his honor, and retired to her country place in a blaze of
glory; finding some consolation for all her disappointments in the
purchase of a couple of new racers with pedigrees far longer than that
of the duke.

Easter came that year almost at its earliest, and it was therefore
found possible to have the consecration of the new bishop in June. To
it were assembled all the dignitaries of the church. Boston for a
couple of days overflowed with men in ecclesiastical garb; and if the
general public was not deeply stirred by the importance of the event,
all those connected with it were full of interest and excitement.

Mrs. Wilson surprised her friends by returning to town and reopening
her house for the consecration week. She announced to her husband her
intention of doing this as they sat in the library at their country
place while Dr. Wilson smoked his final pipe for the night. They had
been dining out, and had driven home in the moonlight, chatting of the
people they had seen and the gossip they had heard. Elsie was in high
spirits, amusing her husband by her satirical remarks. At last she
said:--

"I hope, Chauncy, you won't mind if I go off for a week."

"Off for a week? Where are you going?"

"Into town to open the house for the consecration of the great Bishop
Strathmore."

"Well," her husband said, laughing, "I like your grit. If you can't
win, you won't show the white feather."

She laughed in turn, as gleefully and as musically as a child.

"I'm going for revenge."

"Oh, that's it. Is Rangely to die?"

"Pooh, it isn't Rangely. He's too insignificant. I can snub him any
time. It's better fun than that."

"Well, let's hear."

"You know that Marion Delegass is to end her season with a week in
Boston."

"Well? You are not going to Boston to see her, are you? You've seen her
in Paris and New York enough to last, I should think."

"Oh, no; I'm going to meet her."

"Marion Delegass, the most notoriously disreputable actress even on the
French stage? Well, she'll be a change from your parsons."

"Luckily her last week is the week of the consecration of the heathen."

"Is she to take part?"

"Don't be flippant. I am to give Mlle. Delegass a luncheon. I've
arranged it by letter. By one of the most curious coincidences in the
world it comes on the very day of the consecration."

"That is amusing, but I don't see that it's much of a revenge."

"No?" Elsie responded demurely, casting down her eyes. "I am so sorry
that Mrs. Strathmore can't come."

"Mrs. Strathmore? You didn't ask her!"

"Why, of course, Chauncy, I wanted to show that I hadn't any ill
feeling against the family of my bishop."

"To meet Marion Delegass?"

"Of course. I thought it would liven Mrs. Strathmore up a little. She
always reminded me of water-gruel with not enough salt in it."

Dr. Wilson burst into a roar of laughter, leaning back in his chair and
slapping his knee.

"Marion Delegass! Why she's left more husbands and lovers behind her
than a sailor has wives! Marion Delegass and that prig in petticoats!
Well, Elsie, you do beat the devil!"

"Am I to understand that you know His Satanic Majesty well enough to
speak with authority?" she laughed. "What do you think now of my
revenge?"

"I don't exactly see where the revenge comes in. She won't come to the
lunch."

"Come? Oh, no; thank Heaven, she won't come. She'd be like a death's
head in a punch-bowl. She won't come, but she'll tell that she was
invited. She'll be too furious not to tell; and everybody will know
that I asked her. That's all I care about."

Wilson laughed again.

"Well," he said again, "you are the cheekiest and the most amusing
woman in town. You'll shock all your relations, but they must be
getting hardened to that by this time."

Whether the relatives were on this occasion more or less shocked than
upon others was not a question to which Elsie devoted any especial
thought. She gave her luncheon, and all the world knew that she had
invited Mrs. Strathmore to meet Marion Delegass on the day of the
consecration. Mrs. Strathmore was so enraged that she talked flames and
fury, even going so far as to wonder whether there were not some
possibility of excommunication; so that her tormentor was enchanted
with the success of her revenge.

The consecration took place on a beautiful June day, and was as
imposing a function in its line as Boston had ever seen. Trinity was
crowded to overflowing, and if the ceremony was less imposing than
would have been the induction of a Catholic bishop, it was impressive
and dignified. The sunlight filtering through the windows of stained
glass splashed fantastic colors over the long surpliced train which
wound through the aisles down to the chancel, singing processionals of
joyous hope; the air was full of the sense of solemn meaning; the organ
pealed; the noble words of the fine old ritual spoke to the hearts of
the hearers, and carried their message of a faith which took hold upon
the unseen. Above all the circumstance, the form, the conventions, the
creeds, rose the spirit of the worshipers, uplifted by the thrilling
realization of the outpouring of the soul of humanity before the
unknown eternal.

Maurice had accompanied Mrs. Staggchase and Miss Morison to the
ceremony. It had been his impulse not to go, but his cousin urged it,
and it needed little to induce him to go to any place where Berenice
was, even though it were a church. He went with some secret misgiving
lest the service should move him more than he wished; but to his
satisfaction he found that while he felt æsthetic pleasure, he was
inclined to be critical about the doctrine of the ritual. His
satisfaction, he reflected, would have been thought amusing by Mrs.
Staggchase; but it at least assured him that he had not been mistaken
in his mental attitude toward the creed he had discarded.

The thing which most moved him was the sight of Philip among the
surpliced deacons in the procession. Philip's face seemed to him
thinner and paler than of old; he blamed himself that he had not
disregarded his friend's injunction, and insisted upon seeing him. To
his repeated requests Philip had returned answer that he could not bear
the meeting. Maurice had come at length to feel something almost of
resentment at the wall which this prohibition put between them; but
to-day, seeing the white countenance, he experienced a pang of deep
self-reproach. He reflected how sharply his defection must have weighed
his friend down. He should have tried to comfort him; at least he
should have assured Phil that in spite of whatever might come his
affection would remain unchanged.

He thought lovingly of the old days when he and Phil were together, and
of the plans they had sometimes made for keeping if possible together
even after they went out into the world to work. He had the impatience
of one who has recently put a doctrine by for the blindness, as it
seemed to him, which kept Phil still in the power of the old
superstition; but with his friend's white face, marked with mental
suffering, there to soften him, he dwelt little on this, and much on
his affection for his friend and fellow.

As Maurice brooded, watching Philip moving slowly down the aisle,
Berenice bent forward to take a book from the rack, and her face came
between him and his friend. The thought of Philip vanished as a shadow
before a sun-burst. He was conscious only of Berenice, sitting there so
near him, her dark eyes serious with the solemnity of the occasion, her
cheeks tinged with a color so lovely that the lining of a shell or the
petals of a rose were poor things with which to compare it. He forgot
all else, and lost himself in a delicious, troubled dream of what might
be. Surely, surely she must love him! He could not give her up; it was
not possible that he should not some day win her. He fixed on her a
look so ardent that it seemed to compel her glance to meet his. The
flush in her cheek deepened, and he reflected with an exultant thrill
that even in the absorption of a time like this he could reach and move
her spirit.

The rest of the service was little to Maurice. He heard the music,
listened now and then to the words which were being spoken, thought for
a moment here and there upon the strangeness that these people should
be consecrating Mr. Strathmore and not recognizing in the least that
they were assisting at the breaking down of the church; he gave a
little reflection to his own interview with the new bishop, unable
completely to satisfy himself how far Mr. Strathmore was sincere and
how far simply following out a policy; these and other matters floated
through his mind, but they were mere trifles on the surface. His real
thought was of Berenice, always of Berenice. The fluttered, troubled
look which he had seen when his gaze had compelled hers, a look which
seemed to him full of confession of things unutterable, full almost of
appeal as if she realized that she was betraying a feeling that she
feared to own even to herself, this look of a moment so fleeting clocks
could hardly have measured it, filled him with a wild, unreasoning
bliss. He did not again try to challenge her eyes. He sat in a dream of
happiness; a vague, intangible, ecstatic sense that all was well, that
the universe was in tune, and that all things were but ministers of his
joy.

When the ceremonial was concluded Mrs. Staggchase went home with
Berenice to lunch with Mrs. Morison. Maurice put them into their
carriage, feeling that he could not let Berenice go out of his sight.
He stood on the curbstone watching the carriage as if it had set out on
a voyage to regions unknown and far; then smiling at himself with a
realization of what he was doing he turned back to go home himself. As
he did so he came face to face with Philip.



                        XXXVI


             THE HEAVY MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
                           Measure for Measure, iv. I


The mind of Philip Ashe had not become more quiet as time went on, and
the day of the consecration found him hesitating between his old life
and a new one. Ever since the chance encounter with the Irish priest he
had been going almost every afternoon to talk with this new friend, and
one by one he had found his doubts about the supremacy of the Roman
church fading away. Ashe was of a nature which must rely upon another,
and since he was shut off from the companionship of Wynne it was
inevitable that he should lean upon this great, hearty, healthy man,
who with the possibility of adding a son to the church received him so
warmly. Philip's nature, moreover, inclined him strongly toward a
church which exercised absolute authority, and in doctrinal points he
found himself surprisingly at one with his teacher. Nothing held him
back but the force of habit and a natural hesitancy to break away from
the faith which he had professed. Undoubtedly his feeling for Father
Frontford counted for much; but the fact, that in the months which had
preceded the election the Father Superior had been so much absorbed
that intimacy between him and his deacons was impossible, had greatly
lessened Philip's sense of loyalty to him. Very tenderly and wisely the
priest led Ashe on, until he was in very truth a Catholic in all but
name.

To his ardent, mystical mind, deeply responsive to the ritual of the
older church, the ceremonies of the consecration seemed poor and thin.
He craved symbolism and richly suggestive rites. He had been more than
once in these latter days to the services of the Catholics, and his
imagination came more and more to demand the embodiment in form of the
aspirations of his soul. He tried to stifle the disappointment which
assailed him as the function proceeded, but it was impossible for him
not to realize that the ceremonial of his own faith left him cold and
unsatisfied. He missed the warm emotional excitement of the music, the
incense, the sonorous Latin, the sumptuous robes, and the romantic
associations of the mass.

He felt keenly, moreover, that the man who was being to-day installed
as the head of the diocese was of tendencies distinctly opposed to his
desires. He mingled with disappointment that Father Frontford had not
been chosen a genuine conviction that Strathmore would use his
influence to carry church forms toward a worship ever simpler and more
bare. He could not wholly smother an almost personal resentment against
Strathmore, and a consciousness that it would be always impossible for
him to regard the newly consecrated bishop with that respect and
veneration due to one holding the office. He reflected that the church
must itself be tending toward a dangerous liberalism if it were
possible for this thing to have come about. He listened dully and
confusedly to the service until the time came when the bishop elect
made his vows. He heard the strong voice of Strathmore, vibrant,
deliberate, penetrating, repeat with slow solemnity the promise of
conformity and obedience to the doctrine and worship of the church. The
words tingled through the mind of Ashe like an electric shock. To his
excited feeling Strathmore was perjuring himself in the name of God,
since it was impossible to feel that the new bishop followed or
intended to follow either. He experienced a wild impulse to spring to
his feet and protest; he wondered if he only of all the persons in this
crowded church recognized the shocking irreligion of that vow. He
reflected that in the Catholic communion it would have been impossible
for popular suffrage to raise to the bishopric a man like this, a
heretic and a perjurer.

The service went on, and Philip sat in a sort of dull stupor. He could
not think clearly; he was only dreamily conscious of what was going on
about him. The music, the prayers, the solemn words were to him so
remote from his true self that he seemed to hear them through a veil of
distance. He had ceased to have part in this rite; he ceased even to
heed it.

Like one who is lost in idle musing, one who concerns himself with
trifling thoughts lest he realize too poignantly a bitter actuality,
Philip sat in his place, now and then glancing about the great church.
Changing his position a little, he saw the face of Mrs. Fenton. He
dwelt on it with mingled grief and pain. More and more he became
absorbed in gazing, while love and anguish swelled in his heart. He
forgot where he was; he saw her only; he felt only her presence in all
the throng. His passion seemed to him greater than ever. He did not for
an instant think of her as of one who could or would requite his
affection; or even as one who belonged to his future life. He was
filled with a sense of the completeness of his devotion to her; he felt
that he had loved her more than Heaven itself; but he felt also that he
was bidding her good-by. He had not definitely said to himself that a
change was before him; yet looking at her he felt it. The shadow of an
eternal farewell seemed to be over him. He was benumbed with suffering;
he drank in her face greedily; he seemed to himself to be imprinting
for the last time upon his memory that which was dearer to him than
life, yet which he was to see no more.

The service ended at last, and once more the long procession of which
he was a part slowly made its way out of the church. Philip found
himself in the vestry in the midst of a crowd of ecclesiastics from
which he extricated himself with all possible speed; and got once more
into the open air. He threaded his way among the groups standing on the
sidewalks chatting and hindering him. Suddenly a man turned close to
him, and Maurice stood before his face.

"Phil!" he heard the joyful voice of his friend cry. "My dear old Phil,
how glad I am to see you!"

The sound was like a charm which breaks a spell. For the instant all
else was forgotten in the pleasure of being again with his
heart-fellow. He could have flung his arms about the other's neck and
kissed him, so keen was his delight. The doubts and distractions which
a moment earlier had bewildered and tortured him vanished before
Wynne's greeting as a mist before a brisk and wholesome wind. He seized
the hand held out to him, and clasped it almost convulsively.

"Maurice!" was all that he could say.

"I really ought not to recognize you," Maurice said, in a great hearty
voice which sounded to Philip strangely unfamiliar. "Why in the world
have you refused to see me? I assure you I'm not contagious."

They were close to a group waiting on the sidewalk, and with
instinctive shrinking Ashe led the way down the street. Soon they were
walking in much the old fashion, and Philip left his friend's question
unanswered until they had gone some distance. Then he turned with a
smile not a little wistful.

"Certainly it was not because I did not long to see you," he said.

Maurice smiled, but Philip sensitively felt a veiled impatience in his
tone as he replied:--

"Oh, Phil, if I could only get the ascetic nonsense out of you!"

Ashe could not answer. He could not reprove his friend after the
separation--which to him had been so long and so sorrowful, and he had
a secret feeling that they were to be more entirely divided. The pair
walked in silence a moment, and then Wynne spoke.

"Well, I'll not talk on forbidden subjects; but, surely, Phil, you are
not going to throw me over entirely. I wouldn't drop you, no matter
what happened."

"I'm not throwing you over," Philip answered with a choking in his
throat. "I would--Oh, Maurice," he broke out, interrupting himself, "it
isn't for want of caring for you, but if I am ever to help you, I must
keep my own faith. I have been so troubled and so--There," he broke off
again, "let us talk of something else."

He felt that Maurice was studying him carefully.

"Phil, old fellow, you are hysterically incoherent. What's the matter
with you? It can't be all my going off. Can't you come home with me,
and talk it out?"

Ashe shook his head. The more he was touched and moved by the affection
of his friend, the more he shrank from him. This tender comradeship
seemed to him the most subtile of temptations. He feared, moreover,
lest he might reveal to Maurice too much of what was in his heart.

"Not now," he said. "I must go home at once."

"Then I'll walk along with you," rejoined the other. "I do wish you'd
let me help you. You are evidently all played out physically, and half
an eye could see that you've something on your mind. Is it the bishop?"

"That has troubled me a good deal," Ashe returned, feeling a relief in
being able to say this truthfully.

"Well, Phil, if you worry yourself sick over what you can't help, what
strength will you have for the things that you can do? I'm glad it
isn't all my going that has brought you to this, for you look
positively ill. I wish you'd get sick-leave, and go off a while."

Ashe shook his head again. He felt that if Maurice went on talking to
him he should lose his self-command. He must get away; yet he could not
bear to hurt his friend. He turned toward Maurice and held out his hand.

"Dear Maurice," he said, "don't be hurt; but I can't talk with you. I
must be alone. I am upset, and not myself. It is not that I don't trust
you, you know; but there are things that a man has to fight out for
himself."

The other stopped, and regarded him closely.

"All right, Phil," he said. "I understand. If you've got a fight with
the devil on hand nobody can help you. I only wish I could."

He wrung the hand of Ashe, and added:

"Good-by. I'm always fond of you, old fellow; and you know that when
there is a place that I can help there's nothing I wouldn't do for you."

Ashe tried to answer, but he could not command his voice. He could only
return the warm pressure of Wynne's hand, and then, miserable and
hopeless, go on his way to his conflict with the arch fiend.

Once in his chamber Ashe fastened the door, drew down the shades, and
lighted the gas. He laid aside his cassock, and loosened his clothing
so that his breast lay bare. He took from a drawer a little crucifix of
iron. This he placed across the chimney of the gas-burner, and watched
it until it was heated. Then he seized it with his fingers, but the
stinging pain made him drop it to the floor. He bared his breast,
wildly calling aloud to heaven, and flung himself down upon the
crucifix, pressing the hot iron to his naked bosom. A fierce shudder
convulsed him; he extended his arms in the form of a cross, and with
closed eyes lay still an instant. A horrible odor filled the room;
great drops of sweat dripped from his forehead; his teeth were set in
his lower lip. For a moment he remained motionless; then in
uncontrollable agony he writhed over upon his back and fainted.

The return to consciousness was a terrible sensation of misery and
weakness. He was heart-sick and racked in body and mind. Feebly he
rose, and gathered his scattered senses. Then with trembling he got to
his feet. His wound gave him bitter agony, but the bodily pain made him
smile. He took from the same drawer a picture of the Madonna, and knelt
before it with clasped hands. His doubts, his passion, his
self-reproaches, danced like demons before his distracted brain. The
troubled, stormy thoughts of his distraught mind merged insensibly into
prayers. He put aside the clothing and showed to the Virgin Mother his
wounded breast, scarred and bleeding. He looked into her face with
murmured words of contrition, of imploring, of faith. A gracious sense
of her womanly pity, of her heavenly tenderness, stole soothingly over
him. He seemed almost to feel cool hands on his hot forehead; it was as
if in a moment more the heavens might open and grant to him the
beatific vision. There came over him a wave of joy which was beyond
words. The longing of his soul for the woman he loved was merged in the
desire of his heart which yearned toward the blessed Virgin Mother. His
prayers became more glowing, more ecstatic, until in a rapture of
adoration, of bliss, of passion, he fell prostrate before the divine
image, crying out with all his soul:--

"Thou ever blessed one! To thee I give myself! 'O thou, to the arch of
whose eyebrow the new moon is a slave,' receive me, save me!"

He had no sense of incongruity to make the phrase unseemly or
ludicrous. It was to him the formal transfer of his deepest allegiance
from an earthly love to a heavenly. He had at last found peace.



                        XXXVII


                   THIS IS NOT A BOON
                            Othello, iii. 3.


It was Mrs. Wilson who was the immediate means of bringing about an
understanding between Maurice and Berenice. Mrs. Wilson was never so
occupied that she was not able to attend to any new thing which might
turn up, and her interest in the spring races did not prevent her from
having a hand in the affairs of the lovers. While she was in town
attending to the luncheon for Marion Delegass she dined with Mrs.
Staggchase, and Maurice took her down.

"I understand that you are a renegade," she remarked vivaciously as
soon as they were seated. "I wonder you dare look me in the face."

"Because you are the church?" he demanded.

"Certainly not now that that Strathmore is bishop," she retorted,
tossing her head. "However, I always said that you were too good to be
wasted in a cassock."

"Thank you. What would you say if I made such a reflection on the
clergy?"

"Oh, I've no patience with the clergy!" she declared. "They bore me to
death. There's that solemn-faced friend of yours, Mr. Ashe--his name
ought to be Ashes!--he actually lectured me on my worldliness! _My_
worldliness, if you please, and I working myself to a shadow for the
election of Father Frontford!"

"He has imagination, you see," Maurice suggested, smiling.

"Now you are sneering, Mr. Wynne. I shall talk to the man on the other
side."

She was good as her word, and left Maurice to devote himself to the
lady on his right. He had the American adaptability, and a couple of
months had sufficed to make him reasonably at ease at a dinner. The
continuous delight he felt in his freedom, moreover, inspired him with
an inclination to be frank and communicative, so that if he did not
talk like the conventional man of the world, he managed not to sit
silent. His neighbor to-night was Mrs. Thayer Kent, and he chatted
easily with her about the West, where for a couple of years she had
been living on a ranch. Something in Mrs. Kent's talk reminded him of
Berenice, and he sighed inwardly that the latter's mourning prevented
her from going out. As if the thought had been spoken aloud, Mrs.
Wilson recalled herself to his attention by saying in his ear:--

"It is such a pity Berenice Morison isn't here. Have you seen her since
the Mardi Gras ball?"

"Yes," he answered, turning quickly, and vexed to feel himself flush.
"I saw her yesterday at the consecration."

"Did you go? How immoral! I stayed at home and gave a luncheon for
Marion Delegass."

"So I heard; but everybody hadn't such a moral thing as that to do."

"Oh, no; very likely not. By the way, you have never apologized for
deserting me in the middle of the service that night."

"I had to take care of that girl. She fainted."

"Oh, you did? Who was she? What did you do with her? However, I don't
care. It's none of my business. I wonder, though, what sort of a story
you'd have told Berenice if she'd been there."

Wynne was too confused to answer this sally, although he wanted to say
something about the cruelty of taking him into the ball-room. His
confusion increased Mrs. Wilson's amusement.

"I think I should like to be in at the death," she said. "She is coming
down to stay with me next week. Come down and make love to her. I won't
tell about the girl you carried out of church in your arms."

More and more disconcerted and self-conscious, Maurice could only
stammer that Mrs. Wilson flattered him if she supposed that Miss
Morison would tolerate any love-making on his part.

"You are adorable when you blush like that," was the reply which he
got. "I have almost a mind to set you to make love to me. However, that
wouldn't be fair. I will take it out in seeing you and her. You must
surely come down."

Maurice regarded the invitation as merely part of Mrs. Wilson's
badinage, but in due time it was formally repeated by note. He opened
the letter at the breakfast table, and was advised by his cousin to
accept.

"Mrs. Wilson," she commented, "is like a banjo, more exciting than
refined, but she isn't bad-hearted. She has the old Boston blood and
traditions behind her."

"They are sometimes rather far behind," interpolated Mr. Staggchase
dryly. "She wasn't a Beauchester, you know. However, she has her
ancestors safe in their graves so that they can't escape her."

Mrs. Staggchase smiled good-naturedly at the little fling at her own
family pretensions.

"You are wicked this morning, Fred," was her reply. "Elsie is something
of a sport on the ancestral tree; but she is worth visiting. Berenice
Morison is going down there sometime soon. Perhaps she will be there
with you, Maurice."

"I thought," Mr. Staggchase observed, "that old Mrs. Morison didn't
approve of Mrs. Wilson."

"Nobody approves of Elsie," was Mrs. Staggchase's calm reply. "I'm sure
I don't; but after all she is a sort of cousin of Berenice, and she
can't very well refuse to visit her. Really, there is nothing bad about
Elsie. She is startling, and she certainly does things which are bad
form. That's half of it because she married as she did."

Nothing more was said, and Maurice kept his own counsel in regard to
the fact that he knew that Miss Morison was to be his fellow-guest. He
was full of wild hopes. He reproached himself that he was wrong to
forget that Berenice was rich and he was poor; yet not for all his
reproaches could he keep himself from feeling Mrs. Wilson had not
seemed to see any insurmountable obstacle to his wooing; that she had
appeared rather to be ready to help his suit. He must not, of course,
try to win Berenice; yet he was going to Mrs. Wilson's to meet her, to
be with her, to revel in the delicious pleasure of hoping, of fearing,
of loving.

The house of the Wilsons at Beverly Farms was on a bluff overlooking
the sea. It was reached by a long avenue winding through pines mingled
with birches and rowan trees; and stood in a clearing where all the day
and all the night the sound of the waves on the cliff answered the
whispering of the wind in the pine-tops. The broad piazzas of the house
looked out over the sea, and gave views of the islands off shore, the
ever-changing water, the beautiful curves of the sea marge, now high
with defiant rocks, and now falling into sandy beaches. A level lawn,
velvety and green, stretched from the house to the edge of the cliff,
with here and there a rustic seat or a century plant stiff and arrogant
in its lonely exile from warmer climes.

On this piazza Maurice found himself, just before dinner on the evening
of his arrival, walking up and down with Berenice. It was still cool
enough to make the exercise grateful.

"It is so delightful to have the weather warm enough to be out of doors
without being all bundled up," she said, looking over the sea, cold
green and gray in the declining light.

"The water doesn't look very warm," Maurice responded, following her
gaze.

"No, it isn't exactly summer yet," she replied lightly. "Do you know,"
she added, turning to meet his eyes, "I can't help thinking how
different this is from the last time we were together away from Boston."

"When we were at Brookfield?"

"Yes."

"It is different; more different to me than you can have any idea of.
Then I was a cog in a machine; now I am my own master."

They walked to the end of the piazza, turned, and came down again. They
were facing the light now, and her face shone with the pale glow of the
declining day. In her black dress, with a soft shawl thrown about her,
she was dazzling; and Maurice found it difficult not to take her in his
arms then and there.

"It must have been a strange feeling," she observed thoughtfully, "to
know that you were not master of your own movements, but had to do as
you were told, whether you approved of it or not."

"Strange," he echoed, a sense of slavery coming over him which was far
stronger than anything he had felt while the bondage lasted, "it was
intolerable!"

"Yet you endured it?" she returned, regarding him curiously.

"Yes, I endured it. In the first place, I thought that it was my duty;
and in the second, it was not so hard until I had seen"--

"Well, until you had seen?"--

"Until I had seen you, I was going to say."

Berenice flushed, and tossed her head.

"You have caught a pretty trick of paying compliments, Mr. Wynne."

"No," he answered with gravity, "I have only the mistaken temerity to
say the truth."

She regarded him with a mocking light in her deep, velvety eyes.

"And is it the truth that you have given up your religion because you
have seen me?"

Maurice wondered afterward how he looked when she sped this shaft, for
he saw her shrink and pale. She even stammered some sort of an apology;
but he did not heed it. Although he was sure that he should sooner or
later have come to the same conclusion whether he had met Berenice or
not, he knew in his secret heart that there was in her words some savor
at least of truth. He felt their bitterness to his heart's core, and
could only stand speechless, reproaching her with his glance. If they
were true it was cruel for her to say them. He regarded her a moment,
and then turned toward the long French window by which they had come
out of the house. Berenice recovered herself instantly, and behaved as
if nothing had occurred to mar the serenity of their talk.

"Yes," she said in an even voice, "you are right. It is becoming too
cold to stay out here."

He held open the window for her, and she swept past him with a soft
rustle and a faint breath of perfume. He did not follow, but drew the
window to behind her and continued his promenade alone until he was
summoned to dinner. All his glorious air-castles had fallen in ruins
about his feet, and he rated himself as a fool for having come to
Beverly Farms to meet this girl who evidently flouted him.

The result of this conversation was to bring Maurice to the resolution
to return to town. All the doubts which had been in his mind arose like
ghosts ill exorcised, more tangible and more insistent than ever. He
realized that he had come here fully persuaded in his secret heart that
Miss Morison must love him, and with the hope of winning some proof of
it. Now he assured himself that she did not care for him and that he
had been a fool to indulge in a dream so absurd. The obstacles which
lay between them presented themselves to him in a dismal array. He
decided that she could have no respect for him, or she could not have
thrown at him the implication that he had apostatized from selfish
motives. With all the awful solemnity with which a man deeply in love
examines trifles, he recalled her looks and words, deciding that he was
to her nothing more than the butt of her light contempt; and secretly
wondering when and where he should see her again, he decided to leave
her forever.

He announced his determination next morning to his hostess. As he could
not well give the real reason for his decision, and had no experience
in social finesse, he came off badly when asked why he had come to this
sudden decision. He could not equivocate; and when Mrs. Wilson asked
him point-blank if Berenice had been treating him badly, he could only
take refuge in the reply that it was not for him to criticise what Miss
Morison chose to do. He persisted in his resolution to return to
Boston, feeling obstinately that he could not with dignity remain where
he was while Berenice was there. A man of the world would at once have
seen the folly of such a course, but Maurice was not a man of the world.

"Well," Mrs. Wilson said, after she had argued with him a little, "you
have retained the clerical obstinacy, whatever else you've given up. I
am not in the habit of pressing my guests to stay if they are tired of
my society. If you choose to go, of course you will go."

"Oh, it is not that I am tired of your society," poor Maurice put in
eagerly.

"If I were a man," his hostess went on, "I never would let a woman see
that I minded how she treated me. You'd soon have her coming down from
her high horse if you showed her that you didn't care."

Maurice flushed painfully. It was impossible for him to talk to Mrs.
Wilson about his feeling for Berenice.

"I am afraid that I had better go," he said, with eyes abased.

She regarded him with a mixture of impatience and amusement struggling
in her face.

"By all means go," she retorted. "I'll tell Patrick to be at the door
in time to take you to the three o'clock train."

She swept away rather brusquely, leaving him disconsolate and uneasy.
He felt that he had bungled matters; but before he had time to consider
Berenice appeared, and joined him on the piazza.

"I am sent by Mrs. Wilson," she announced, "to ask you to stay."

"You take some pains to clear yourself from the suspicion of having any
interest in the matter."

"'I am only a messenger,'" she quoted saucily, seating herself on the
rail of the piazza in the sunshine, and looking so piquant that Maurice
felt resolution and resentment oozing out of his mind with fatal
rapidity.

He flushed at her allusion to his ill-considered interview with her,
but he could not for his life be half so indignant as he wished to be.

"Apparently an indifferent messenger. You evidently do not care whether
I go or I stay."

"Why should I?"

"Why should Mrs. Wilson?" he retorted, not very well knowing what he
was saying.

"Oh, Mrs. Wilson is your hostess. Besides," Bee went on, a delightful
look of mischief coming into her face, "she said that she hated to have
her plans interfered with, and that you were so handsome that she liked
to have you about."

Maurice flushed with a strangely mixed sensation of pleased vanity and
irritation, and was angry with himself that he could not receive her
jesting unmoved. He bowed stiffly.

"I am very sorry," he returned, "that Mrs. Wilson should be deprived of
so beautiful an ornament for her place."

"Then you will go?" Bee demanded, looking at him with mirthful eyes, a
glance which so moved him that he could not face it.

"I see no reason why I should remain."

"There certainly can be none if you see none. Well, I want to give you
something of yours before you leave us."

She drew from the folds of her handkerchief the little grotesque mask
which she had pinned upon her lover's cassock at the Mardi Gras ball.
Maurice flushed hotly at the sight.

"You are determined, Miss Morison, to spare me no humiliation in your
power."

"Humiliation?" she echoed. "Why, I was humiliating myself. Seriously,
Mr. Wynne, I have been ashamed of that performance ever since; and I
most sincerely beg your pardon. The humiliation is mine entirely."

"But where in the world," demanded he, a new thought striking him, "did
you get the thing? You know I threw it on the table."

"Miss Carstair gave it to Mr. Stanford, and I got it from him."

Maurice came a step nearer.

"Why?" he asked, his voice deepening.

"I--I didn't like to have him keep it," Bee murmured, with downcast
face and lower tone.

"Why?" he repeated, so much in earnest that his voice was almost
threatening.

She was for a moment more confused than ever, but rallying she held out
the mask.

"Oh, that I might tease you with it again!" she laughed.

He took the absurd trinket in his hand.

"It is pretty badly dilapidated," he observed.

"Yes," she said demurely. "I crushed it in the carriage on the way home
from the ball. I--I crumpled it up in my hand."

"Why?"

"You keep saying 'why' over and over to me, Mr. Wynne, as if I were on
the witness-stand."

"Why?" he persisted.

He had forgotten all the doubts which had beset and hindered him, the
scruples he had had about wooing, and the fears that she did not love
him. He was conscious only that she was there before him and that he
loved her; that her downcast looks seemed to encourage him, so that it
was impossible to rest until he knew what was really in her mind. The
unspoken message which he had somehow intangibly received from her made
him forget everything else. He loved her; he loved her, and a wild hope
was beating in his heart and seething in his brain. He could not turn
back now; he must know. He saw her grow paler as he looked at her,
standing so close that his face was bent down almost over her bent
head. He felt that her secret, nay, the crown of life itself, was
within his grasp if he did not fail now.

"Why?" he asked still again, hardly conscious that he said it, and yet
determined that he would win an answer at whatever cost.

She raised her face slowly, shyly; her eyes were shining.

"Because," she said, hardly above a whisper, "I was determined to
convince myself that I hated you. But then"--

Her words faltered, yet he still did not dare to give way to the warm
tide which he felt swelling up from his heart. His voice softened
almost to the tone of hers.

"But then?"

The crimson stained her beautiful face, and faded.

"I think I--I kissed it," she murmured, so low that the words were mere
phantoms of speech.

He tried to answer, but the words choked in his throat. He sprang
forward, and gathered her into his arms. It is an art which even
deacons may know by nature.

When the pair came in to luncheon an hour later, Mrs. Wilson looked up
at them, and then without question turned to a servant.

"You may tell Patrick that we shan't need the carriage for the
station," that sagacious woman said coolly.

Maurice was both surprised and touched by the gratification which his
engagement gave to his friends. Mrs. Wilson might be expected to take
satisfaction, since any woman is likely to approve of any match which
she may be allowed to have a hand in promoting; the Staggchases were
delighted, and Mrs. Morison received him with a kindness which moved
him more than anything else. Mrs. Morison treated him much as if he
were her son. She spoke wisely to him about his future, and she had a
word of warning on the subject of his attitude toward religion.

"My dear Maurice," she said, after she had come to call him by that
name, "let me give you a caution. The most fanatical belief is less
evil than dogmatic denial. If you are really the agnostic you claim to
be, your very confession that the truth is too great for human grasp
binds you to respect the unknown."

"But one cannot respect dogmas," he objected.

"We were not speaking of dogmas," she responded with sweet and
dignified earnestness, "but of the mystery of life and the great
unknown that incloses it. The great fault and danger of this age is
that it is all for breaking down. It reforms abuses and improves away
old errors; but it seems to forget the need of providing something to
take the place of what it clears away. Men can no more live without a
belief than without air."

"But it is hard to have patience with what one sees to be false."

"What one believes to be false, you mean. It isn't easy to have
patience with those who hold to theories that we've laid by; but surely
it is impossible not to respect the spirit in which any honest soul
sincerely believes."

"Yes," Maurice assented, somewhat doubtfully; "but it is so hard to
have patience with creeds that are entirely outworn."

The old lady smiled and shook her head.

"Again I have to say 'which seem to you outworn.' A creed is never
really outworn so long as a single man sincerely believes in it.
However, you may have as little patience as you like with them if you
will only remember that after all the creed itself is nothing, while
the attitude of the mind to truth is everything. If you respect
conviction, that is all I ask."

Mrs. Staggchase at another time had also an ethical word for him.
Maurice was deeply moved by the fact that Philip had gone into the
Catholic church and entered a monastery at Montreal. Like his friend,
Ashe had left the Clergy House as soon as he had come to the decision
to which his doubts led. He had seen Maurice, and had talked to him
unreservedly of his faith and of his plans. It was idle to attempt to
move him; and it was after bidding the proselyte good-by that Maurice
was talking of him to Mrs. Staggchase, and lamenting what occurred.

"My dear fellow," she observed in her faintly satirical manner, "I know
that I'm growing old, because whereas my convictions used to be all
right and my actions all wrong, now my actions are right enough, but my
convictions have all evaporated. Mr. Ashe is still young enough to need
convictions, and the more rigid they are the more contented he'll be."

"But with his training, to turn out in this way," responded Maurice.
"It's amazing. Think of a New England Puritan turned Catholic!"

"On the contrary, it is the most natural thing in the world. His
Puritan training is what has made him a Catholic."

Maurice thought a moment in silence.

"I suppose," he said at length, "that in this age there are only two
things possible for a thinking man. One must go over to Rome and rest
on authority, or choose to use his reason, and be an agnostic."

Mrs. Staggchase regarded him with a smile which made him flush a little.

"'No doubt but ye are the people,'" she quoted, "'wisdom shall die with
you.' Yet I have known persons really of intellectual respectability
who haven't found it necessary to do either."

He was too wise to answer her. He remembered that it was time to keep
an appointment with Berenice, and he smiled with the air of one too
happy to be ruffled.

"I suppose," he remarked, as he rose to go, "that if I would give you
the chance you would easily prove that Phil and I both are merely
Puritans more or less disguised!"





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