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."
CRUEL PROOF OF THIS MAN'S STRENGTHAs 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 minuteI 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.
'TWAS WONDROUS PITIFULOthello, 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, "andI 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.
IN WAY OF TASTETroilus 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?" FatherFrontford 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."
"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!"