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 mediaeval 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!"