The Puritans Part 28

She took no notice of his words.

"If I laughed," continued he, "it was only from nervousness. I was carried away"--

"I observed that you were," she interrupted icily.

He stood awkwardly a moment, while she finished putting up her hair.

Then, as she turned toward him, he smiled again, holding out his hand.

"Surely you are not angry with me," he pleaded. "I care more for your feeling toward me than for anything else in the world."

"It would amuse Mrs. Rangely to hear you say so, not to mention my husband."

He stared at her with the air of a man not sure whether he is awake or dreaming.

"What are they to us?" he asked, sinking his voice almost to a whisper.

"Mrs. Rangely may be nothing to you, but Dr. Wilson is still a good deal to me, thank you."

He looked at her again with perplexity in his glance, but with his face hardening.

"You surely cannot mean that you have ceased to care for me just for a second of meaningless laughter?"

She swept him a scornful courtesy.

"You do these things better in your novels, Mr. Rangely, which shows what an advantage it is to have time to think speeches over. I wouldn't have my hero say a thing like that, if I were you. It would make him seem like a conceited cad."

The insolence of her manner was such as no man could bear. Rangely crimsoned to the temples. He paced across the room, while she coolly seated herself in a great Venetian chair, and began to play with a little jade image. He came back to her, and stood a moment as if he could not find words.

"Why don't you go?" she asked, looking up at him as if he were a servant sent upon an errand.

"Because," he broke out angrily, "when I go I shall not come back; and I should like to understand this thing."

She shrugged her shoulders, and leaned back in her chair, looking him over from head to foot.

"Why you quarrel with me is more than I know," he went on. "You've got tired of me, I suppose, and want to amuse yourself with another man."

The red flushed in her cheek.

"If my husband, who you say is nothing to us, were here," she said, "he would horsewhip you."

The other laughed savagely.

"He is not here, however, so you may digest my remark at your leisure."

Mrs. Wilson rose from her seat with an air of dignity which was really imposing.

"Mr. Rangely," she said, "it is not my custom to bandy words, even with my equals. I have allowed you the freedom of my house because I was willing to help you in your desire to be useful to Father Frontford.

You have taken advantage of my kindness to insult me. This seems to me sufficiently to explain the situation."

He stared at her a moment in evident amazement. Then he burst into hoa.r.s.e laughter.

"My desire to be useful to Father Frontford!" he echoed. "That is the best yet! You know I cared nothing about your pottering old church politics except to please you."

"I see that I was deceived completely," she responded coldly.

She crossed the room and pressed an ivory b.u.t.ton.

"Deceived!" he sneered. "It would take a clever man to deceive you."

She looked not at him, but beyond him. He turned, and saw a footman in the doorway.

"The gentleman wishes to be shown out, Forrester," said she.

She held the tips of her fingers to Rangely.

"Thank you so much for coming," she murmured in her most conventional manner.

"The pleasure has been mine," he responded.

They both bowed, and Rangely followed the footman.

XVII

A BOND OF AIR Troilus and Cressida, i. 3.

"You have made a new man of me," Maurice Wynne had said to Mrs. Morison in bidding her good-by; and the words repeated themselves in his mind as he came back to Boston, and as he once more took up for a few days his home with Mrs. Staggchase.

There is nothing more inflammable than the punk left by the decay of a religion, and any theology may be said to be doomed from the moment when men begin to ask themselves whether they believe it. Maurice had been so strenuously questioning his belief that it is small wonder that he found his heart full of fire. In the days of his stay at Brookfield, moreover, he had been rapidly journeying on the road toward a new view of life; and the idea of returning to the Clergy House became to him well-nigh intolerable. It seemed like taking upon himself once more the swaddling-clothes of infancy.

On the afternoon of his return, he hurried to see Ashe, and found himself obliged to wait some time for his friend's return from a committee meeting. Mr. Herman chanced to be at home alone, and Maurice sat with him in the library. Wynne had come to know the sculptor fairly well, and had been warmly drawn toward him. He was to-day struck more than ever by the strength and self-poise which Herman showed. The young man was seized with a desire to appeal to the sanity and the kindliness of one who seemed to possess both so aboundingly.

"Have you ever found yourself all at sea, Mr. Herman?" he asked abruptly.

"Of course. I fancy every man has had that experience."

"But," Maurice hurried on, more impulsively yet, "you can never have felt that you were a renegade and a hypocrite. That's where I am now."

The sculptor regarded him with evident surprise, yet with a look so keen that Maurice felt his cheeks grow warm.

"Does that mean," Herman asked with kindly deliberation, "that you are tired and out of sorts, or is it something deeper?"

Wynne was silent a moment. Now that he had broken the ice, he feared to go on. It was something of a shock to find himself on the brink of a confidence when he had not intended to make one.

"I'm afraid it goes deep," he answered. "The truth is, Mr. Herman, that I've come back with my whole mind in a turmoil."