The Puritans Part 36

"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, dispa.s.sionately, 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 superst.i.tion 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 G.o.d, 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 a.s.sist 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 n.o.ble 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. "n.o.body'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 n.o.body 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."