The Puritans Part 39

"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 p.r.i.c.kling 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 st.u.r.dy 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 p.r.o.noun 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 doc.u.ment.

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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sailed, 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 ign.o.ble 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 pa.s.sionate conviction may have been mistaken is to feel profound and disquieting doubt of all that human faith may compa.s.s; 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, n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion 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."