The Puritans Part 49

Father Frontford regarded Maurice with a look in which were mingled surprise, disapprobation, and regret. As the two sat holding each other's eyes, the face of the older man changed and softened. Into it came a smile of high and spiritual beauty, of n.o.bility and unworldliness, of tenderness most touching. All that was most winning in the character of the man was embodied in the look which he fixed upon his recreant disciple, a look pleading and wistful, yet full of dignity and strength. He leaned forward, laying the tips of his thin fingers almost caressingly on the arm of the other.

"My son," he said, "it is not what I have done that you remember; it is what I represent. The truth and sweetness of religion is what has touched you. I am only the representative; and no one knows better how unworthy I am to be so looked on. If the grace of divine love seems to you good shining through me, think what it is in itself. Oh, my son,"

he went on, the tears coming into his eyes, "I have loved you, and I love you more now that I see you tempted and bewildered. Turn back to the bosom of the church before it is too late."

Maurice sat silent with look downcast. His firmness was not shaken; he had no inclination to reconsider his decision, but he was deeply moved by the emotion of the other. He could not bear to meet pleading so affectionate with a cold negative.

"It is for yourself that I appeal to you," the priest went on. "It is for the good of your own soul, and for your happiness in this world and the world to come. Think of your mission. Think how men need you; of the sin and the error that cry out to Heaven, and of how few there are to do the Lord's work. You have been confused by the temptations of the world, and in all of us there is a selfish spirit that may lead us to do in a moment of madness what we shall repent with tears of blood all our lives."

Still Maurice could not answer; and the Father, bending still nearer, taking one of the young man's hands in both his own, still pleaded.

"You have said that you felt my interest in you. Do not give me the bitterness of feeling that I am a careless shepherd who has lost a lamb to the wolves. If you have gone astray it must be in part my fault; it must be my negligence. Oh, my son, don't force me to stand guilty before G.o.d to answer for your lost soul."

It seemed to Maurice that he was being swept away by the simple power of the emotion of Frontford. He felt the tears in his eyes, and almost without his volition his hand responded to the pressure of the hand that clasped it. He made a strong effort to call back his will.

"Father," he responded, "we must each stand or fall alone. It is not your fault that I can't see things as you do, or that I can't any longer remain here. I am changed. If I stayed, it would be against my convictions."

"Ah," was the eager reply, "but you could submit your convictions to the church."

Maurice drew back.

"I am a man, to think for myself. I must be honest with my reason. The church cannot take for me the place of honesty and conviction."

The Father Superior dropped the hand he held.

"Then you insist on putting your own will and your own wisdom above that of the church?"

"I must do the thing that seems to me right."

The priest's face hardened. It was as if over the surface of a pool a film of ice formed. He sank back in his chair, and when he spoke again it was in a voice so hard and cold that the young man started.

"When do you leave?" the Father Superior asked.

"I meant to wait until after nones so as to say good-by to Philip."

"I prefer that you should go at once."

"You mean that you prefer that I should not see him?" Maurice demanded quickly.

"I merely said that I prefer that you should go at once," was the cold reply.

Maurice rose briskly. His impulse was to retort sharply, but he held himself in check.

"Very well," he answered. "I shall take it as a favor if you will let Philip know that I did not willingly leave him without a word. It would hurt him to think that."

"The wounds of earth," the Father Superior said gravely, "are the joys of heaven."

Maurice stood an instant with a keen desire to reply, to break down this icy statue of religion; then he drew back.

"I will not trouble you longer," he said. "Good-by."

"Good-by, Mr. Wynne," the other responded with the manner of one addressing a stranger.

Maurice went to his chamber thoroughly aroused and excited. The restraint which he had put on himself during the talk with Father Frontford brought now its reaction. He rehea.r.s.ed in his mind the telling and caustic things which he might have said, then laughed at himself for his unnecessary fervor. He packed his belongings, and, leaving them to be called for, set out for the house of his cousin. To go out from the Clergy House seemed to him like the ending of a life.

Mrs. Staggchase was fortunately at home. It seemed to Maurice that her keen eyes took in the whole story from his secular dress. He blushed as she gave him her hand.

"Well, my dear boy," she observed, "you have come to luncheon, I suppose, because the fare at the Clergy House is so poor in Lent. Sit down, and give me an account of your doings last night. I trust that you saw Mrs. Wilson safe home."

"I left her in the church."

"Ah! And what did you do then?"

"I went home and fought it out with myself. You were right in saying that things were not concluded when I became a deacon. I have given up the whole thing."

"What do you mean by the whole thing?"

"I mean," he returned earnestly, "that I found out that I was acting a part. That I didn't believe even the first principles of the religion I was getting ready to teach. I have broken down in the temptation, Cousin Diana."

She looked at him closely. The buoyancy of his morning mood was gone, and it was hard for him to endure her searching look. It came over him that he was an apostate; one who had abandoned all that he had vowed to uphold; his vanity smarted at the thought that she must think him weak and unstable as water.

"I am only what I was," he went on. "The difference is that I have discovered what you probably saw all the time, that I don't believe the things I have been taught. I am as free from the old creeds as you are.

I don't even pretend to know that there is a G.o.d."

"My dear boy," she responded, shrugging her shoulders, "you run into extremes like a schoolgirl. I beg you won't talk as if I could be so vulgar as not to believe in a deity. Don't rank me with the crowd of common folk that try to increase their own importance by insisting that there's nothing above them. Really, an atheist seems to me as bad as a man who eats with his knife."

He changed countenance, but her words left him speechless. He could not hear her speak in this way without being shocked. He might be without creed, but his temper was still devout.

"If you've thrown overboard all your old dogmas," she went on with unruffled face, "you'd better go to work to get a new set. I've just heard of some sort of a society got up by women out in Cambridge, where they deduce the ethnic sources of prophetic inspiration--whatever that means!--from the 'Arabian Nights' and 'Mother Goose.' You might find something there to suit you."

He could not answer her; he could only wonder whether she disapproved of what he had done, or if she were vexed with him for coming to her.

"It's possible," she went on mercilessly, a fresh note of mockery in her voice, "that Berenice might help you. Very often a woman wins converts where a priest fails. After last night"--

He came to his feet with a spring.

"Don't!" he exclaimed. "I can't stand any more. Do you think that it's been easy for me to find out the truth about myself; to have to own that I've been a cheating fool, without honesty enough to know my own mind? As for Miss Morison"--

His voice failed him. He was unnerved; the reaction from his long vigil, from his interview with Father Frontford, overcame him. The simple mention of the name of Berenice made him choke, and he stood there speechless. His cousin rose and came to him softly. Before he knew what she was doing, she bent forward and kissed his forehead.

"You poor boy," she said in a voice half laughing, yet so gentle that he hardly recognized it, "don't take my teasing so much to heart. You are only finding out like the rest of us that it is impossible not to be human."

He could answer only by grasping her hand, ashamed of the weakness which had betrayed him, and touched deeply by her kindness.

"Come," Mrs. Staggchase said, moving to the bell, and speaking in her natural tone. "I have helped you to break your life into bits; I must try to help you to put the pieces together into something better. You must stay here for a while, and we'll consider what is to be done next.

Will you tell Patrick how to get your things from the Clergy House?

Take your old room. I'll see you at luncheon."

And as the servant appeared at one door she withdrew by another.