Chapter 17

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.