Chapter 22

At the door of the supper-room they encountered Dr. Wilson, with a bud on his arm.

"Well, Miss Morison," he exclaimed, with his usual jovial brusqueness, "I thought that my wife was the cheekiest woman in Boston, but you ran her hard to-night."

"Oh, even if I surpassed her," Berenice retorted in sudden anger, yet forcing herself to speak laughingly, "she is entirely safe to leave the reputation of the family in the hands of her husband."

Dr. Wilson chuckled with perfect good-nature.

"Oh, we men are not in it with the women," laughed he.

He passed on with his companion, and Berenice, with feminine perversity, avenged herself upon the girl he was escorting.

"How stout Miss Harding is," she commented. "It is such a pity for a bud."

"But she is pretty," Stanford returned.

"Oh, yes, in a way. She has the face of an overripe cherub."

He laughed and led her to a seat.

"Take your picture of Mr. Plant," said he, "and I will get you the bouillon."

"No, I can't have anything so hideous. Give me one of yours instead. I'll have that little fat monk."

"All that I have is at your service," he responded with seriousness sounding through the mock gravity, as he unpinned the little mask and put it into her hand.

"Thank you, but I don't ask your all. I hope that you didn't value this especially."

"Not that I remember. I haven't an idea who gave it to me."

"You don't seem to value a gift on account of the giver."

"That depends," returned he. "Now there are some givers whose favors I cherish most carefully."

He took from his breast-pocket a little Greek flag of silk, neatly folded. Berenice flushed, recognizing a favor which she had given him early in the evening.

"Now this," he said, "I put away next to my heart, you observe."

"The giver would be flattered," Berenice observed. "Was it Clare Tophaven?"

He looked at her, laughing; then seemed to reflect.

"I don't know that it is right to tell you," he returned; "but if you won't mention it, I'll confide to you that it must have been Miss Tophaven. Sweet girl."

"Very. Are congratulations in order?" Berenice inquired.

She was pleased that the talk had taken this bantering tone, and secretly determined to keep it away from dangerous seriousness.

"Somewhat premature, I should say," Stanford replied. "You see she has no suspicion of my devotion, and her engagement to Fred Springer is to come out next week."

The bit of gossip served Berenice well. She had heard it already, but it was easy to feign surprise, and to chat lightly about the match, as if she had not a thought beyond it in her mind. To her amazement and disconcerting Stanford cut through the light talk to demand with sudden gravity:--

"And when may our engagement be announced, Berenice?"

She regarded him with startled eyes, but she held herself well in hand, managing to use the same jesting tone in which she had been speaking.

"Certainly not before it exists," was her answer.

He leaned toward her eagerly. The room was almost deserted, and they sat in the shelter of a great palm, so that she felt herself to be alone with him.

"Don't try to put me off," he pleaded. "I am in earnest."

She rose quickly, setting her cup down in the tub of the palm.

"Come," she said, "you forget that I am dancing the german with Mr. Van Sandt. He will have no idea what has become of me."

Stanford stood before her, barring her way.

"Hang Van Sandt! You should be dancing with me, only I had to do the polite to this everlasting English girl. I wish she was in Australia. I wonder why in the world an English girl is never able to learn to dance."

"That I cannot answer. Perhaps their feet are too big; but you must go back to her all the same, whether she can dance or not."

"Not until you answer me. You know you are keeping me on hot coals, Berenice. You know I love you."

She flushed, drew back, grew pale.

"I have answered you already," she replied, hurriedly but firmly. "Why must you make me say it again? I don't love you, and that is reason enough why you shouldn't care for me."

"It isn't any reason at all. I should be fond of you anyway. Why, even if you made a guy of me before everybody as you did to-night of that clerical thing"--

"Stop!" Berenice interrupted, her color rising and her eyes shining. "I will not have you speak of Mr. Wynne in that way. What I did was bad enough."

"Berenice," demanded Stanford, regarding her keenly, "do you mean to marry _him_?"

"You have no right to ask me whom I mean to marry! I am not going to marry you, at least!"

"A clergyman. A man in petticoats! Well, I must say"--

She drew herself up to her full height, looking at him with anger and excitement in her heart so great that they seemed to choke her.

"Do you see this?" she asked, holding up the little mask dangling from her finger. "I fastened this to his cassock to-night. I insulted him in the sight of everybody. Does that look as if"--

"Is that the same mask?" broke in Stanford. "You begged it of me afterward!"

She could not command her voice to reply. Shame, grief, indignation, struggled in her heart; yet her strongest conscious feeling was a determination that the tears in her eyes should not fall. She slipped past him, and moved toward the ball-room. With a quick step he gained her side.

"I beg your pardon," he said contritely. "I didn't mean to hurt you. You used to be nice to me, but lately"--

She mastered herself by a strong effort. She was fully aware that there were too many curious eyes about her to make any demonstration safe.

"Let me take your arm," she answered. "Folks are watching. We need not make a spectacle of ourselves. I haven't meant to treat you badly. A girl never knows how a man is going to take things, and I only meant to be pleasant. As soon as you began to show that you were in earnest"--

She was so conscious that her words were not entirely frank that she instinctively hesitated.

"I have always been in earnest," interpolated he.

"But you will get over it," murmured she, desperately.

They had come to a group of palms, where they paused to let a bevy of dancers pass.

"Do you really mean," Stanford asked, in a hard voice, "that there is really no hope for me?"

"There is no hope that I shall ever feel differently about this."

"Then I shall certainly get over it," returned he with a touch of anger in his voice. "I don't propose to go through life wearing the willow for anybody."

She raised to his her eyes shining with shy but irresistible light.

"Ah," she half whispered, "that is the difference. I know he wouldn't get over it."

"He!"

The monosyllable brought to her an overwhelming sense of the confession which her words had carried. She pressed the arm upon which her finger-tips rested.

"I have trusted you," she whispered hurriedly. "Be generous. Ah, Mr. Van Sandt," she went on aloud, "I hope you didn't think I had deserted you. Mr. Stanford found me incapable of dancing, and had to revive me with bouillon."

XXIX

WEIGHING DELIGHT AND DOLE Hamlet, i. 2.

Strangely enough the thought which most strongly impressed Maurice Wynne on the morning following the Mardi Gras ball was the simplicity of life. He had heard in the early dawn the bell for rising; he had started up, then upon his elbow realized that he had freed himself from its tyranny. He had slidden back into his warm place, smiling to himself, and fallen into a sleep as quiet as that of a child. About eight he was roused by a brother sent to see if he was ill, his absence from early mass having been noted. Maurice sent the messenger away with the explanation that having been out to the midnight service he had slept late; then, being left alone, he made his toilet with deliberation. He seemed to himself a new man. There appeared to be no longer any difficulty in life. He reflected that one had but to follow common sense, to live sincerely up to what commended itself to his reason, and existence became wonderfully simplified. He no longer experienced any of the confusing doubts and perplexities which had of late made him so thoroughly miserable.

He hesitated to don again the dress of a deacon, but he reflected that to do otherwise would be to expose himself to the curiosity and comment of his fellows. With a smile and a sigh he put on for the last time the cassock, recalling the contemptuous terms in which at the time of the accident Mehitabel Durgin had referred to the garment. He wondered at himself for ever finding it possible to appear before the eyes of men in such a dress, and blushed to think how incongruous the clerical livery must have looked in the ballroom.

Breakfast was already half over when he appeared, and the reading of Lamentations was accompanying the frugal meal. He sank into his seat in silence, casting his eyes down upon his plate lest they should betray the joy he felt. He knew that he could have no talk with Philip until after nones, and he was not willing to leave the house without bidding his friend good-by. While he went on with his breakfast he was busy planning what he would do when he had left the routine of the Clergy House behind him. He determined to go to Mrs. Staggchase for advice, and to ask her to direct him to some quiet boarding-place where he might reorganize his scheme of life.

In the study hour which followed breakfast Wynne went boldly to the room of Father Frontford, and knocked at the door. When he heard the voice of the Father Superior bidding him enter he was for the first time seized with an unpleasant doubt. The long habit of obedience half asserted itself, so that for an instant he was almost minded to turn back. With a smile of self-scorn he shook off the feeling, and opened the door.

The Father looked up in evident surprise at sight of the deacon who came unsummoned at such an hour. He was alone, a fact which Maurice noted with satisfaction.

"Good morning, Wynne," he said. "Did you wish to see me?"

"Yes, sir," Maurice answered, closing the door, and standing before it. "I came to tell you that I have decided to leave the Clergy House."

The abruptness of the communication evidently startled the Superior. Wynne watched him as he laid down his pen, the lines about his thin lips growing tense.

"Sit down," he said gravely.

Maurice obeyed unwillingly. He would have been glad to retreat at once, his errand being done; but he knew this to be of course impossible. He sat down facing the other, meeting with steadfast eyes the searching look fastened upon him.

"Since when," Father Frontford asked, "have you held this determination?"

"Since last night."

"Is it founded upon any especial circumstance connected with your going with Mrs. Wilson to midnight service?"

Maurice looked down for a moment in thought, then he met the eyes of the other frankly.

"Father," he said, "I don't think that I could tell you all that has led to this decision if I would; and I do not see that it would be wise for us to go into the matter in any case. It seems to me that the fact that I have decided, and decided absolutely, is enough."

The face before him grew a shade sterner.

"You seem to forget that you are speaking to your Superior."

"Perhaps," the young man returned with calmness, "it is you who forget that I have ended that relation."

Father Frontford's face darkened.

"I do not recognize that you have authority to end it."

Maurice tried to repress the irritation which he could not but feel; and forced himself to speak as civilly as before.

"Will you pardon me," he said; "I do not wish that our last talk should be bitter. I owe you much, and I shall never cease to respect the unselfishness with which you have tried to help me. That I cannot follow your path does not blind me to the fact that you have worked so untiringly to make the way plain and attractive to me."

He was not without a secret feeling that he was speaking with some magnanimity, yet he was entirely sincere. He realized with thorough respect, even at the moment of breaking away, how complete was the devotion of the Father. There was in his mind, too, some satisfaction at the tone he had unconsciously adopted. It flattered him to find that he should be almost patronizing his Superior.

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 nobility 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 God 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 rehearsed 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 God."

"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.

XXX

PARTED OUR FELLOWSHIP Othello, ii. 1.

Berenice had abundant leisure to reflect upon her attitude toward her lovers, for Mrs. Frostwinch was soon so seriously ill that it was evident to all that the end was at hand. Berenice devoted herself to the invalid, although there was little that she could do. The sick woman did not suffer; she seemed merely to be fading out of life; to have lost her hold upon something which was slipping from her loosened grasp.

"The fact is, Bee," Mrs. Frostwinch said one day, "that the doctors say I'm dead. I'm beginning to believe it myself, and when I'm fully convinced, I suppose that that'll be the end."

"Oh, don't joke about it, Cousin Anna," cried Bee. "It is too dreadful."

"It won't make it any less dreadful to be solemn over it," the other answered. "However, death should be spoken of with respect; even one's own."

Berenice longed to know what had taken place between her cousin and Mrs. Crapps, but she hardly liked to ask. That there had been a disagreement of some kind, and that Mrs. Frostwinch had lost faith in the woman, she knew; but beyond this she was in the dark. One afternoon, however, her cousin explained matters.

"It is so humiliating, Bee, that I can hardly bear to think of it, the way things turned out. My conscience will be easier, though, if I tell you the whole of it. It is so vulgar that it makes me creep. We were at Jekyll's Island, and she had an ulcerated tooth."

"I thought she couldn't have such things?"

"She thought or pretended that she couldn't. I must say that she fought against it with tremendous pluck; but the face kept swelling, and the pain got to be more than she could bear. When she gave out she went to pieces completely. She literally rolled on the floor and howled. I couldn't go on believing in her after that. She'd actually made herself ridiculous."

"But," began Berenice, "I should think"--

"If it had been something dangerous, so that I had had to think of her life," went on her cousin, not heeding, "I could have borne it; but that common thing! Why, her face looked like a drunken cook's! I can't tell you the humiliation of it!"

"But if she could help you, why not herself?"

Mrs. Frostwinch smiled wanly.

"I've tried to think that out," answered she. "It was always said of the old witches, you know, that they couldn't help themselves. It is faith in somebody else that is behind the wonders they do. I've grown very wise in the last few weeks, Bee. I don't pretend that I understand all the facts, but I do know pretty well what the facts are. I believed in Mrs. Crapps, and that belief kept me up. When I couldn't believe in her, that was the end of it."