Chapter 25

"Just now," she remarked, "before you are plunged in the study of the law, you may do escort duty for me. I am going to call on Berenice Morison."

"On Miss Morison?"

"Yes. Her grandmother is staying with her. Mr. Frostwinch has gone abroad, you know, and as the old house belongs to Bee, she is staying on there."

"But--but she won't care to see me."

"Very likely not," assented his cousin coolly, "but she'll endure you for my sake."

"I don't like being endured," he retorted, between fun and earnest. "Besides, she's so much money"--

"You are not such a cad as to be afraid of her money, I hope."

"Not in one way, but don't you see now that she has so much, and I have lost Aunt Hannah's"--

"Really, Maurice," she interrupted brusquely, "you must learn not to speak your thoughts out like that! I'm not asking you to go to propose to Bee. You have the theological habit of taking things with too dreadful seriousness. Come with me for a call, and don't bother about consequences and possibilities."

Maurice blushed at his own folly in betraying his secret scruples, but his cousin spared him any farther teasing, and they went on their way peacefully. It seemed to him when he entered the stately Frostwinch house that it had somehow been transformed. Everything was much as it had been in the lifetime of Mrs. Frostwinch, yet to his fancy all looked fresher and more cheerful. He smiled to himself, feeling that the change must simply be the result of his knowledge that this was now the home of Berenice; yet even so he could not persuade himself that the alteration was not actual. He felt joyously alert as he followed Mrs. Staggchase to the library, where Bee was sitting with old Mrs. Morison.

He had never been in this apartment before. It was high, and heavily made, with an open fire on the hearth, and enough books to justify its name. Berenice came forward to meet them, and Mrs. Morison remained seated near the fire.

"I am so glad to see you, Mrs. Staggchase," Bee said cordially. "It is just one of those dreary days when it proves true courage to come out."

"And true friendship, I hope," the other answered, passing on to Mrs. Morison. "My dear old friend, I wish I could believe you are as glad to see me as I am to see you."

Berenice in the mean time gave her hand to Maurice graciously, but with a certain grave courtesy which he felt to put them upon a purely ceremonious footing.

"It is kind of you to come," she said. "Grandmother will be glad to see you."

Maurice tried hard to look unconscious, but he could not help questioning her with his eyes. She flushed under his eager regard, and drew back a little.

"I am very glad of the chance to see--Mrs. Morison," he answered.

Bee flushed more deeply yet. Then she turned mischievously to Mrs. Morison.

"Grandmother," she said, "it seems that Mr. Wynne came to see you and not me."

The old lady greeted him kindly.

"I am glad to see you looking so well, Mr. Wynne," she said. "I hope that your arm does not trouble you at all."

"Not at all. I was too well taken care of at Brookfield."

Mrs. Staggchase laughed, spreading out her hands.

"There," said she gayly, "you see! He has only been in my hands a few weeks, but I call that a very pretty speech."

"He probably has a natural gift for pleasing speeches," Berenice remarked meaningly.

Maurice crimsoned, but his education had not proceeded far enough for him to have any reply.

"Well, take him away, Bee, and give him tea or gossip. I want to talk to your grandmother about old friends, and you young people won't understand."

"He may have tea if he is tractable," responded Bee. "We are evidently not appreciated, Mr. Wynne. Will you ring the bell over there, please."

He did as he was directed, and then followed her to the tea-table at a little distance from the fire. He was full of a troubled joy, the mingled delight of being with her and the consciousness that he had firmly determined in his own mind that he had no right to show her his feelings. He said to himself that he could bear anything else better than that she should think of him as a fortune-hunter. Her wealth loomed between them as a wall which it were dishonorable even to attempt to scale. His brain was busy phrasing things which he longed to say to her, words seemed to seethe in his head, yet he found himself strangely tongue-tied and awkward. When most of all he desired to appear at his ease, he was most completely uncomfortable and self-conscious.

A servant came with the tea, and he was able to cover to some extent his uneasiness by serving the ladies. When this was done, and he sat nervously stirring his own cup, he found himself searching his mind in vain for those things which it would be safe to say. His brain was full of things which must not be said. He could think only of things which it was not safe to utter; and his discomfiture increased as he saw Miss Morison watching him with a half-veiled smile.

"By the way," she said at length, when the silence was becoming too marked, "I fulfilled your request."

"My request?" he echoed, unable to remember that he had made any.

"Yes. Have you forgotten that you came to ask me"--

He put out his hand impulsively.

"Please don't!" he interrupted. "It is bad enough to remember what an unmitigated idiot I was without the humiliation of thinking that you remember it too."

"I remember," she responded, with a sparkle in her eye, "that you did not seem to relish the mission on which you were sent. However, I accepted the intention, and I have promised the men a continuance of their stipends." Her face grew suddenly grave, and she added: "I can't joke about it, though. I really did it because Cousin Anna would have wished it."

They were silent now because they had come so near a solemn subject that neither of them cared to speak. The thoughts of Maurice went back to the day he had come to do the errand of Father Frontford, and his cheek grew hot.

"I hope you will believe," he said eagerly, "that I had really no idea of how very ill your cousin was. She seemed so well when I saw her that it was all unreal to me. I wish I could tell you how sorry I have been for you. I have thought of you."

She raised her eyes to his, and they exchanged a look in which there was more than sympathy. Maurice felt her glance so deeply that for the moment he forgot all else. Obstacles no longer existed. He was looking into the eyes of the woman he loved, and thrilling as if her heart was questioning his. It seemed to him that her very self was demanding how deep and how true had been his thought of her in her time of sorrow. He bent forward, sounding her gaze with his, trying to convey all the unspoken words which jostled in his brain. Her eyes fell before his burning look, and her head drooped. The room was darkening with the coming dusk, and they sat at some distance from the others. He laid his hand on hers.

"Berenice!" he whispered.

She rose as if she had not noted.

"Don't you think it is time for lights, grandmother?" she said in a voice so unemotional that it sent a chill to his heart.

"It is certainly time for us to be going home," Mrs. Staggchase interposed, rising in her turn.

And far into the night Maurice Wynne vexed his soul with vain endeavors to decide what Berenice meant by her treatment of him.

XXXIV

WHAT TIME SHE CHANTED Hamlet, iv. 7.

The grief which Philip felt over the apostasy of Maurice overshadowed for a time every other feeling. He sorrowed for his friend, praying and yearning, searching his heart to discover whether his own influence or example had helped to bring about this lamentable fall; he turned over in his mind plans for bringing the wanderer back to the fold; he ceased to think about the coming election, and thought of his ill-starred love hardly otherwise than as a possible sin which had helped perhaps to lead to this catastrophe.

Affection between two men is much more likely to be mutual than that between two women. Men are more generally frank in their likes and dislikes, they are as a rule more accustomed to feel at liberty to be open and to please themselves in their familiarities; and it seems to be true that men are more constant in friendship, as women are said to be more constant in love. Affection between women, moreover, is apt to be founded upon circumstance, while that between men is more often a matter of character.

The fondness of Philip and Maurice for each other was of long standing; it had arisen out of the mutual needs of their natures, and was part of their growth. Philip was the one most dependent upon his friend, however, and now he felt as if he were torn away from his chief support. He reasoned with himself that he had been letting affection for his friend come between him and Heaven; he tried to feel that Providence had interfered to break down his idol; yet to all this he could not but answer that Maurice had been always a help, and that it was impossible to believe that Providence would accomplish his good by the hurt of his benefactor. He did assure himself that his suffering was the will of a higher power, and as such to be acquiesced in and improved to his spiritual good. If the voice of his secret heart, that inner self from which we hide our faces and whose words we so obstinately refuse to hear, cried out against the cruelty of this discipline, he but closed his ears more resolutely. To listen would be to yield to temptation. He would not see Maurice; he hardly permitted himself to read his friend's letters. He answered these notes by fervid appeals to the wanderer to return to the fold, to be reconciled with the church, to take up again the priesthood he had discarded. Hard as it was, he still strove for what he felt to be the other's lasting good.

Lent ended, and the gladness of Easter came upon the land; the spring showed traces of its secret presence by a thousand intangible and delicate signs in sky, and air, and earth: there was everywhere a stir and a quickening, a blitheness which belongs to the vernal season only. Philip felt all these things by the growing sharpness of the contrast between his mood and that of the world without. His melancholy and unrest seemed to him to grow every day more intense and unbearable.

That Father Frontford did not more fully realize Philip's condition was probably due to the near approach of the election. As the time for the convention drew near, the supporters of the rival candidates redoubled their exertions; there was hurrying to and fro, writing of letters and continued consultation, all of which inevitably distracted the attention of the Father. He did perceive, however, that Philip was troubled, and nothing could have been more tender or considerate than his attitude. He did not talk to Ashe about Maurice, but he contrived to make his deacon understand that no blame was attached to him for the apostasy of Wynne. Philip found a new affection for the Father springing in his heart, so soothing, so winning was the sympathy of the Superior.

The days passed on until the convention actually assembled. Philip was feverishly anxious; yet he persistently assured himself that he had no doubt in regard to the result. He felt that the end had been accomplished by the work which had already been done; and the convention itself seemed to him somewhat unreal and unmeaning. It had in his mind not much more than the function of announcing a result which he felt to have been arrived at already in the canvassing of lists of delegates in which he had taken part at Mrs. Wilson's. Until the thing was formally announced, however, it was impossible to be at ease.

The first day of the convention was mainly one of organization and of preparation. Business was disposed of and all made ready for the election of the morrow. Philip went into the convention in the hour of recreation. He tried to be interested in matters which he assured himself were of real importance; yet he found his memory dwelling on Maurice and the times they had talked of this convention. Even his efforts to fix his thoughts on the election itself could not drive his friend from his mind. He walked home at last, saying passionately that he had ceased to care for the church, for its welfare, its fate; that he had cared only for his own selfish desires and interests. He looked back upon the convention which he had left, and saw mentally a picture of men who seemed strange and remote, concerned with matters which he did not understand, in which he had no interest. He felt completely out of key with everything; he longed for Maurice with unspeakable pain. He had rested on Maurice. In every mental crisis he had depended upon finding his friend at hand, sympathetic, strong, responsive; he had come to be as one unable to stand alone. It seemed impossible for him to go on longer without seeing his fellow, his friend, his confidant, his support. The convention and the Clergy House alike became misty and accidental in comparison with his own desperate need of Maurice.

A couple of blocks from the House he was joined by a fellow deacon.

"I say, Ashe," was the other's greeting, "did you ever know anything so unfortunate as that Wilson letter?"

Philip turned upon him an uncomprehending face.

"What is the Wilson letter?" he inquired absently.

"What? Don't you know about it? I saw you at the convention."

"I was there a little while; but there was nothing said about a letter, that I heard."

"Oh, there has been nothing said about it in the convention, but they say it will turn the scale."

"But what is it?"

"It's a letter Mrs. Wilson--Mrs. Chauncy Wilson, you know--you must know who she is?"

"Yes; I know her."

"Well, this is a letter that she wrote to a rector in the western part of the State,--his name was Briggs or Biggs, or something of that kind. She said that if he didn't vote for Father Frontford she could get him out of his parish."

"What!" exclaimed Philip. "She couldn't have written such a thing!"

"There's a fac-simile of it in the hands of every member of the convention."

"But how did it get out?"

"They say," answered the other, eager to impart his information, "that a man named Rangely had it printed, and sent it around. I don't know who he is, but he's a newspaper man, I believe."

"I know who he is," Philip returned, "but I thought he was a friend of Mrs. Wilson. I've seen him at her house. How did he get the letter?"

"I'm sure I don't know; but he had it. He's written a circular to go with it. He says that that is the way the friends of Father Frontford are trying to secure the election. There is a great deal of feeling about it."

"But will it make much difference?"

"They say that it will turn the scale. There are a number of men who were in doubt, and this is likely to be enough to insure Mr. Strathmore's election."

"What a disgraceful trick!" Philip cried indignantly. "Father Frontford isn't responsible for what Mrs. Wilson did. Besides, it doesn't change the real facts of the case. It doesn't make Father Frontford any the less the right man."

"Of course it doesn't," was the reply. "But I've been talking with my uncle. He's a delegate from Springfield. He says that he's sure it will get Mr. Strathmore elected."

The news gave Philip a shock, but it seemed impossible that a trivial, outside trick like this could alter the conscientious vote of the candidates. He was uneasy, but he seemed to have lost all vital care about the election, and even this disconcerting event did not greatly change his feeling. He reproached himself that he cared so little; yet his personal misery so absorbed him that his thoughts wandered even from this new cause for self-reproach.

After supper that night he was summoned to the Father Superior.

"I wish you to do an errand for me," Father Frontford said. "I presume that you have heard of the publication of Mrs. Wilson's letter. It may do harm, and whatever happens I want her to know that I do not blame her. She acted unwisely, no doubt; but her intention was good. Besides, I really became responsible when I trusted so much to her judgment. I shall be happier if I know that she is not thinking that I feel disposed to be vexed with her."

The tone in which this was said was too sincere for Philip to doubt that the Father uttered his true feeling. He looked into the face of the other, and was struck by the complete weariness, almost exhaustion, which marked it. He went on his way haunted by those deep-set eyes, so full of pain, of fatigue, and, it seemed to Philip, of self-reproach.

Mrs. Wilson was not at home, so that Philip had only to leave the note. He turned back, crossing the Public Garden in the soft evening. Overhead was the mysterious darkness, quivering with stars. The air was full of suggestions of advancing spring. He felt in his veins an unreasonable restlessness, a stirring as of sap in the tree, a longing for that which he could not define. He heard around him gay voices and laughter, for the night was warm, and people were sitting about on the benches or strolling along the walks. He began to examine the groups he passed, looking with a curious eye at the couples sitting side by side in friendly or in loving companionship. He felt so utterly alone, and all these about him were mated. The tones of women sounded soft and sweet in his ear. Stray verses of Canticles began to float through his mind as wisps of vapor drift across the sky before the fog comes in from the sea. He repeated the collect for the day, and through it all he was thinking that it was possible to walk past the house of Mrs. Fenton. The difference in the time of his reaching the Clergy House would not be so great as to attract notice; he might see her shadow on the curtain; it was not probable, of course, but it was possible; in any case, he should feel near to her. He walked more quickly, and as he did so he heard the notes of a guitar, and then the sound of a girl singing. It was only the hard, coarse voice of a street-singer, and the language was Italian. He did not understand the words, but the music was seductive, the night of spring, star-lit and fragrant with intangible odors, quickened his sense. Constantly recurring in the song, as if set there for his ear, he understood the magic word "_amore, amore_" strung like beads down the necklace warm on a girl's bosom. Surely he had a right to be human. All the world had leave to love. He had given Mrs. Fenton up; she was only a memory; he should never speak to her again; it could not be wrong simply to walk past her house. He had lost even his friend; if this poor act were a comfort, it surely was not sin. "_Amore--amore_," sang the Italian girl over there in the warm, palpitating night. He had consecrated his love as an offering on the altar; surely he need not therefore deny it.

He had gained Beacon Street, and was walking rapidly, his cheeks hot and flushed, his heart on fire. Far down a neighboring street he heard the approach of a band of the Salvation Army. They were singing shrilly, with beating of tambourines and clanging of cymbals, a vulgar, raucous tune, redolent of animal vigor and of coarse passions, a tune as unholy as the rites of a pagan festival. Ashe stood still as with flaring torches they drew nearer. The blare of the brass, the vibrant, tingling clangor of the cymbals, the high, penetrating voices of the women, the barbaric rhythm of the air, made him in his sensitive mood tremble like a tense string. He shivered with excitement, nervous tears coming into his eyes so thickly that he turned away blinded, and stumbled against a man who was passing.

"My good brother," exclaimed a rich, Irish voice, jovial, yet not without dignity, "you don't see where you are going."

Philip recognized instantly the tones of the priest whom he had met at the North End; and without even apologizing he answered with an overwhelming sense of how true were the words in a figurative sense:--

"No, I cannot see."

The other was evidently impressed by the manner in which the reply was given, for instead of passing on he stopped and examined Ashe closely.

"Can I do anything for you?" he asked.

"Providence has sent you to me, I think," Philip returned. Then he put his hand on the arm of the stranger, bending forward in his eagerness. "Where do you live?" he asked. "May I come to see you to-morrow afternoon? It may be that you can tell me where I am going."

XXXV

THE WORLD IS STILL DECEIVED Merchant of Venice, iii. 2.

However much or little the ill-starred letter of Mrs. Wilson may have had to do with it, the fact was that both houses of the convention elected Mr. Strathmore by majorities sufficiently large to satisfy even his friends. The lay delegates were more generally in his favor than the clergy, which circumstance gave for a time some shadowy hope to the high-church party that the House of Bishops might refuse to confirm the election; but whatever consolation was derived from such an expectation was of short duration. The election was ratified, and almost immediately preparations were begun for the consecration of the new bishop.

Father Frontford remarked to an interviewer at the close of the convention that "it was not the least happy of the incidents of the election that Mr. Strathmore had been chosen by a majority so decided, since it indicated clearly the wishes of the church;" and he used his influence to prevent any attempt to induce the House of Bishops to oppose the choice of the convention. As soon as the matter was settled he called upon Mr. Strathmore and offered his congratulations in person.

"It is true that I would have prevented your election had I been able," he said frankly; "but that was entirely a question of church polity. I hardly need say how complete is my confidence in your sincerity and your ability."

"Brother," Mr. Strathmore replied, with that smile whose charm no man could resist, "I thank you for coming, and I thank you for your generous words. One thing we may be sure of and be grateful to God for. The church is certainly too great and too stable to be shaken by the mistakes of any one man. If we differ sometimes about the best way of showing it outwardly, we at least are one in wishing the best interests of religion and of humanity."

Father Frontford had had some difficulty in soothing Mrs. Wilson after the election. She declared vehemently that the House of Bishops should not confirm Mr. Strathmore.

"I will go to New York myself," she announced. "I know I can manage the Metropolitan. If he's on our side we can prevent that infidel Strathmore from getting a majority."

It is possible that Father Frontford, with all his decision, might have been unable to prevent some demonstration, but Dr. Wilson quietly remarked to his wife:--

"Elsie, we've had enough of this bishop racket. I'm devilish tired of the whole thing, and I wish you'd find a new amusement."

"But, Chauncy," she responded, "think how maddening it is to be beaten! And as for that Fred Rangely, I could dig out his eyes and pour in hot lead!"

Wilson chuckled gleefully.

"You played your private theatricals just a little prematurely. It was devilish clever of him to get back at you that way; but that letter has made newspaper talk enough about you, and you'd better drop church politics. Isn't it time to get your stud into shape for the summer?"

Elsie shrugged her shoulders.

"I don't know. I hate to give it up while there's a fighting chance. The campaign has been a lot of fun. However, I suppose you are right. You have a dreadfully aggravating way of being. Besides, I am pretty tired of parsons, and horses wear better."