The Puritans by Arlo Bates

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Wynne felt the tone like a caress. He seemed to be understood without
need of more speech. His condition, which had seemed to him so
intricate and so unique, began to appear possible and human. He was not
so completely cut off from human sympathy as he had felt.

"Yes," he assented; "I will be frank about it. I did not think that
Father Frontford would understand what it meant to feel that life is
given to us to be glorified by the love of a woman."

"If this is all that is troubling you," Strathmore remarked, "it seems
to me that your position, though it may not be pleasant, is not very
tragical. Our bishops are generally willing to absolve from vows of
celibacy."

"I doubt if Father Frontford would be," Maurice commented
involuntarily.

"That is perhaps one of his virtues in the eyes of his supporters,"
Strathmore suggested with a twinkle.

"I have not taken the vows, however," Maurice responded hastily,
flushing, and ignoring the thrust.

"Then what is your trouble?"

"When I meant to take them, it was the same thing."

"Do I understand you that to intend to do a thing and then to change
the mind is the same as to do it?"

"Oh, no; not that; but I am not clear that it isn't my duty to take
them. I'm not sure that it is right for a priest to marry--if you will
pardon my saying so."

"And you come to me to convince you? It seems to me that Providence has
already done that through the agency of some young woman. If you really
know what it is to love a good woman there is no real doubt in your
mind as to the sacredness of marriage,--for the clergy or for anybody
else. Isn't your trouble perhaps an obstinate dislike to seem to
abandon a position once taken?"

The words might have sounded severe but for the tone in which they were
spoken.

"But that is not the whole of the matter," Maurice continued, feeling
as if he were being carried forward by an irresistible current. "If I
have been mistaken on this point about which I have felt so sure and so
strongly, what confidence can I have in my other beliefs?"

"Ah, it goes deep," Strathmore said with emphasis. "It is of no use to
put old wine into new bottles. The effect of trying to make you young
men accept mediaevalism, like clerical celibacy, is in the end to make
you doubt everything. Haven't you any respect for the authority of the
church?"

"Oh, implicit!" Maurice responded.

"But," his host remarked with a smile, "because you begin to have
doubts about a thing which the church doesn't inculcate, you show an
inclination to throw overboard all that she does teach."

Maurice was silent a moment, playing with a rosary which he wore at his
belt. He was surprised that he had never thought of this; and he was
startled by the doubt which had arisen in his mind as soon as he had
declared his implicit faith in the church. He realized in a flash that
while he had spoken honestly, he had not told the truth.

"I am afraid that I'm not quite honest," he said, "though I meant to
be. I'm afraid that after all I don't feel sure of all the church
teaches."

"My dear young man," the other replied kindly, "you are fighting
against the age. You have been taught to believe,--if you will pardon
me,--that the thing for a true man to do is to resist the light of
reason. There are, for instance, a great many things which used to be
received literally which we now find it necessary to interpret
figuratively. It would be refusing to use the reason heaven gives us if
we refused to recognize this. The teachings of the church are true and
infallible, but every man must interpret them according to the light of
his own conscience and reason."

"But if this is once allowed I don't see where you are to draw the
line. The heathen are very likely honest enough."

"I said the teaching of the church, Mr. Wynne. If a man earnestly
searches his heart and follows this guide as he understands it, there
can be no danger."

"Mr. Strathmore," Maurice said, "perhaps it seems like forcing myself
upon you, and then taking the liberty of fighting your views; but this
is too vital to me to allow of my stopping for conventionalities. You
seem to me to be inconsistent. You refer to the church as the supreme
authority, but you give into the hand of every man a power over that
authority."

The other smiled with that warm, sympathetic glance which was so
winning.

"Does it seem possible to you," asked he, "that two human beings ever
mean quite the same thing by the same words? Isn't there always some
little variation, at least, in the impression that a given phrase
conveys to you and to me?"

"Theoretically I suppose that this is true," assented Maurice; "but
practically it doesn't amount to much, does it?"

"It at least amounts to this," was the reply, "that what one man means
by a set form of words cannot be exactly the same that another would
mean by it. The creed is one thing to the simple-minded, ignorant man,
and something infinitely higher and richer to a Father in the church.
You would allow that, of course."

"Yes," Maurice hesitatingly assented, "but I shouldn't have thought of
it as an excuse for laxity of doctrine."

"I am not recommending laxity of doctrine. I am only saying that since
absolute unity of conception is impossible, it is idle to insist upon
it. I am not excusing anything. A fact cannot need an excuse in the
search for truth."

The young deacon felt himself sliding into deeper and deeper waters,
though the mien of Strathmore seemed to inspire confidence. He was more
and more uncertain what he believed or ought to believe.

"But is this the belief of the church?" he persisted.

"What is the belief of the church if not the belief of its members?"

"I do not know," Maurice answered. "I came to you to be told."

He tried to grasp definitely the belief which was being presented to
him, but it appeared as elusive as a shadow in the mist. Mr.
Strathmore's look was as frank and clear as ever. There was in his eyes
no sign of wavering or of evasion; his smile was full of warmth and
sympathy.

"My dear young friend," the elder said, "I don't pretend to speak with
the authority of the church; but to me it seems like this. We live in
an age when we must recognize the use of reason. We are only doing
frankly what men have in all ages been doing in their hearts. Men
always have their private interpretations whether they recognize it or
not. Nothing more is ever needed to create a schism than for some clear
thinker to define clearly what he believes. There are always those who
are ready to follow him because this seems so near to what many are
thinking."

"But that is because so few persons are ever able to define for
themselves what they do believe," Maurice threw in.

"Then do they ever really appreciate what the doctrines of the church
are?" Strathmore asked significantly.

Maurice shook his head. He seemed to himself to be entangled in a net
of words. He could not tell whether the man before him was entirely
sincere or not. There seemed something hopelessly incongruous between
the position of Mr. Strathmore as a religious leader and these opinions
which seemed to strike at the very foundations of all creeds; yet the
manner and look with which all was said were evidently honest and
unaffected.

"Don't suppose that I think it would be wise to proclaim such a
doctrine from the housetops," continued Strathmore, answering, Maurice
felt, the doubt in the face of the latter. "I speak to you as one who
is face to face with these facts, and must have the whole of it."

Maurice rose with a feeling that he must get away by himself and think.

"Mr. Strathmore," he said, "I am more grateful than I can say for your
kindness. I'm afraid that I've seemed stupid and ungracious, but I
haven't meant to be either. I see that every man must work out his own
salvation."

"But with fear and trembling, Mr. Wynne."

The smile of the rector was so warm and so winning that it cheered
Maurice more than any words could have cheered him; Mr. Strathmore
grasped the young man warmly by the hand and added:--

"Don't think me a heretic because I have spoken with great frankness.
Remember that the good of the church is to me more dear than anything
else on earth except the good of men for whom the church exists. God
help you in your search for light."

XVIII

CRUEL PROOF OF THIS MAN'S STRENGTH
As You Like It, i. 2.

The afternoon was already darkening into dusk one day late in January
when Philip Ashe stood in the hallway of a squalid tenement house,
looking out into a dingy court. The place was surrounded by tall
buildings which cut off the light and made day shorter than nature had
intended, an effect which was not lessened by the clothes drying
smokily on lines above. In one corner of the court yawned like the
entrance to a cave the mouth of the passageway by which it was entered.
In another stood a dilapidated handcart in which some dweller there was
accustomed to carry abroad his rubbishy wares. The windows were for the
most part curtainless, rising row above row with an aspect of
wretchedness which gave Ashe a sense of discomfort so strong as almost
to be physical. Here and there rags and old hats did duty instead of
glass; some windows were open, framing slatternly women.

These women were stupidly quiet. Ashe wondered if they would have
talked to each other across the court if he had not been in sight, or
if the gathering dusk silenced them. One of them was smoking a short
black pipe, and once let fall a spark upon the head of another idler a
couple of floors below. The injured woman poured forth a volley of
oaths, and Ashe expected a war of words. Nothing of the sort occurred.
The figure above was so indifferent as hardly to glance down where the
offended harridan was steaming with a fume of curses.

Philip began to be uneasy. He looked up at the darkening sky, and
backward to the gloom of the stairway behind him. No gas had been
lighted in the building, and he wondered if any ever were. It was
certainly too late for Mrs. Fenton to be poking about in these
dangerous places. They had been doing charity visiting together, and
she had insisted on coming to this one house more before going home. He
had remonstrated, but she had laughed at his fears.

"I don't believe any of these places are really dangerous," she had
declared. "I've been coming here for years, and nobody ever troubled
me."

"By daylight it is all very well," he had answered, "but it's a
different thing after dark. I have been here once or twice to see some
sick person in the evening, and it is a rough place."

"But it isn't after dark," she had persisted, "and it won't be for an
hour."

She had had her way, but Ashe reflected uneasily that if harm came to
her it would be his fault. He should have insisted upon her going home.
The light was fading fast, and the locality was one of the worst in
town. He wondered why the mere absence of daylight gave wickedness so
much boldness. Men who by day were the veriest cowards seemed to spring
into appalling fearlessness as soon as darkness gave its uncertain
promise of concealment. The thought made him turn, and begin slowly to
walk up the stairs.

He was not sure what floor she meant to visit. She was going, he knew,
to see a woman whose husband got drunk and beat her. She had told him
about the poor creature as they came along. She was sure Mrs. Murphy
must have known a decent life. She set her down as having been a
housekeeper or upper servant who had foolishly married a rascal. The
woman, Mrs. Fenton had added, was evidently ashamed of her present
condition, and afraid that those who had known her in her better days
should discover her.

"It is pitiful," Mrs. Fenton had said musingly, "to see how she clings
to her husband. She pulls down her sleeves to cover the bruises, and
tells how good he was to her when they were first married. She says he
doesn't mean to hurt her, but that he's the strongest man in the court,
and doesn't realize what he is doing. She's even proud of his
strength."

"Strength is apt to impress women," Ashe had answered, not without a
secret sense of humiliation to lack this quality.

As he walked gropingly up the dark stairway, a man came clumsily after,
and presently stumbled past him. A strong smell of liquor enveloped the
newcomer, and he lurched heavily against Ashe without apology. Philip
heard his uneven steps mounting in the gloom, and followed almost
mechanically. He paused in one of the hallways to listen to a babble of
words in one of the rooms. It was chiefly profanity, but it hardly
seemed to be ill-natured. It was simply a family cursing each other
with well-accustomed vehemence. He grew every instant more and more
uneasy, and thought of knocking at every door until he found his
friend. What right had philanthropy to demand that a beautiful, noble
woman should be exposed to the chances of a nest of ruffianism and
vice? He was indignant at the committee for not delegating such work to
men. Then he remembered that Mrs. Fenton was herself on the committee,
and that it was by her own insistence that she was here.

"She is capable of any sacrifice to what she believes to be right," he
said to himself; "but she is too good for such work; she is too
delicate, too"--

Suddenly a noise arose on the floor above him. A man's voice, thick
with anger or drink, was pouring out a stream of words, half oaths; a
woman was shrilly entreating. Ashe sprang quickly upstairs, and as he
did so he heard Mrs. Fenton scream. The sound was behind a door, and
without stopping to deliberate he tried to open it. The latch yielded,
but he could not open.

"Let me in!" he cried fiercely. "What is the matter?"

The voice of a man who was evidently against the door answered him with
blasphemies. A woman within cried to the man to stop, while Mrs. Fenton
called to Ashe for help. Philip set his shoulder against the door and
strained with all his might to force it. He remembered then what Mrs.
Fenton had said about the strength of the husband of her pensioner.

"Go to the window, and call the police," he shouted.

"He's holding me!" Mrs. Fenton cried back pantingly.

Philip strained more desperately, and as he did so he heard the window
within flung open, and the voice of a woman yelling for the police. The
man inside sprang forward with an oath, the door yielded, and Philip
plunged headlong into the room.

As Philip fell upon his knees, he saw a man seize the woman who from
the window was calling for help, and fling her to the floor. The sound
of her fall, with her wild shriek beaten into a choking gasp by the
force with which she struck, turned his heart sick; but his fear for
Mrs. Fenton kept him up. He scrambled to his feet, and as he did so she
ran toward him.

"Your cassock is all dust!" she cried hysterically. "Oh, come away!"

The absurdity of the words made him burst into nervous laughter; yet he
saw that the drunken man was coming, and he instinctively put her
behind him and took some sort of a posture of defense.

"Save yourself," he cried hastily. "He's killed the woman."

All this passed with the quickness of thought. There seemed to Philip
hardly the time of a breath between the opening of the door and the
blow which now fell upon the side of his face. Fortunately he partly
evaded it, but he reeled and staggered, feeling the earth shake and the
air full of stinging points of fire. He saw the figure of his assailant
towering between him and the light; he had a glimpse of Mrs. Fenton
rushing to the window to call again for help; he realized with a
horrible shrinking that that hammer-like fist was again striking out
for his face; he was conscious of a sickening impulse to run, a
humiliating and overwhelming sense of his inability to cope with this
brute and of even his ignorance how to try; yet most of all he felt the
determination to defend Edith or to die in the attempt. In a wild and
futile fashion he dashed against his assailant, striking blindly and
furiously, crying with rage and weakness, but throwing all his force
into the fight. He felt crushing blows on his head and chest. Once he
was struck on the side of the throat so that he gasped for breath with
the sensation that he was drowning. Now and then he felt his own fist
strike flesh, and the sensation was to him horrible. He fought blindly,
doggedly, inwardly weeping for the shame and the pity of it, wondering
if there would never be any end, and what would happen to Mrs. Fenton
if he were beaten helpless. Surely if aid were coming it must have
arrived long ago. He had been fighting for hours. He kept striking on,
but he felt his strength failing, and he could have laughed wildly at
the pitiful feebleness of his blows. He was knocked down, and scrambled
up again, amazed that he was not killed or disabled. His one hope lay
in the fact that the man was evidently much the worse for drink, and
often struck as blindly as himself. If he could but occupy the brute's
attention until help came, Mrs. Fenton would be saved.

Suddenly he was aware that the roaring in his ears was not all from the
ringing in his head, but that heavy steps were sounding from the
stairway. In a moment more screaming women were swarming in, and the
din become intolerable as they scuttled about him, calling out to his
opponent to stop and not to do murder. Men followed, and a couple of
policemen came in their wake. Ashe saw through heavy eyelids the shine
of brass buttons, and felt that the wearers of the uniforms to which
these belonged had seized upon his assailant. He staggered against the
wall, sick, faint, and dizzy. The two policemen were having a severe
struggle to subdue their prisoner, and it seemed to Philip that all the
inhabitants of the neighborhood were crowding in at the narrow door.
The wife lay where she had been dashed to the floor, and Mrs. Fenton
bent over her.

"Oh, Mr. Ashe," the latter said, coming to him, "you must be terribly
hurt! I think Mrs. Murphy's killed."

He tried to smile, but his face was swollen and unmanageable.

"It's no matter about me," he managed with difficulty to say, "if you
are not hurt."

The realities of life came back. The whirling rush of the swift moments
of the fight seemed already far off. The crowd examined him with frank
curiosity, commenting on him as "the dude that's been scrappin' with
Mike Murphy." He saw some of the women busy over the prostrate form of
Mrs. Murphy, lifting her from the floor to the bed.

"Well, Mike," one of the policemen said, "I guess this job'll be your
last. You've done it this time."

The prisoner seemed to have become sober all at once, now that he was
in the hands of the law. He went over to the bed, between his captors,
and examined the injured woman with the air of one accustomed to such
occurrences.

"Oh, the old woman'll pull round all right," he growled. "She ain't no
flannel-mouth charity chump."

Without a word Ashe put his hand upon the arm of Mrs. Fenton, and led
her toward the door. The insult cut him more than all that had gone
before. What had passed belonged to a drunken and irrational mood. This
taunt came evidently from deliberate contempt and ingratitude. Philip
had a bewildered sense of being outside of all conditions which he
could understand. This shameless effrontery and brutality seemed to him
rather the distorted fantasy of an evil dream than anything which could
be real. His one thought now was to get his companion away before she
was exposed to fresh insult.

They were detained a little by the police; but after giving their
addresses were allowed to go. Ashe felt shaky and exhausted, but the
hand of Mrs. Fenton was on his arm, and the need of sustaining her gave
him strength. They got with some difficulty through the crowd and out
of the court, and after walking a block or two were fortunate enough to
find a carriage.

"Mr. Ashe," Mrs. Fenton said, as they drove up Hanover Street, "I'm
afraid you're terribly hurt; and it is all my fault."

"No, no," he replied with swollen lips. "The fault was mine. I
shouldn't have let you go into that place."

"But you did try to stop me; only I was obstinate. Oh, I don't know how
to thank you for coming as you did."

"But what happened before I came?"

Mrs. Fenton shuddered.

"Oh, I don't think I know very clearly. That great drunken man came in,
and asked me for money. Of course I didn't give it to him; and his wife
tried to get him to let me go. Then he struck her on the mouth!"

"The brute!" Ashe involuntarily cried, clenching his bruised fists.

"Then he caught me by the waist, and I screamed; and in another minute
I heard you at the door."

"But it was the woman that called the police."

"Yes; and when she did that I was fearfully frightened. I knew that if
she called the police against her own husband she must think that he'd
really hurt me."

Philip leaned back in the carriage, dizzy with the overwhelming sense
of the peril that had beset her,--her! Then, mastered by an
overpowering impulse, he threw himself forward and caught her hands,
covering them with kisses.

"Oh, my darling!" he gasped. "Oh, thank God you are safe!"

She dragged her hands away from him, and shrank back.

"Mr. Ashe!" she cried. "What is the matter with you? What are you
doing?"

He did not attempt to retain his hold, but drew himself back into the
darkness of his corner of the carriage. A strange calmness followed his
outbreak; a sort of joyous uplifting which made him master of himself
completely.

"I am sinning," he answered with a riotous sense of delight. "I am
laying up remorse for all my future. I am telling you I love you; that
I love you: I love you! I love you and I have saved you; and I shall
brood over that, and do penance, and brood over it again, and do
penance again, all my life long!"

"Oh, you are confused, excited, hurt," she cried. "You don't know what
you are saying!"

"I know only too well what I am saying. I am saying that I"--

"Oh, for pity's sake, don't!" she moaned, putting out her hand.

He caught her wrist, and again kissed her hand passionately.

"Yes, I know that I ought not to say this now when you have had to bear
so much already; that I ought never to say it; but it is said! It is
said! You'll forget it, but I shall remember it all my life. I shall
remember that you heard me say that I love you!"

He threw himself back into his corner, and she shrank into hers, while
the carriage went rattling over the pavement. Aching and sore, Philip
yet knew a wild exhilaration, a certain divine madness which was so
intense a delight that it almost made him weep. It was like a religious
ecstasy, recalling to his mind moments in which he had seemed to be
lifted almost to trance-like communion with holy spirits.

"I ought to ask you to forgive me, Mrs. Fenton," he said as they drew
near her house, "but I cannot. I did not mean to do this; but I can't
regret it. I am sorry for you; I am sorry--I shall be sorry, that is--
for the sin of it; but the sin is sweet."

He wondered at his own voice, so even yet so high in pitch.

"Oh, what shall I do?" Mrs. Fenton cried sobbingly. "Is it my fault
that this happened?"

"Oh, nothing can be your fault. It is all mine! But you must love me, I
love you so!"

"No, no," she exclaimed vehemently. "I don't love you! I cannot love
you! For pity's sake don't say such things!"

She buried her face in her hands and burst into sobs. Philip set his
lips together, smiling bitterly at the pain it gave him. He controlled
his voice as well as he was able.

"I beg you will forgive me," said he. "I have been out of my head.
Forget my impertinence, and"--

He could not finish, but the stopping of the carriage at her door saved
him the need of farther effort.

He assisted her to alight, rang the bell, and said goodnight in a voice
which he was sure did not betray him to the coachman.

XIX

'TWAS WONDROUS PITIFUL
Othello, i. 3.

Poor Ashe got home more dead than alive. His passion had shaken him
like a delirium. He had been swept away by his emotion, and had thrown
to the winds past and future. He felt as the carriage drove away from
Mrs. Fenton's as if he had been swung up and down on some monstrous
wave and dashed, broken and bleeding, on a rough shore. He could not
think; and fortunately for him he was even too benumbed to feel
greatly.

He reached the Hermans' in a sort of half-stupor, in which
indifference, keen joy, and bitter contrition were strangely mingled.
The contrition, however, seemed somehow to belong to the future; it was
what he must endure when the time should come for repentance; the joy
was a present blessing, tingling in his every fibre.

He met Mrs. Herman in the hall. She exclaimed when she saw him, and he
stood smiling at her, swaying as if he were intoxicated.

"What has happened?" she cried. "What have you done to your face?"

The room and his cousin swam before him in a golden mist. He felt that
he was grinning idiotically, yet he could not stop. He tried to speak,
but his lips seemed too swollen to form words. He put out his hand to
grasp a chair, and perceived that he could not reach it.

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