The Puritans by Arlo Bates

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"Are you comparing us?" she asked gayly. "Or are you trying to decide
what I would have done in her case? I can tell you that."

"What would you have done?"

"Done? I would have run away from him and the convent both! Do you
think I was made to be cooped up in a nunnery if I could escape?"

"No," he answered with fervor, "you were certainly not made for that."

"That is an unclerical answer from a monk."

"I am not a monk."

She put her head a little on one side with delicious coquetry.

"Would it be rude to ask what you are, then?"

He regarded her a moment, and then with explosive vehemence he broke
out:--

"I am a deacon who has not taken the vows, and I am a man who loves you
with his whole soul!"

She paled, and then flushed to her temples. She cast her eyes down, and
seemed to be struggling for self-control. He did not offer to touch
her, although his throat contracted with the intensity of his effort to
maintain his outward calm. Then she looked up with a smile light and
cold.

"We are not called upon to play Filippo and Lucretia in reversed
parts," she said. "I am not trying to tempt you away from your calling.
Wouldn't it be better to talk about the weather?"

He was unable to answer her, but sat staring with hot eyes into her
face, feeling its beauty like a pain.

"It has been very cold for the season during the past week," she went
on.

"Miss Morison," he retorted hotly, "I had no right to say that, but you
needn't insult me. It is cruel enough as it is."

Her face softened a little, but she ignored his words.

"Tell me," she remarked, as if more personal subjects had not come into
the conversation, "what are the chances of the election? I hear so many
things said that I have ceased to have any clear ideas on the subject
at all."

Maurice sat upright, throwing back his shoulders. This girl should not
get the better of him. He lifted his head, his nostrils distending.

"It is too soon to speak with certainty," he responded; "but it is in
regard to that that I came--that I was sent to see you this afternoon.
We are under vows of obedience at the Clergy House."

He said this defiantly, fancying he saw in her face a smile at the idea
of his servitude.

"You will regard what I say as the words of a messenger."

"All?" she interrupted.

He flushed with confusion, but he was determined that he would not
again lose control of himself.

"All that I _shall_ say," he responded. "What I have said is to be
forgotten."

"By me or by you?" she asked, dimpling into a smile so provoking that
he had to look away from her or he should have given in.

"By you," was his reply; but he could not help adding under his breath:
"If you wish to forget it."

She laughed outright.

"I will consider the matter. But this errand from the powers that be at
the Clergy House; I am curious about that."

"You will remember," he urged, his face falling, "that it is only a
message for which I have no responsibility."

"Certainly; although you would of course bring no message of which you
didn't approve."

"I am not asked whether I approve or disapprove. It is the decision of
the Father Superior that it should be said; and that is the whole of
it."

"Well," she inquired, as he paused, unable to go on, "after this
tremendous preamble, what is it?"

It seemed to Maurice that he could not say it; but he cleared his
throat, and forced himself to look her in the face.

"It has to do with your inheritance of the--your inheritance through
Mrs. Frostwinch."

"My inheritance? What do you mean?" she demanded, suddenly becoming
grave.

As briefly as possible he explained to her the errand which had been
given to him. He could see indignation gathering in her look.

"But who has told Father Frontford that Mrs. Frostwinch is so ill?" she
broke out at last. "Cousin Anna is not so well since she came from the
South, but that is all. It is shameful to be speculating on her death
and disposing of her property as if she were buried already! I wonder
at you!"

Wynne smiled bitterly.

"I have already said that I had nothing whatever to do with the
matter," he answered.

"You had no right to come to me with such a message. It puts me in the
position of waiting for her death! Oh, it's an insult! It's an insult
to me and to Cousin Anna! What will she think?"

"She will think nothing," he said, roused by a sense of her injustice,
"because she will never know."

"Why will she not?"

"Because if it is cruel for me to say a thing which harms nobody except
me for bringing the message, it would be a thousand times more cruel
for you to tell your cousin that her death was counted on."

He rose as he spoke, and stood looking down on her with the full
purpose of constraining her to his will. She sprang up in her turn.

"Very well; I will not tell her. You may say to Father Frontford from
me that it will be time enough for him to undertake the disposal of my
property when it is mine. I thank him for his officiousness!"

"You are unjust to Father Frontford. I have made his wish seem
offensive by the way I have put it, I suppose. At any rate, he is
simply seeking the good of the church."

"And to have himself made bishop."

"He would vote to-morrow for any man that he thought would do better
than he can do. He would support Mr. Strathmore himself if he believed
it well for the church. I do not find myself in sympathy with
everything that he does, but I know him, and of one thing I am sure: he
would be burned alive in slow fires to advance the good of the church."

She looked at him curiously. Then she turned away in seeming
carelessness, and began to arrange some pink roses which stood in a big
vase on a table near at hand.

"Good-by," he said. "I am sorry to have offended you."

"Must you go?" responded she with a society manner which cut him to the
quick. "Let me give you a rose."

She broke one off, and handed it to him. He took it awkwardly, wholly
at a loss to understand her.

"They are lovely, aren't they?" she said. "Mr. Stanford sent them to me
this morning."

He looked at her until her eyes fell. Then he laid the rose on the
table near the hand which had given it to him, and without further
speech went out.

XXIV

FAREWELL AT ONCE, FOR ONCE, FOR ALL, AND EVER
Richard II., ii. 2.

Although Ashe had said that he should not go again to the poverty-
stricken dwelling of Mrs. Murphy, he found himself a few days later
beside her bed. Word had been brought to him that she was dying, and
that she begged to see him before her death. There was no resisting a
call like this, and on a gloomy afternoon he had gone down to the dingy
court, torn by memories and worn with inward struggles.

He found the old woman almost speechless with weakness. The room was
more comfortable, and he knew that Maurice had been at work. The
slatternly girl was in attendance, and there was also the pleasant-
faced priest whom Philip and Maurice had encountered in the court. The
priest had come with an acolyte to administer the last rites, and the
woman had made her confession. So intent, however, was Mrs. Murphy upon
the purpose for which she had summoned Ashe that she cried out to him
as he entered, and apparently for the moment forgot all else.

Ashe looked at the priest in apology, but the latter said kindly:--

"Let her speak to you, and then she will be done with things of this
earth."

It was the safety of her husband for which the poor creature was
concerned. It was on her mind that Ashe and Mrs. Fenton could save him
from punishment if they chose. She pleaded piteously with Philip to
have the prisoner set free.

"He'll be all alone of me," she moaned. "That'll be more punishment
than you're thinking, your riverince. He'll come out of jail sober, and
he'll remember how he had me to do for him night and day these long
years. He'll not be liking that, your riverince; and he'll be uneasy to
think maybe he had some small thing to do with it himself. Not that I
say he did," she added hastily. "His little fun wouldn't be the cause
of harm to me as is used to his ways, but maybe he'll be after thinking
so. It's the fever I have, from poor living, and maybe from being so
long without Tim and worrying the heart out of my body for him, and he
there in jail. Only if you'll promise to let him go, you and the sweet
lady that very likely didn't know his pleasant ways when he had a drop
too much, you'd make it easier dying without him."

She gasped out her words as if every syllable were an effort, her eyes
appealing with a wildness which touched his heart. The girl went to the
bed and leaned over, taking in hers the thin, withered hand.

"There, there, Mrs. Murphy," she said, "of course the gentleman'll do
it. He couldn't have the heart to resist your dying prayer."

"I am ready to do all I can, Mrs. Murphy," Philip stammered, struggling
with his conscience to promise as much as he could; "and I'll see Mrs.
Fenton. I'm sure she won't wish to have anything done that you would
not like."

The sick woman burst into weak tears, stammering half inarticulate
blessings.

"I don't know," Philip began, feeling that it was not honest to give
her the impression that he could set her husband free, "how much"--

The priest crossed to him and laid a hand quickly on his shoulder.

"Whist!" he said in Philip's ear. "There's no need of troubling her
with that. You'll do what you can, and the rest's with heaven that is
good to the poor."

Mrs. Murphy had not heard or heeded what Ashe said, and still mumbled
her thanks while the Father prepared to administer the viaticum. The
acolyte and the girl looked at Ashe as if expecting him to withdraw.

"May I remain?" Philip asked, looking at the priest with deep feeling.

The other regarded him benignly.

"Remain, my brother; and may the Holy Virgin bless the sacrament to
your soul as well as to hers."

Ashe could not have told why he had yielded to the impulse to stay. He
had for months been coming more and more to feel that the church of
Rome was his true refuge, yet he hardly now dared confess this to
himself. He had been deeply affected by the discovery that Maurice had
been to confession at St. Eulalia, and he longed himself to follow the
example of his friend. To Ashe, however, it seemed like trifling with
sacred things, and he could not do it. Now as he knelt on the unclean
and uneven floor of that sordid chamber he experienced a peace and a
security such as he had never before known. He was moved almost to
tears; yet he would not yield.

"It is not Rome," he insisted to himself. "It is the simple faith of
these poor souls. That is beautiful and holy. It would be easy for me
to think that I was becoming a Catholic."

He left as soon as the rite was concluded, but the memory of it
remained.

He saw Mrs. Fenton on the afternoon following. He had not been alone
with her since his mad declaration of love. He wished now to meet her
calmly, yet the moment he entered her house his heart quickened its
beating. He was no longer a priest bent on an errand of mercy; he was
an ardent lover, acutely conscious that he was in the rooms through
which she passed day by day, that in a moment he should see her, hear
her voice, perhaps touch her hand. He was shown into the library where
she was sitting, and she rose to greet him frankly and simply.

"She was not touched by what happened in the carriage," Philip said to
himself, with the woeful wisdom of love, "or she could not so
completely ignore it."

"How do you do, Mr. Ashe?" she said with perfect calmness. "You are
just in time for a cup of tea. I am having mine early, because I came
in a little chilled."

He was too confused with the joy of her presence to decline.

"I have come on an errand which is not over pleasant," he remarked,
watching her handling the cups, "and I am afraid that it is useless
too."

"Does that mean that it is something you wish me to do but think I'm
too hard-hearted or selfish to agree to?"

"It is not a question of willingness so much as of power. Mrs. Murphy
is dying,--very likely by this time she is not living,--and she begs us
to save her husband from being punished."

"But how could that be done?"

"I doubt if it could be done; but I promised her that I would speak to
you. I suppose that if we did not give evidence there would not be much
that could be told; but I hardly think that we have the right not to."

Mrs. Fenton thoughtfully regarded the fire a moment; then seemed to be
recalled to the present by the active boiling of the little silver
teakettle.

"I'm afraid women would drive justice out of the world if they had
their way," she said with a smile.

He smiled in reply, full of delight in her mere presence. They talked
the matter over, arriving at some sort of a compromise between their
sympathy for the dying woman and their feeling that a man like Murphy
should be dealt with by the law. They came for the moment to seem to be
on the old footing of simple friendliness, while she made the tea and
they discussed the situation.

"One lump or two?" Mrs. Fenton asked, pausing with tongs suspended over
the sugar.

"Two," answered he. "I am afraid I am self-indulgent in my tea, but
then I very seldom take it."

"So small an indulgence," she said, handing him his cup, "does not seem
to me to indicate any great moral laxity."

"It is the principle of the thing," Philip returned, smiling because
she smiled.

Mrs. Fenton shook her head.

"Come," she said, "this is a good time for me to say something that has
been in my mind for a long time. You may think that it isn't my affair,
but I can't help saying that it seems to me you have allowed yourself
to get into a frame of mind that is rather--well, that isn't entirely
healthy. I hope you don't think me too presuming."

"You could not be," was his reply; "but I do not understand what you
mean."

She had grown graver, and leaned back in her chair with downcast eyes.

"I hardly know how to say it," she began slowly, "but you seem to me to
be feeling rather morbidly about the virtue of personal discomfort. If
you will pardon me, I can't think that you really believe it to be any
merit in the sight of heaven that a man should make himself needlessly
uncomfortable."

"But if the mortification of the flesh helps us to"--

She put up her hand and interrupted him.

"I am a good churchwoman, but I am not able to believe in scoring off
the sins of the soul by abusing the body. The old monks scourging
themselves and the Hindus swinging by hooks in their backs seem to me
both pathetically mistaken, and both to be moved by the same feelings."

"Then you do not believe in asceticism at all?"

"Mr. Fenton used to say that asceticism was the most insolent insult to
Heaven that human vanity ever invented."

"But if we are to follow the devices and desires of our own hearts,"
Ashe broke out, his inner excitement bursting forth through his
calmness, "if we are to give way to the joys of this life, if--Do you
not see, Mrs. Fenton, that this covers so much? It goes down into the
depths of a man's heart. It comes almost at once, for instance, to the
question of the marriage of priests."

She flushed, and her manner grew perceptibly colder.

"That is naturally not a subject that I care to go into," she said;
"but I have no scruple against saying that I do not believe in a
celibate priesthood. In our church and our time, it is out of place."

"But it is the supreme test whether a man is willing to give up all his
earthly joy for the service of Heaven."

She frowned slightly, and he realized how significant his manner must
have been.

"The marriage of the clergy is not a subject that it seems to me
necessary for us to discuss," she said.

"Mrs. Fenton," Philip said, "I have given you too good a right to be
offended with me once, but I must say something that I fear may offend
you again. It is not about myself. It is about a better man."

She looked at him in evident surprise and disquiet.

"I asked what you think of the marriage of the clergy," he went on,
"because it seems to me right to tell you that Mr. Candish loves you."

She flushed to her temples, starting impulsively in her seat.

"Mr. Ashe," she said vehemently, "what right have you to talk to me of
such subjects at all?"

"None," he answered, "none at all,--unless--None that you would
recognize; but I wish to atone for the wrong I did in speaking to you,
and to say what he would never say. If it were possible that you cared
for him, I should perhaps help you both."

"You forget, I think, that I have been married."

"I do not forget anything," Philip returned desperately. "It is only
that he is a good man, a noble man, a man that would never have fallen
under his weakness as I did, and if you cared for him, he is too fine
to be allowed to suffer. He loved you long before I ever saw you."

"He has never given me any sign of it."

Her flushed cheeks and something in the way in which she said this
seemed to him to indicate that she did love Candish. He had been moved
by the most sincere desire to sacrifice his own will and happiness to
the well-being of the woman he loved, and if it were that she loved his
rival he had been ready to forget everything but that. Now by a quick
revulsion it seemed to him that he could not endure the success of this
man whose cause he had been pleading.

"Ah!" he cried, bending toward her, "you love him!"

She rose indignantly to her feet.

"Your impertinence is amazing!" she exclaimed. "It is time that
somebody told you the truth. It is hard for me to say unkind things to
one who has saved my life, but you ought to know how you appear. You
have got yourself into a thoroughly unwholesome state of mind and body;
and unless you get out of it you will ruin your whole career. Does it
seem to you that a man who has so little control over himself is a fit
leader for others? Can't you see that you have brooded over this
question of celibacy until you are completely morbid? Find some
wholesome, right-minded woman, Mr. Ashe; love her and marry her, and be
done with all this wretched, unwholesome mawkishness. As for me, when I
married once, I married for life. My son will never be given a second
father."

He had risen also, and his self-possession had returned to him.

"I have annoyed you," he said with a new dignity. "You are perhaps
right in saying that I am morbid, but in what I said to-day I was
trying to put self entirely out of the question. There is only one
thing more that I want to say; and that is that it is not fair to judge
our order by me. I know only too well how natural it is that you
should think all the men at the Clergy House weak and despicable like
me; but that is not so. They are sincere, self-forgetful fellows. You
have seen my friend Wynne. He, for instance, is as manly and fine and
honest as any man alive."

"I do not misjudge them or you, Mr. Ashe. I only feel that in these
past weeks you have not been yourself. We will forget it all, and I
hope that you will forgive me if I have hurt you."

"I have nothing to forgive. It is you who must do that. Good-by."

He went away with the remembrance of her beautiful eyes looking in pity
into his, and once more the phrase of the Persian came into his mind
like a refrain: "O thou, to the arch of whose eyebrow the new moon is a
slave!"

XXV

WHOM THE FATES HAVE MARKED
Comedy of Errors, i. I

Maurice soon heard from his lawyer that the missing desk had passed
into the hands of his sister-in-law, Mrs. Singleton, and that that lady
was staying at Montfield as the guest of Mrs. Ashe. He determined to go
down himself, feeling unwilling to trust business so important to any
other. In order to leave the Clergy House, it was necessary to have
permission from the Father Superior, and on Monday of Shrove week Wynne
requested what the deacons jestingly called among themselves a
dispensation. He did not think it honest to conceal the reason for his
wishing leave of absence, and briefly related the story of his finding
his old nurse and of her revelation.

"Poor old Norah is dead," he concluded, "but I had her affidavit taken,
and if the will can be found there should be no difficulty in
establishing it. The other witnesses are alive." They were sitting in
the Father's study, a room severely plain in its furnishings, like all
the apartments in the Clergy House. The table by which the Superior sat
was covered with papers and letters, the signs of the large
correspondence which Wynne knew Frontford to keep up with members of
his order in England and this country. The furniture was stiff and
uncompromising, the windows covered only by plain shades, while the
bookshelves took an austere air from the dull leather of the bindings
of their tall, formal volumes. Father Frontford leaned back in his
uncushioned chair and pressed together his thin finger-tips in the
gesture which was habitual with him, regarding the young man with keen
eyes.

"This property, if I understand you rightly, is now in the possession
of the church?"

"It was given by the will that was found to the church and to missions.
Some of it went to the founding of a home for invalid priests. My aunt
was the one of my relatives who was a churchwoman."

"And if you succeed in finding and establishing this new will, you mean
to divert the money to your own use?"

"If the will is valid, is not the money mine?"

The Father looked at him a moment before he answered. Then he sighed.

"My son," he asked, "would you have put that question six months ago?"

Maurice flushed, but he did not wish to show that he understood.

"Why not?" he demanded.

"There was not then in your heart a wish to wrest property from the
church that you might enjoy it yourself."

"I haven't any wish now to take from the church anything which is not
mine already."

"By divine right or by human?" the Father inquired with cold
inflexibility.

Maurice began to be irritated. He felt that he was being treated with
too high a hand.

"Have I no rights as a man?" demanded he warmly.

The other sighed once more, and a look of genuine pain came into his
face.

"My son," he said with a gentleness which touched Maurice in spite of
himself, "when you gave yourself to the church, did you keep back part
of the price? Was not your gift all you were and all you might
possess?"

Maurice was silent. He could not for shame answer, that he did not then
know that he had so much to give, and he realized too that this would
then have made no difference. He felt as if he were now being held to a
pledge which he had never meant to make, yet he could not see what
reply there was to the words of the Superior. He cast down his eyes,
but he said in his heart that he would not yield his claim; that the
demand was unjust.

"I have for some time," Father Frontford went on, "in fact ever since
your return, seen with pain that your heart is no longer single to the
good of the church. An earthly passion has eaten into your soul. Your
confessions are evidently attempts to satisfy your own conscience by
telling as little as possible of the doubts which you have been
harboring in your heart. Now there is given you an opportunity to see
for yourself, without the possibility of disguise, what your true
feeling is. The question now is whether you are seeking your own will
or the good of religion. Will you fail us and yourself?"

Maurice was touched by the tone in which this was said. While he had
been growing to be less and less in sympathy with Father Frontford and
with the ideals which the brotherhood represented, he had never for an
instant ceased to believe in the sincerity of the Superior. He might
think him narrow, mistaken, even at times so blinded by desire for the
success of the brotherhood as to become almost Jesuitical in method;
but he felt that the Father lived faithful to his belief, ready, if the
cause required, to sacrifice himself utterly. He could not but be moved
by the appeal which the priest made, and by the genuine feeling which
rang through every word.

"Father," he said, raising his eyes to the face of the other, "I cannot
deny that I am less satisfied about our faith than I used to be. I can
see now that I perhaps have not been entirely frank in confession,
though I hadn't recognized it before. I cannot go into a discussion of
my doubts now. I am not in a mood to talk with you when we must look at
so many things from different points of view. I haven't hidden from you
anything that has happened, and you could not be persuaded that all the
change in me has not come from the fact that I--has not come from my
feeling toward--my feeling about marriage. This is not true. Everything
has changed; and while I may be wrong, I have been trying to act
conscientiously. I feel that it is right for me to follow up this
matter of my aunt's will; and if I cannot make you share my feeling, I
can only say that I don't wish to do anything that seems to me wrong."

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