The Puritans by Arlo Bates

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"I am a novice at the Clergy House of St. Mark."

A beautiful color flushed up in Miss Morison's dark cheek; and Wynne
realized how unconventional he had been in replying to a question which
had not been spoken.

"Is it a Catholic order?" she asked, with an evident effort not to look
confused.

"It is not Roman," he responded. "We believe that it is catholic."

"Oh," said she vaguely; and the conversation lapsed.

They walked a moment in silence, and then Maurice made another effort.

"Has Mrs. Frostwinch been ill?" he asked. "Mrs. Staggchase spoke of her
as a miracle."

"Ill!" echoed Miss Morison; "she has been wholly given up by the
physicians. She has some horrible internal trouble; and a consultation
of the best doctors in town decided that she could not live a week.
That was two months ago."

"But I don't understand," he said in surprise. "What happened?"

"A miracle," the other replied smiling. "You believe in miracles, of
course."

"But what sort of a miracle?"

"Faith-cure."

"Faith-cure!" repeated he in astonishment. "Do you mean that Mrs.
Frostwinch has been raised from a death-bed by that sort of jugglery?"

His companion shrugged her shoulders.

"I don't think it would raise you in her estimation if she heard you.
The facts are as I tell you. She dismissed her doctors when they said
they could do nothing for her, and took into her house a mind-cure
woman, a Mrs. Crapps. Some power has put her on her feet. Wouldn't you
do the same thing in her place?"

Wynne looked bewildered at Mrs. Frostwinch walking before him in a
shimmer of Boston respectability. He had an uneasy feeling that he was
passing from one pitfall to another. He was keenly conscious of the
richness of the voice of the girl by his side, so that he felt that it
was not easy for him to disagree with anything which she said. He let
her remark pass without reply.

"For my part," she went on frankly, "I don't in the least believe in
the thing as a matter of theory; but practically I have a superstition
about it, because I've seen Cousin Anna. She was helpless, in agony,
dying; and now she is as well as I am. If I were ill"--

She broke off with a pretty little gesture as they came within hearing
of the others, who had halted at Mrs. Frostwinch's gate. Wynne said
good-by absently, and went on his way down the hill like a man in a
dream.

"Well," Mrs. Staggchase said, "you have seen one of Boston's ethical
debauches; what do you think of it?"

"It was confusing," he returned. "I couldn't make out what it was for."

"For? To amuse us. We are the children of the Puritans, you know, and
have inherited a twist toward the ethical and the supernatural so
strong that we have to have these things served up even in our
amusements."

"Then I think that it is wicked," Maurice said.

"Oh, no; we must not be narrow. It isn't wrong to amuse one's self;
and if we play with the religion of the Persians, why is it worse than
to play with the mythologies of the Greeks or Romans? You wouldn't
think it any harm to jest about classical theology."

Wynne turned toward her with a smile on his strong, handsome face.

"Why do you try to tangle me up in words?" he asked.

Mrs. Staggchase did not turn toward him, but looked before with face
entirely unchanged as she replied:--

"I am not trying to entangle you in words, but if I were it would be
all part of the play. You are undergoing your period of temptation. I
am the tempter in default of a better. In the old fashion of
temptations it wouldn't do to have the tempter old and plain. Then you
were expected to fall in love; now we deal in snares more subtle."

Maurice laughed, but somewhat unmirthfully. There was to him something
bewildering and worldly about his cousin; and he had come to feel that
he could never be at all sure where in the end the most harmless
beginning of talk might lead him.

"What then is the modern way of temptation?" he inquired.

"It shows how much faith we have in its power," she replied, as they
waited on the corner of Charles Street for a carriage to pass, "that I
don't in the least mind giving you full warning. Did you know the lady
in that carriage, by the way?"

"It was Mrs. Wilson, wasn't it?"

"Yes; Mrs. Chauncy Wilson. You have seen her at the Church of the
Nativity, I suppose. She is one phase of the temptation."

"I don't in the least understand."

"I didn't in the least suppose that you would. You will in time. My
part of the temptation is to show you all sorts of ethical jugglery,
the spiritual and intellectual gymnastics such as the Bostonians love;
to persuade you that all religion is only a sort of pastime, and that
the particular high-church sort which you especially affect is but one
of a great many entertaining ways of killing time."

"Cousin Diana!" he exclaimed, genuinely shocked.

"I hope that you understand," she continued unmoved. "I shall exhibit a
very pretty collection of fads to you if we see them all."

"But suppose," he said slowly, "that I refused to go with you?"

"But you won't," returned she, with that curious smile which always
teased him with its suggestion of irony. "In the first place you
couldn't be so impolite as to refuse me. A woman may always lead a man
into questionable paths if she puts it to his sense of chivalry not to
desert her. In the second, the spirit of the age is a good deal
stronger in you than you realize, and the truth is that you wouldn't be
left behind for anything. In the third, you could hardly be so cowardly
as to run away from the temptation that is to prove whether you were
really born to be a priest."

"That was decided when I entered the Clergy House."

"Nonsense; nothing of the sort, my dear boy. The only thing that was
decided then was that you thought you were. Wait and see our ethical
and religious raree-shows. We had the Persian to-day; to-morrow I'm to
take you to a spiritualist sitting at Mrs. Rangely's. She hates to
have me come, so I mustn't miss that. Then there are the mind-cure,
Theosophy, and a dozen other things; not to mention the semi-
irreligions, like Nationalism. You will be as the gods, knowing good
and evil, by the time we are half way round the circle,--though it is
perhaps somewhat doubtful if you know them apart."

She spoke in her light, railing way, as if the matter were one of the
smallest possible consequence, and yet Wynne grew every moment more and
more uncomfortable. He had never seen his cousin in just this mood, and
could not tell whether she were mocking him or warning him. He seized
upon the first pretext which presented itself to his mind, and
endeavored to change the subject.

"Who is Mrs. Rangely?" he asked. "A medium?"

"Oh, bless you, no. She is not so bad as a medium; she is only a New
Yorker. Do you think we'd go to real mediums? Although," she added,
"there are plenty who do go. I think that it is shocking bad form."

"But you speak as if"--

"As if spiritualism were one of the recognized ethical games, that's
all. It is played pretty well at Mrs. Rangely's, I'm told. They say
that the little Mrs. Singleton she's got hold of is very clever."

"Mrs. Singleton," Maurice repeated, "why, it can't be Alice, brother
John's widow, can it? She married a Singleton for a second husband, and
she claimed to be a medium."

"Did she really? It will be amusing if you find your relatives in the
business."

"She wasn't a very close relative. John was only my half-brother, you
know, and he lived but six months after he married her. She is clever
enough and tricky enough to be capable of anything."

"Well," Mrs. Staggchase said, as they turned in at her door, "if it is
she it will give you an excellent chance to do missionary work."

They entered the wide, handsome hall, and with an abrupt movement the
hostess turned toward her cousin.

"I assure you," she said, "that I am in earnest about your temptation.
I want to see what sort of stuff you are made of, and I give you fair
warning. Now go and read your breviary, or whatever it is that you sham
monks read, while I have tea and then rest before I dress."

Maurice had no reply to offer. He watched in silence as she passed up
the broad stairway, smiling to herself as she went. He followed slowly
a moment later, and seeking his room remained plunged in a reverie at
which the severe walls of the Clergy House might have been startled; a
reverie disquieted, changing, half-fearful; and yet through which with
strange fascination came a longing to see more of the surprising world
into which chance had introduced him, and above all to meet again the
dark, glowing girl with whom he had that afternoon walked.

III

AS FALSE AS STAIRS OF SAND
Merchant of Venice, v. 2.

It was cold and gray next morning when Maurice took his way toward a
Catholic church in the North End. He had been there before for
confession, and had been not a little elated in his secret heart that
he had been able to go through the act of confession and to receive
absolution without betraying the fact that he was not a Romanist. He
had studied the forms of confession, the acts of contrition, and
whatever was necessary to the part, and for some months had gone on in
this singular course. To his Superior at the Clergy House he confessed
the same sins, but Maurice had a feeling that the absolution of the
Roman priest was more effective than that of his own church. He was not
conscious of any intention of becoming a Catholic, but there was a
fascination in playing at being one; and Wynne, who could not
understand how the folk of Boston could play with ethical truths, was
yet able thus to juggle with religion with no misgiving.

This morning he enjoyed the spiritual intoxication of the confessional
as never before. He half consciously allowed himself to dwell upon the
image of the beautiful Miss Morison to the end that he might the more
effectively pour out his contrition for that sin. He was so eloquent in
the confessional that he admired himself both for his penitence and for
the words in which he set it forth. He floated as it were in a sea of
mingled sensuousness and repentance, and he hoped that the penance
imposed would be heavy enough to show that the priest had been
impressed with the magnitude of the sin of which he had been guilty in
allowing his thoughts, consecrated to the holy life of the priesthood,
to dwell upon a woman.

It was one of those absurd anomalies of which life is full that while
Maurice sometimes slighted a little the penances imposed by his own
Superior, he had never in the least abated the rigor of any laid upon
him by the Catholic priest. It was perhaps that he felt his honor
concerned in the latter case. This morning the penance was
satisfactorily heavy, and he came out of the church with a buoyant
step, full of a certain boyish elation. He had a fresh and delightful
sense of the reality of religion now that he had actually sinned and
been forgiven.

Next to being forgiven for a sin there is perhaps nothing more
satisfactory than to repeat the transgression, and if Maurice had not
formulated this fact in theory he was to be acquainted with it in
practice. As he walked along in the now bright forenoon, filled with
the enjoyment of moral cleanness, he suddenly started with the thrill
of delicious temptation. Just before him a lady had come around a
corner, and was walking quietly along, in whom at a glance he
recognized Miss Morison. There came into his cheek, which even his
double penances had not made thin, a flush of pleasure. He quickened
his steps, and in a moment had overtaken her.

"Good morning," he said, raising his ecclesiastical hat with an air
which savored somewhat of worldliness. "Isn't it a beautiful day?"

She started at his salutation, but instantly recognized him.

"Good morning," she responded. "I didn't expect to find anybody I knew
in this part of the town."

"It isn't one where young ladies as a rule walk for pleasure, I
suppose," Maurice said, falling into step, and walking beside her.

"I am very sure that I don't," Miss Morison replied with a toss of her
head. "I do it because I was bullied into being a visitor for the
Associated Charities, and I go once a week to tell some poor folk down
here that I am no better than they are. They know that I don't believe
it, and I have my doubts if they even believe it themselves, only they
wouldn't be foolish enough to prevaricate about it. Oh, it's a great
and noble work that I'm engaged in!"

There was something exhilarating about her as she tossed her pretty
head. Wynne laughed without knowing just why, except that she
intoxicated him with delight.

"You don't speak of your work with much enthusiasm," said he.

"Enthusiasm!" she retorted. "Why should I? It's abominable. I hate it,
the people I visit hate it, and there's nobody pleased but the
managers, who can set down so many more visits paid to the worthy poor,
and make a better showing in their annual report. For my part I am
tired of the worthy poor; and if I must keep on slumming, I'd like to
try the unworthy poor a while. I'm sure they'd be more interesting."

She spoke with a pretty air of recklessness, as if she were conscious
that this was not the strain in which to address one of his cloth.
There was not a little vexation under her lightness of manner, however,
and Wynne was not so dull as not to perceive that something had gone
amiss.

"But philanthropy," he began, "is surely"--

"Your cousin," she interrupted, "declares that only the eye of
Omniscience can possibly distinguish between what passes for
philanthropy and what is sheer egotism."

He laughed in spite of himself, feeling that he ought to be shocked.

"But what," he asked, "has impressed this view of things upon you this
morning in particular?"

His companion made a droll little gesture with both her hands.

"Of course I show it," she said; "though you needn't have reminded me
that I have lost my temper."

"I beg your pardon," began Maurice in confusion, "I"--

"Oh, you haven't done anything wrong," she interrupted, "the trouble is
entirely with me. I've been making a fool of myself at the instigation
of the powers that rule over my charitable career, and I don't like the
feeling."

They walked on a moment without further speech. Maurice said to himself
with a thrill of contrition that he would double the penance laid upon
him, and he endeavored not to be conscious of the thought which
followed that the delight of this companionship was worth the price
which he should thus pay for it.

"This is what happened," Miss Morison said at length. "I don't quite
know whether to laugh or to cry with vexation. There's a poor widow
who has had all sorts of trials and tribulations. Indeed, she's been a
miracle of ill luck ever since I began to have the honor to assure her
weekly that I'm no better than she is. It may be that the fib isn't
lucky."

She turned to flash a bright glance into the face of her companion as
she spoke, and he tried to clear away the look of gravity so quickly
that she might not perceive it.

"Oh," she cried; "now I have shocked you! I'm sorry, but I couldn't
help it."

"No," he replied, "you didn't really shock me. It only seemed to me a
pity that you should be working with so little heart and under
direction that doesn't seem entirely wise."

"Wise!" she echoed scornfully. "There's a benevolent gentleman who
insisted upon giving this old woman five dollars. It was all against
the rules of the Associated Charities, for which he said he didn't care
a fig. That's the advantage of being a man! And what do you think the
old thing did? She took the whole of it to buy a bonnet with a red
feather in it! The committee heard of it, though I can't for my life
see how. There are a lot of them that seem to think that benevolence
consists chiefly in prying into the affairs of the poor wretches they
help! And they posted me off to scold her."

"But why did you go?"

"They said they would send Miss Spare if I didn't, and in common
humanity I couldn't leave that old creature to the tender mercies of
Miss Spare."

"What did you say?"

The face of Miss Morison lighted with mocking amusement.

"That's the beauty of it," she cried, bursting into a low laugh which
was full of the keenest fun. "I began with the things I'd been told to
say; but the old woman said that all her life long she had wanted a
bonnet with red feathers, but that she had never expected to have one.
When she got this money, she went out to buy clothing, and in a window
she saw this bonnet marked five dollars. She piously remarked that it
seemed providential. She's like the rest of the world in finding what
she likes to be providential."

"Yes," murmured Maurice, half under his breath; "like my meeting you."

Miss Morison looked surprised, but she ignored the words, and went on
with her story.

"She said she concluded she'd rather go without the clothes, and have
the bonnet; and by the time we were through I had weakly gone back on
all the instructions I'd received, and told her she was right. She knew
what she wanted, and I don't blame her for getting it when she could.
I'm sick of seeing the poor treated as if they were semi-idiots that
couldn't think without leave from the Associated Charities."

The whole tone of the conversation was so much more frank than anything
to which Wynne was accustomed that he felt bewildered. This freedom of
criticism of the powers, this want of reverence for conventionalities,
gave him a strange feeling of lawlessness. He felt as if he had himself
been wonderfully and almost culpably daring in listening. He wondered
that he was not more shocked, being sure that it was his duty to be.
There was about the young man's mental condition a sort of infantile
unsophistication. The New England mind often seems to inherit from
bygone Puritanism a certain repellent quality through which it takes
long for anything savoring of worldliness or worldly wisdom to
penetrate. When once this covering is broken, it may be added, the
result is much the same as in the case of the cracking of other glazes.

After he had parted from Miss Morison, Maurice walked on in a blissful
state of conscious sinfulness. He understood himself well enough to
know that before him lay repentance, but this did not dampen his
present enjoyment. He had not so far outgrown his New England
conscience as to escape remorse for sin, but he had become so
accustomed to the belief that absolution removed guilt that there was
in his cup of self-reproach little abiding bitterness.

That afternoon he accompanied Mrs. Staggchase to the house of Mrs.
Rangely with a confused feeling as if he were some one else. His cousin
wore the same delicately satirical air which marked all her intercourse
with him. She carried her head with her accustomed good-humored
haughtiness, and her straight lips were curled into the ghost of a
smile.

"This is the most stupid humbug of them all," she remarked, as they
neared Mrs. Rangely's house on Marlborough Street. "You'll think the
deception too transparent to be even amusing,--if you don't become a
convert, that is."

"A convert to spiritualism?" Wynne returned with youthful indignation.
"I'm not likely to fall so low as that. That is one of the things which
are too ridiculous."

She laughed, with that air of superiority which always nettled him a
little.

"Don't allow yourself to be one of those narrow persons to whom a thing
is always ridiculous if they don't happen to believe it. You believe
in so many impossible things yourself that you can't afford to take on
airs."

The tantalizing good nature with which she spoke humiliated Wynne. She
seemed to be playing with him, and he resented her reflection upon his
creed. He was, however, too much under the spell of his cousin to be
really angry, and he was silenced rather than offended. They entered
the house to find several of the persons whom he had seen at Mrs.
Gore's on the day previous; and Wynne was at once charmed and
disquieted by the entrance a moment later of Miss Morison, who came in
looking more beautiful than ever. It gave him a feeling of exultation
to be sharing her life, even in this chance way.

The preliminaries of the sitting were not elaborate. Mrs. Rangely, the
hostess, impressed it upon her guests that Mrs. Singleton, the medium,
was not a professional, but that she was with them only in the capacity
of one who wished to use her peculiar gifts in the search for truth.

"She does not understand her powers herself," Mrs. Rangely said; "but
she feels that it is not right to conceal her light."

Maurice was too unsophisticated to understand why Mrs. Rangely's talk
struck him as not entirely genuine, but he was to some extent
enlightened when his cousin said to him afterward: "Frances Rangely has
the imitation Boston patter at her tongue's end now, but she is too
thoroughly a New Yorker ever to get the spirit of it. She rattles off
the words in a way that is intensely amusing."

The shutters of the small parlor in which the company was assembled had
been closed and the gas lighted. There were about a dozen guests, and
all had the air of being of some position. While the hostess went to
summon the medium, Maurice asked in a whisper if the master of the
house was present, and was answered that Fred Rangely was too clever to
be mixed up in this sort of thing. Wynne caught a satirical glance
between his cousin and Miss Morison, and more than ever he felt that
the meeting was a farce in which he, vowed to a nobler life, should
have had no part.

His musings were cut short by the entrance of Mrs. Rangely with the
medium. He recognized Mrs. Singleton at a glance, and was struck as he
had been before by the appealing look of innocence. She was a slender,
almost beautiful woman, with exquisite shell-like complexion, and
delicate features. An entire lack of moral sense frequently gives to a
woman an air of complete candor and purity, and Alice Singleton stood
before the company as the incarnation of sincerity and truth. Her face
was of the rounded, full-lipped, wistful type; the sensuous, selfish
face moulded into the likeness of childlike guilelessness which of all
the multitudinous varieties of the "ever womanly" is the one most
likely to be destructive.

Had it not been that Maurice was acquainted with her history, he could
hardly have resisted the fascination of this creature, as tender and as
innocent in appearance as a dewy rose; but he was thoroughly aware of
her moral worthlessness. Yet as she stood shrinking on the threshold as
if she were too timid to advance, he could not but feel her
attractiveness and the sweetness of her presence. He watched curiously
as in response to a word from Mrs. Rangely she came hesitatingly
forward, bowed in acknowledgment to a general introduction, and sank
into the chair placed for her in the centre of the circle. She was clad
in black, but a little of her creamy neck was visible between the folds
of lace which set off its fairness. Her arms were bare half way to the
elbows, and her hands were ungloved. Maurice wondered if she would
recognize him; then he reflected that he sat in the shadow, out of the
direct line of her vision, and that it was years since she had seen
him.

"We will have the gas turned down," Mrs. Rangely said; and at once
turned it, not down, but completely out, leaving the room in absolute
darkness.

There followed an interval of silence, and Maurice, whose wits were
sharpened by his knowledge of the medium, and who was on the lookout
for trickery, reflected how inevitable it was that this breathless
silence, coupled with the darkness and the expectation of something
mysterious, should bring about the frame of mind which the medium would
desire. The silence lasted so long that he, not wrapt in expectation,
began to grow impatient. He put out his hand timidly in the darkness
and touched the chair in which Miss Morison was sitting, getting
foolish comfort from even such remote communion. He fell into a reverie
in which he felt dimly what life might have been with her always at his
side, had he not been vowed to the stern refusal of all earthly
companionship.

His reflections were broken by a loud, quivering sigh seeming to come
from the medium, and echoed in different parts of the room. There was
another brief interval of silence, and then the medium began to speak.
Her tone was strained and unnatural, and at first she murmured to
herself. Then her words came more clearly and distinctly.

"Oh, how beautiful!" she whispered. Then in a voice growing clearer she
went on: "Bright forms! There are three,--no, there are five; oh, the
room is full of them. Oh, how bright they are growing! They shine so
that they almost blind me. Don't you see them?"

The room rustled like a field of wheat under a breeze.

"There is one that is clearer than the others," went on the voice of
the medium in the electrical darkness. "She is all shining, but I can
see that her hair is white as snow. She must have been old before she
went into the spirit world. She smiles and leans over the lady in the
armchair. Oh, she is touching you! Don't you feel her dear hands on
your head?"

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