The Puritans by Arlo Bates

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Maurice felt the chair against which his fingers rested shaken by a
movement of awe or of impatience. He flushed with indignation. It was
Miss Morison to whom the medium was directing this childish
impertinence. He longed to interfere, and even made so brusque a
movement that Mrs. Staggchase leaned over and whispered to him to
remain quiet.

"There are many spirits here," the medium went on with increasing
fervor, "but none of them are so clear. She is speaking to you, but you
cannot hear her. She is grieved that you do not understand her. Oh, try
to listen so that you may hear her message with the spiritual ear. She
is so anxious."

The audience seemed to quiver with excitement. Simply because a woman
whom Maurice knew to be capable of any falsehood sat here in the
darkness and pretended to see visions, these men and women were
apparently carried out of themselves. It seemed to him at once
monstrous and pitifully ridiculous.

"It must be your grandmother," spoke again the voice of Mrs. Singleton,
now thick with emotion. "Yes, she nods her head. She is so anxious to
reach through your unconsciousness. Wait! she is going to do something.
I think she is going to give you some token. Let me rest a moment, so
that I can help her. She wants to materialize something."

Heavy silence, but a silence which seemed alive with excitement, once
more prevailed. Maurice began himself to feel something of the
influence pervading the gathering, and was angry with himself for it.
Suddenly a cry from the medium, earnest and full of feeling, broke out
shrilly.

"Oh, she has something in her hand. Try to assist her. She will succeed
in materializing it fully if we can help her with our wills. I can see
it becoming clearer--clearer--clearer! Now she is smiling. She is
happy. She knows she will succeed. Yes; it is--Oh, what beautiful
roses! They are changing from white to red in her hands. She holds them
up for me to see; she is lifting them up over your head. Now, now she
is going to drop them! Quick! The light!"

The voice of Mrs. Singleton had risen almost to a scream, and bit the
nerves of the hearers. As she ended Maurice heard the soft sound of
something falling, and felt Miss Morison start violently. The gas was
at once lighted, and there in the lap and at the feet of Berenice, who
regarded them with an expression of mingled disgust and annoyance, lay
scattered a handful of crimson roses.

The company broke into expressions of admiration, of belief, of awe.
Mrs. Singleton had played to her audience with evident success. Miss
Morison gathered up the flowers without a word, and held them out to
the medium, who lay back wearied in her chair.

"Don't give them to me," Mrs. Singleton said in a faint voice. "They
were brought for you."

"How can you bear to give them up?" a woman said. "It must be your
grandmother that brought them."

"My grandmother was in very good health in Brookfield yesterday,"
Berenice responded. "I hardly think that they come from her."

The tone was so cold that Mrs. Singleton was visibly disconcerted.

"Of course I don't know the spirit," she said. "But are both your
grandmothers living?"

"She nodded her head, you know," put in another.

To this Miss Morison did not even reply; but the awkwardness of the
situation was relieved by Mrs. Rangely, who broke into conventional
phrases of admiration and wonder.

"Yes, Frances," Mrs. Staggchase observed dryly, "as you say, it
couldn't be believed if one hadn't seen it."

Her manner was unheeded in the flood of praise and congratulation with
which Mrs. Singleton was being overwhelmed.

"It is what I've longed for all my life," one lady declared, wiping her
eyes. "I never could have confidence in professional mediums, but this
is so perfectly satisfactory. Oh, I _do_ feel that I owe you so much,
Mrs. Singleton!"

"Yes, this we have seen with our own eyes," another added. "It is
impossible for the most skeptical to doubt this."

To this and more Maurice listened in amazement, until he rather
thought aloud than consciously spoke:--

"But it all depends upon the unsupported testimony of the medium."

Mrs. Rangely drew herself up with much dignity.

"That," she said, "I will be responsible for."

"It isn't unsupported," chimed in one of the ladies. "Here are the
roses."

At the sound of Maurice's voice Mrs. Singleton had turned toward him,
and he saw that she recognized him. She looked around with a glance
half terrified, half appealing.

"It is so kind in you to believe in me," she murmured pathetically. "I
don't ask you to. I only tell you what I see, and"--

Maurice rose abruptly and strode forward.

"Alice," he exclaimed, "what do you mean by this humbug? Don't you see
that they take it seriously? Tell them it's a joke."

Again Mrs. Singleton looked around as if to see whether she had
support.

"It is manly of you to attack me," she answered, evidently satisfied
with the result of her survey. "I cannot defend myself."

"Do you mean to insist?" he demanded, with growing anger.

"If the roses do not justify what I said," responded she, sinking back
as if exhausted, "it may be that I saw only imaginary shapes."

A sharp murmur ran around the room. The believers were evidently
rallying indignantly to the support of their sibyl, and cast upon Wynne
glances of bitter reproach. He looked at Mrs. Staggchase, but it was
impossible to judge from her expression whether she approved or
disapproved of what he had done. He was suddenly abashed, and stood
speechless before the rising tide of outraged remonstrance. Then
unexpectedly came from behind him the clear voice of Miss Morison.

"It is unfortunate that the roses should have been given to me," she
said, "for by an odd chance I saw them bought a couple of hours ago on
Tremont Street."

There was an instant of hushed amazement, and then the medium fled from
the parlor in hysterics.

IV

SOME SPEECH OF MARRIAGE
Measure for Measure, v. 1.

"O thou to the arch of whose eyebrow the new moon is a slave!"

Philip Ashe colored with self-consciousness as the words came into his
mind. He felt that he had no right to think them, and yet as he looked
across the table at his hostess it seemed almost as if the phrase had
been spoken in his ear by the seductive voice of Mirza Gholan Rezah. He
sighed with contrition, and looked resolutely away, letting his glance
wander about the room in which he was sitting at dinner. He noted the
panels of antique stamped leather, and although he had had little
artistic training, he was pleased by the exquisite combination of rich
colors and dull gold. Some Spanish palace had once known the glories
which now adorned the walls of Mrs. Fenton's dining-room, and even his
uneducated eye could see that care and taste had gone to the decoration
of the apartment. Jars of Moorish pottery, few but choice, and pieces
of fine Algerian armor inlaid with gold were placed skillfully, each
displayed in its full worth and yet all harmonizing and combining in
the general effect. Ashe knew that the husband of Mrs. Fenton had been
an artist of some note, and so strongly was the skill of a master-hand
visible here that suddenly the painter seemed to the sensitive young
deacon alive and real. It was as if for the first time he realized
that the beautiful woman before him might belong to another. By a
quick, unreasonable jealousy of the dead he became conscious of how
keenly dear to him had become the living.

Ashe had met Mrs. Fenton a number of times during the week which had
intervened since the Persian's lecture at Mrs. Gore's. He had seen her
once or twice at the house of his cousin, with whom Mrs. Fenton was
intimate, and chance had brought about one or two encounters elsewhere.
He had until this moment tried to persuade himself that his admiration
for her was that which he might have for any beautiful woman; but
looking about this room and realizing so completely the husband dead
half a dozen years, he felt his self-deception shrivel and fall to
ashes. With a desperate effort he put the thought from him, and gave
his whole attention to the talk of his companions.

"Yes, Mr. Herman is in New York," Mrs. Herman was saying. "He has gone
on to see about a commission. They want him to go there to execute it,
but I don't think he will."

"Doesn't he like New York?" asked Mr. Candish, the rector of the Church
of the Nativity, who was the fourth member of the little company.

Mrs. Herman and Mrs. Fenton both laughed.

"You know how Grant feels about New York, Edith," the former said. "If
anything could spoil his temper, it is a day in what he calls the
metropolis of Philistinism."

"I never heard Mr. Herman say anything so harsh as that about
anything," Candish responded. "Do you feel in that way about it?"

"The thing which I dislike about the place is its provincialism," she
answered. "It is the most provincial city in America, in the sense that
nothing really exists for it outside of itself. If I think of New York
for ten minutes I have no longer any faith in America."

"Then I shouldn't think of it, Helen," put in Mrs. Fenton.

"Then you wouldn't go with your husband if he went there to do this
work, I suppose," Mr. Candish observed.

"I should go with him anywhere that, he thought it best to go. I fear
that you haven't an exalted idea of the devotion of the modern wife,
Mr. Candish."

Ashe watched with interest the rector, who flushed a little. He knew of
him well, having more than once heard the awkwardness and social
inadaptability of the man urged as reasons of his unfitness to be
placed at the head of the most fashionable church in the city. Philip
saw him glance at the hostess and then cast down his eyes; and wondered
if this were simple diffidence.

"That is hardly fair," Mr. Candish said, somewhat awkwardly. "The
clergy, not having wives, are poor judges in such a matter."

"That might be taken as an argument for the marriage of the clergy,"
she responded with a smile.

"How so?"

"If they had wives they would be better able to sympathize with the
trials and joys of their parishioners."

"I never thought of that," murmured Mrs. Fenton.

Mr. Candish flushed all over his homely, freckled face.

"By the same reasoning you might hold that a clergyman should have
committed all the sins in the decalogue, so that he should have ready
sympathy with all sorts of sinners."

"I'm not sure that he wouldn't be more useful if he had," Mrs. Herman
answered with a smile; "at least a man who hasn't wanted to commit a
sin must find it hard to sympathize with the wretch that hasn't been
strong enough to resist temptation. Still, I hope that sin and marriage
are not put into the same category."

"Oh, of course not," Mrs. Fenton interpolated. "Marriage is a
sacrament."

"It has always seemed to me inconsistent," Mrs. Herman went on, "that
the church should exclude her priests from one of the sacraments."

Ashe saw a faint cloud pass over the face of the hostess. He was
himself a little shocked; and Candish frowned slightly.

"The church admits her priests to this sacrament in a higher sense," he
said with some stiffness.

Helen smiled.

"Now I have shocked you," was her comment. "I beg your pardon."

"I can never accustom myself to a familiar way of handling sacred
things," he returned. "It is to me too vital a matter."

"I am afraid that that is because you are still so young," she
retorted. "It is, if you'll pardon me, the prerogative of youth to find
all views but its own intolerable."

The manner in which this was said deprived the words of their sting,
but Mrs. Fenton evidently felt that they were getting upon dangerous
ground, and she interposed.

"We shall ask you to define youth next, Helen," she threw in.

"Oh, that is easy. Young people are always those of our own age."

In the laugh that followed this the question of the marriage of the
clergy was allowed to drop; but to all that had been said Philip had
listened with a beating heart. He felt the air about him to be charged
with meanings which he could not divine. He had somehow a suspicion
that the hostess was more interested in this talk than she was willing
to show; and with what in a moment he recognized as consummate and
fatuous egotism, he felt in his heart the shadow of a hope that there
might be some connection between this and her interest in him. Then a
fear followed lest there might be things here hidden which would make
him miserable did he understand.

"Mrs. Herman insists that she is a Puritan," Mrs. Fenton said a moment
later. "You see how she proves it by the position she takes on all
these questions."

"Of course I am a Puritan," was the answer. "I was born so. There is
nothing which I believe that wouldn't have seemed to my forefathers
good ground for having me whipped at the cart's tail, but I am Puritan
to the bone."

"I don't see what you mean," Candish said.

"I mean that I inherit, like all of us children of the Puritans, the
way of looking at things without regard to consequences, of feeling
devoutly about whatever seems to us true, and of realizing that
individual preferences do not alter the laws of the universe; isn't
that the essence of Puritanism?"

"Perhaps," he answered; "but are the unbelievers of to-day devout?"

Ashe looked at his cousin as she paused before answering. He felt that
the question must baffle her. He did not comprehend what was behind her
faint smile.

"Certainly not all of them," was her reply. "The age isn't greatly
given to reverence. I am a Puritan, however, and I must say what I
think. I believe that there is a hundredfold more devoutness in the
infidelity of New England to-day than in its belief."

Ashe leaned forward in amazement, half overturning his glass in his
eagerness.

"Why, that is a contradiction of terms," he exclaimed.

Mrs. Herman's smile deepened.

"Not necessarily, Cousin Philip," returned she.

"It is possible for belief to degenerate into mere conventionality,
while sincere doubters at least must have a realization of the mystery
and the awe which overshadow life."

Mrs. Fenton put up her hand in a pretty gesture of deprecation.

"Come," she said, "I don't wish to be despotic, but I can't let Mrs.
Herman lead you into a discussion of that sort. We'll talk of something
else."

"Am I to bear the blame of it all?" demanded Helen. "That I call
genuinely theological."

"Worse and worse," the hostess responded. "Now you attack the cloth."

"It seems to me," observed Mr. Candish, coming out of a brief study in
which he had apparently not heard Mrs. Fenton's last words, "that you
leave out of account the matter of desire. The believer at least longs
to believe, and surely deserves well for that."

"I don't see why. Certainly he hasn't learned the first word of the
philosophy of life who still confounds what he desires and what he
deserves."

"Come, Helen," put in Mrs. Fenton; "I wouldn't have suspected you of
trying to pose as a belated remnant of the Concord School."

Ashe easily perceived that the hostess was becoming more and more
uneasy at the course of the discussion. He could see too that Mr.
Candish was growing graver, and his sallow face beginning to flush
through its thin skin. It was evident that Mrs. Fenton saw and
appreciated these signs, and wished to change the subject of
conversation. Philip wondered that she took the matter so gravely, but
cast about in his own mind for the means of helping her. Before he
could think of anything to say his cousin had started a fresh topic.

"By the way," she asked, "who is to be bishop?"

Candish shook his head with a grave smile.

"We should be relieved if we knew," was his answer.

"There's a great deal being done to defeat Father Frontford," Ashe
added; "but the lay delegates haven't been chosen."

"The friends of Mr. Strathmore are working very hard," observed Mrs.
Fenton. "It would be a great misfortune if they were to succeed."

"But I suppose the friends of Father Frontford are at work too?"
returned Helen.

Ashe thought that he detected a faint trace of satire in her voice, and
he turned toward her with earnest gravity.

"It is not to be supposed," he answered, "that the friends of the
church are idle at a time of so much importance. Mr. Strathmore is
really little better than a Unitarian; or at least he is so lax that
he gives the world that opinion."

He felt that this was a reply which must end all inclination to
raillery on her part. He began to feel fresh sympathy with the
disturbance of Mr. Candish earlier in the dinner. The matter now was to
him so vital that he could not talk of it except with the greatest
gravity. He watched Helen closely to discover if she were disposed to
smile at his reply. He could detect no ridicule in her expression,
although she did not seem much impressed with the weight of the charge
he had brought against Mr. Strathmore, the popular candidate for the
bishopric of the diocese, then vacant.

"Mrs. Chauncy Wilson is doing a good deal," Mrs. Fenton remarked,
glancing smilingly at Helen.

"Oh, yes," responded the other. "I remember now that she declined to be
on a committee for the picture-show because, as she said, she had to
run the campaign for the bishop."

"The expression," Candish began, rather stiffly, "is somewhat"--

"It is hers, not mine," Helen replied. "I should not have chosen the
phrase myself."

"It is singular," Mrs. Fenton said thoughtfully, "how little general
interest there is in this matter of the choice of a bishop."

"And what there is," Mrs. Herman put in with a faint suspicion of
raillery in her tone, "comes from the fact that Mr. Strathmore is
popular as a radical."

"It is natural enough that the general public should look at it in that
way," Mr. Candish commented. "Mr. Strathmore has all the elements of
popularity. He is emotional and sympathetic; and religious laxity
presented by such a man is always attractive."

"The infidelity of the age finds such a man a living excuse," Ashe
said, feeling to the full all that the words implied.

Mrs. Fenton smiled upon him, but shook her head.

"That is a somewhat extreme view to take of it, Mr. Ashe. I think it is
rather the personal attraction of the man than anything else."

The talk drifted away into more secular channels, and Ashe in time
forgot for the moment that he was already almost a priest. Youth was
strong in his blood, and even when a man has vowed to serve heaven by
celibacy the must of desire may ferment still in his veins. A youthful
ascetic has in him equally the making of a saint and a monster; and
until it is decided which he is to be there will be turmoil in his
soul. His newly realized love for Mrs. Fenton threw Ashe into a tumult
of mingled bliss and anguish. The heart of the most simple mortal soars
and exults in the sense that it loves. It may be timid, sad,
despairing, but even the smart of love's denial cannot destroy the joy
of love's existence. Philip felt the sting of his conscience; he looked
upon his passion as no less hopeless than it was opposed to his vows;
he was overshadowed by a half-conscious foresight of the pain which
must arise from it; yet he swam on waves of delight such as even in his
moments of religious ecstasy he had never before known. He felt his
cheeks flush, and when his cousin glanced at him he dropped his eyes in
the fear that they would betray his secret. He dared not look openly at
Mrs. Fenton, yet from time to time he stole glances so slyly that he
seemed almost to deceive himself and to conceal from his conscience the
transgression.

Yet, too, he struggled. He realized at moments what he was doing, and
his cheek grew pale at the idea that he was juggling with his
conscience and his soul. He tried to attend to the talk, and could only
succeed in listening for the sound of her voice. He kept no more hold
on the conversation than was sufficient to allow him to put in a word
now and then to cover his preoccupation. The instinct of simulation
asserted itself as it springs in a bird which flies away to decoy the
hunter from its nest. He feigned to be interested, to be as usual, but
all his blood was trembling and tumbling with this new delirium; and
all struggles to forget his passion only increased its intensity.

At moments he was astonished at himself. He could not understand what
had taken possession of him. He even whispered a desperate question to
himself whether it might not be that he had been singled out for a
special temptation of the devil,--a distinction too flattering to be
wholly disagreeable. Then he glanced again at his hostess, fair, sweet,
and to his mind sacred before him, and felt that he had wronged her by
supposing that the arch fiend could make of her a temptation. He had
for a moment a humiliating fear that he might have eaten something that
after the spare diet of the Clergy House had exhilarated him unduly. He
felt that at best he was a poor thing; and he seemed to stand outside
of his bare, empty life, pitying and scorning the futility of an
existence unblessed by the love of this peerless woman.

The evening went on, and Ashe struggled to conceal the wild commotion
of his mind, feeling it almost a relief to get away, so fearful had he
been of losing control of his tumultuous emotions. It would be bliss to
be alone with his dream.

As he and Mrs. Herman were going home, Helen said:--

"I do wonder"--

"What do you wonder?" he asked.

"Did I say that out loud?" she responded. "I didn't mean to. I was
thinking that I couldn't help wondering whether Edith Fenton will ever
marry Mr. Candish."

The first thought of Ashe was terror lest his secret had been
discovered; his second was a memory of the way in which he had seen
Mrs. Fenton look at the rector at dinner. He was overwhelmed by a rush
of hot anger against his rival.

"Mr. Candish!" he echoed. "Why, he is an ordained priest!"

His own words cut him like a sword. He had himself pronounced the death
sentence of his own hope. It was with difficulty that he suppressed a
groan, and what reply or comment Mrs. Herman made was lost in the
tumult of an inner voice crying in his heart: "O thou, to the arch of
whose eyebrow the new moon is a slave!"

V

VOLUBLE AND SHARP DISCOURSE
Comedy of Errors, ii. 1.

On the morning after the dinner at Mrs. Fenton's, Philip Ashe and
Maurice Wynne met on the steps of Mrs. Chauncy Wilson's. The house was
on the proper side of the Avenue, with a regal front of marble and with
balconies of wrought iron before the wide windows above, one of
especially elaborate workmanship, having once adorned the front of the
palace of the Tuileries. Pillars of verd antique stood on either side
of the doorway, as if it were the portal of a temple.

"Good morning, Phil," Maurice called out as they met. "Are you bound
for Mrs. Wilson's too?"

"Yes," was the answer. "I had a note last night."

"Well," Wynne said gayly, as they mounted the steps, "if the inside of
the house is as splendid as the outside, we two poor duffers will be
out of place enough in it."

Ashe smiled.

"You may be a duffer if you like," he retorted, "but I'm not."

"Here comes somebody," was the reply. "For my part I'm half afraid of
Mrs. Wilson. They say"--

But the door began to move on its hinges, and cut short his words.

Wynne might have concluded his remark in almost any fashion, for there
were few things which had not been said about Mrs. Wilson. Although she
had been born and bred in Boston, one of the most common comments upon
her was that she was "so un-Bostonian." Exactly what the epithet
"Bostonian" might mean would probably have been hard to explain, but it
is seldom difficult to defend a negation; it was at least easy to show
that the lady did not regard the traditions in which she had been
nourished, and that she had a boldness which was as far as possible
from the decorous conventionality to be expected of one in whose veins
ran the blood of the most correctly exclusive old Puritan families.

There was a general feeling that Mrs. Wilson's marriage was to be held
accountable for many of her eccentricities; although, as Mrs.
Staggchase remarked, if Elsie Dimmont had not been what she was she
would not have chosen Chauncy Wilson. Well-born, wealthy, pretty, and
not without a certain cleverness, Miss Dimmont had had choice of
suitors enough who were all that the most exacting of her relatives
could desire; yet she had disregarded the conviction of the family that
it was her duty to marry to please them, and had chosen to please
herself by selecting a handsome young doctor whom she met at the house
of a cousin in the country. He was of some local eminence in his
profession, it is true, although as time went on he gave less attention
to it; he was handsome, and astute, and amusing; but he was a man
without ancestors or traditions. He seemed born to justify the saying
that nothing subdues the feminine imagination like force; and although
the stormy times which were liberally predicted at the marriage of two
creatures so strong-willed had undoubtedly marked their marital career,
it was in the end impossible not to see that Dr. Wilson had secured and
held command of his household.

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