The Puritans by Arlo Bates

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Philip was too completely unsophisticated to understand, and too much
absorbed by his passion for another woman to respond to the cunning
attractions of Mrs. Wilson; yet it is not impossible that she so far
influenced him as to render him unconsciously jealous of another man.
He had surprised Rangely kissing the hand of that lady with an air of
devotion so warm that the blood of the young deacon rose in resentment
which he supposed to be entirely disapproval. He was in a state of mind
which made him especially sensitive to any suggestion of love; and the
sight of any man caressing the hand of a beautiful woman could not but
set his heart throbbing with disconcerting rapidity. In his world even
the touch of a woman's fingers was almost a forbidden thing, and to
kiss them an act not to be so much as imagined. Philip dared not think,
or to define to himself what significance he attached to this incident.
An unsophisticated man is often suspicious from the simple fact that he
is forced to distrust his judgment. He is unable to estimate the value
of appearances, and in the end often falls the victim of errors which
might seem to arise from malevolence or low-mindedness, when in reality
they are the inevitable fruit of ignorance.

As Philip stood confronted with Mrs. Wilson after Rangely had left the
room it seemed to him that he read unspeakable things in her glance.
His clerical bias with its unholy blight of asceticism, his ignorance
of the world, made him a victim of a misapprehension which brought the
blood to his cheeks. His hostess looked at him curiously, and then
burst into a laugh.

"Upon my word," she cried, "I believe you are shocked! You are really
too delicious!"

He flushed hotter yet, and there came over him a helpless sense of
being alike unable to understand this brilliant creature or to cope
with her.

"But--but," he stammered, "I--I"--

"Well?" she demanded, her eyes dancing. "You what? You saw Mr. Rangely
kiss my hand. You may kiss it too, if you like; though I doubt if you
can do it half so devotedly. He's had a lot of practice with a lot of
hands."

Ashe stared at her with wide open eyes.

"But has he a wife?" he asked gravely.

"Meaning to remind me that I have a husband?" she gayly returned. "Yes;
we are both of us married. To think," she continued, spreading out her
hands and appealing to the universe at large, "that such simplicity
exists! Where have you been all your life? Did you never kiss a lady's
hand--or a lady's lips, for that matter?"

"I think you forget, Mrs. Wilson," Ashe said with real dignity, "that I
am a priest."

She regarded him with lifted brows for a moment. Then she moved to a
seat.

"Come," said she; "sit down and talk to me. Where have you passed your
life? You cannot have been brought up in a monastery, for we don't have
them in our church."

"It is a great pity," responded Philip, obeying her command, and
seating himself in a large arm-chair near her.

"Do you really mean it?" was her reply. "Yes, I believe you do! You
were evidently born to be a monk. Oh, how _triste_ it must be to be
made without an appreciation of us!"

He remained silent, his face more grave than ever.

"Well," she went on, settling herself comfortably in the corner of her
sofa amid a pile of sumptuous cushions, "tell me something about your
life. It may be that you were designed by fate to introduce a new
order of monks."

"There is not much to tell," he responded stiffly and almost
mechanically. "I was brought up in the country by a widowed mother. I
went through Harvard and the Divinity School, and since then I have
lived at the Clergy House."

She regarded him closely. Her glance seemed half mocking, and yet to
search into the very secrets of his heart, as if she were asking him
questions which he would not have dared to ask himself. Her eyes
suggested impossible things; they demanded if he had not known of
forbidden cups which held wine deliriously enticing. He cast down his
glance, no longer able to endure hers, yet not knowing why he was thus
abashed.

"But don't you know anything of life?" she questioned. "How could you
go through Harvard without seeing something of it? What were your
amusements?"

"I rowed some, and I walked. The only thing that was a real pleasure
outside of my work was to be with Maurice Wynne. I do not remember that
I ever thought about needing to be amused. Of course I knew a few
fellows. I never knew a great many of the men."

"And no women?"

"None except the boarding-house keeper."

She looked at him rather incredulously. Then she once more threw out
her hands in a gesture of amusement and amazement.

"Good heavens!" declared she; "there are just two things which might be
done with you. You should be put in a glass case as a unique specimen
of otherwise extinct virtue; or you should be sent to Paris to learn
to be a real man. However, it's not my place to take charge of you, so
that may pass."

There burned in the cheek of Ashe a spot of crimson which was perhaps
too deep not to betoken something of the nature of earthly indignation.

"Mrs. Wilson," he said, "I came here to discuss church interests, and
not to be myself the subject of remarks which you certainly would not
think of making to other gentlemen who call on you."

She clapped her hands.

"Bravo!" she cried. "There's the making of a man in him. It's a
thousand pities you can't go to Paris and learn the fun of life."

He rose indignantly.

"If you wish only to talk lightly of evil things," said he, "I do not
see that it is necessary for me to take up more of your time."

"Well," she responded, smilingly unmoved, "I'll confess that if there
is one thing for which I am especially grateful to Providence it is for
its having spared me the ennui of having to live in a virtuous world!
But sit down, and I'll talk as if that blessing had not been granted to
us. As for the salutation of Mr. Rangely which so shocked your
reverence, that was part of the campaign. He had just promised to write
an article for the 'Churchman' advocating Father Frontford from the
point of view of a layman; and of course until that is in print it is
necessary to be gracious to him. The trouble with you is that you've
seen so little of life that you exaggerate the most innocent things.
You really are rather insulting to me, if you think of it; but I pardon
it because you don't know what you were doing. I suppose you never
wanted to kiss a woman's hand or to write a sonnet to her eyebrow?"

Ashe felt the blood rush into his face in so hot a tide that he
involuntarily turned away from his tormentor and walked toward the
door. The question would in any case have been disconcerting, but it
was made doubly so by the word which recalled the phrase from the
Persian hymn which was in his mind so closely associated with Mrs.
Fenton: "O thou, to the arch of whose eyebrow the new moon is a slave!"
He had taken but a step, however, before Mrs. Wilson sprang from her
seat, clapping her hands again. She interposed between him and the
door, her face radiant with fun and mischief.

"Oh, what a blush!" she cried. "Upon my word, there's a woman; there is
a woman even in that icebox you keep for a heart!"

She burst into a peal of laughter, while he stood confounded and
speechless, trying to look unconscious, and vexatiously aware of how
completely he failed. Mrs. Wilson laid the tips of her slender fingers
on his arm, and peered up into his eyes.

"I wouldn't have believed it, St. Anthony! Come, make me your mother
confessor, and I'll give you good advice. It's part of my mission to
take charge of the love affairs of the clergy. Only yesterday I spent
half the afternoon trying to find out how deeply Mr. Candish is smitten
with a pretty widow."

Ashe started in amazement and alarm. The words of Mrs. Herman
connecting the name of Mrs. Fenton with that of Candish flashed into
his mind, and seemed to supply what Mrs. Wilson left unspoken. The
jealous pang which he felt at this confirmation of the interest of
Candish in the woman he loved was doubled by the resentment he felt
that this mocking torment before him should dare even to think of
Edith. Almost without knowing it he broke out excitedly into protest.

"How dare you meddle with her affairs?" he cried.

Mrs. Wilson stared at him an instant in amazement, evidently taken
completely aback. Then a light of cunning comprehension flashed into
her sparkling eyes.

"Ah!" exclaimed she. "You too! Is Mrs. Fenton so irresistible to the
ecclesiastical heart?"

He confronted her in silence. A wave of misery, of helplessness, of
weakness, swept over him. He had no right even to be Mrs. Fenton's
defender. He was, as Mrs. Wilson intimated, not a real man, but a
priest. The very tone of the whole conversation this morning showed how
far she was from regarding him as one having any part in her world. He
had only injured Mrs. Fenton by his ill-judged outburst, and given this
creature who so delighted in baiting him one more opportunity. Worse
than all else was the fact that he had given her a chance to jest about
the woman whom he loved. The tears rushed to his eyes in the intensity
of his feelings, and the beautiful face before him, with its teasing
brightness and dancing fun, swam in his vision. He hated its laughter,
and he expected fresh mockery for the emotion which he could not help
betraying. To his surprise, however, Mrs. Wilson again laid her hand on
his arm, and her face lost its gayety.

"You poor boy," she said, with genuine feeling in her tone, "is it so
real as that? I wouldn't have hurt you for the world, if I had known.
What business had you to be meddling with vows and renunciation until
you knew what they meant?"

She moved back to her seat as she spoke, motioning Ashe to resume his
place. He was too deeply moved to obey her.

"If you will excuse me," he said, "I will see you to-morrow in regard
to those delegates. I--I am not quite myself."

"But you shall not go without saying that you forgive me for my
teasing. Really, I am sorry and ashamed. I never intend to hurt you,
but I see that my teasing may be taken more seriously than it is
meant."

There was real gentleness and pity in her smile, and as she rose to
stand looking into his face with a winning smile of apology he forgot
all his bitterness.

"The trouble is with me," he said. "I do not understand the world, and
I should keep out of it."

"Oh, not at all," she retorted briskly. "You should learn how to live
in it."

A spark of mischief kindled in her glance as she spoke, and she
extended to him the back of her hand. Her smile challenged him, and he
had been won and moved by the sympathy of her voice. The hand, too, was
so beautiful, so slender, so feminine; he had so keen a longing to be
comforted, to be soothed by womanly softness, and to assuage his
loneliness by woman's sympathy, that it seemed impossible to resist the
invitation of those delicate fingers. He took her hand, and raised it
half way to his lips. Then he dropped it abruptly, letting his own arm
swing lifelessly to his side.

"No," he said bitterly. "I am a priest!"

X

A SYMPATHY OF WOE
Titus Andronicus, iii. 1.

The first sensation which returning consciousness brought to Berenice
Morison, after the shock of the collision and the feeling that the
whole train had been hurled confusedly into space, was that of coming
into fresher air as if she were emerging from the depths of the sea.
Opening her eyes without comprehending where she was or what had
happened, she found herself on the side of an overturned car. Around
her were dreadful noises, yells, groans, cries, shouts; her nostrils
were filled with the reek of burning stuffs; the light of lanterns and
of torches blinded her eyes; a sense of horror oppressed her; appalling
calamity which she could not understand seemed to have overtaken her;
and she shuddered with terror unspeakable. Her first impulse was to
shriek and to attempt to flee from the fearful things which surrounded
her; but instantly the self-control of returning reason made itself
felt.

Berenice found herself supported by a couple of men, and it became
clear to her in an instant that she had just been lifted from that pit
below where she could see the glint of flame and the blinding smother
of smoke, and from which came such heartrending cries that she
instinctively tried to cover her ears. In the movement she realized
that beside the hold which her rescuers had of her, she was grasped by
other arms; that she was in the embrace of a man apparently dead. In
the dim light her dazed sense did not recognize him, and she struggled
to release herself from the hold of this corpse.

"Take him away from me!" she shrieked hysterically in mingled terror
and repulsion.

"Gently, gently," said one of the men who held her. "He's got killed
tryin' to save yer."

"If this cut in his arm was in your back," remarked the other, who was
unlocking the hands so strongly clasped behind her, "it'd 'a' been a
finisher."

Her head reeled, and she nearly swooned again; but somehow she found
herself released, and passed down from the car into the arms of more
men.

"For God's sake, hurry," one of them said. "It's getting too hot to
stand here."

A blistering puff of smoke enwrapped her as she went down. She saw a
face blackened and ghastly advance in the flaring light of a lantern.
Hands that seemed to come out of a cloud and a great darkness helped
and sustained her, until she was out of the instant press beside the
burning car. When once she was free and stood upon her feet, she
regained something like self-possession. Her head swam, but she
realized the situation and felt that she was able to help herself.

"I am not hurt," she said to those who would have assisted her. "Don't
mind me."

As she spoke, the body of a man was passed out of the smoke close to
her, and she saw that it was Wynne. Instantly she remembered being
flung into his arms, although what followed she could not recall. She
looked at him now with a piercing conviction that he was dead. His
cassock hung about him in rags, his face was smeared with blood and
grime, his arm hung limp and bleeding. The words of the rescuer on the
car-roof came to her, and she saw in the disfigured form of the young
deacon the body of the man who had given his life for hers. Instantly
all her powers rallied to help and if possible to save him.

"Bring him this way," she said, stepping forward eagerly, her weakness
forgotten. "I'll take care of him."

She moved out of the smoke without any clear idea where she was going
or what she could do. The hurt man was brought after her, one of the
many that were being carried as dead weights among the confused and
agonized crowd. At a short distance from the track there were hastily
arranged car-cushions, coats, and loose coverings thrown down on a bank
half covered with snow. Here the bearers laid Wynne, hurrying back to
their work with a precipitancy which seemed to Berenice heartless.

The scene which Berenice took in at a glance was so wild and terrible
that it stamped itself on her brain in a flash. Lanterns were burning
all about, dancing and flitting to and fro like fireflies in a mist.
The eye caught everywhere glimpses by their light of disordered groups,
dim and dreadful as a nightmare. Close about her were the victims
heaped as if from a battlefield, the wounded moaning in pain, the women
wailing over the dying or the dead, each with cruel egotism intent upon
her own, and seizing upon any helper with terrible eagerness of
despair. A hundred feet away, lighted by the flames which were
beginning to thrust quick tongues through the smoke and the darkness,
was a long heap of shapeless wreck, about which dark figures were
swarming like midges about a bonfire. She could distinguish in the
middle of the line the two locomotives silhouetted against the
darkness, standing half on end like two grotesque monsters rearing in
deadly conflict. Every moment the flames became fiercer, and the
hurrying lanterns moved more wildly.

It was Wynne, however, that claimed her attention. One swift glance
took in the awful picture, and then she sank down on her knees beside
him as he lay, bleeding and insensible, perhaps dead. For a moment she
was ready to cast herself down on the snow in helplessness and in
terror at the horrors of the situation; but the grit of stout Puritan
ancestors was in her fibres, the moral endurance which finds in the
sense of a duty to be done an inspiration that lifts above all
difficulties. Her work was before her; to abandon it impossible.

The flames of the burning car brightened with appalling rapidity.
Shrieks arose so piercing that they wrung her heart as if with a
physical agony. It was the car from which she and Wynne had been taken
which was now that hell of fire. Its glare lit up the pale and bleeding
face beside her, and she realized that at that minute they might have
been in that awful agony. She began to sob wildly, but she began, too,
to try to bring Wynne back to consciousness. She took snow in her hands
and put it to his forehead; she twisted her handkerchief about his arm
to stop its bleeding. She tried to recall what she had heard at
Emergency Lectures, with a strong determination forcing herself to
remember. Kneeling in the snow, in the light of the burning car, her
heart torn by the cries of the suffering, trembling with excitement,
fear, and the shock she had undergone, sobbing almost hysterically,
she yet constrained herself to do her best, binding up his arm with
strips of her clothing, and trying to bring back his senses.

A physician came to her without her knowing until he was at her side.
He bent to examine Wynne, and Berenice tried to repress her sobs that
she might talk to him, and take his directions. The life of Wynne might
depend upon her calmness. She caught up more snow, and pressed it to
her own temples.

"Is he much hurt?" she asked feverishly.

"It is not dangerous as far as I can judge," the doctor answered
hurriedly. "Get him away from here as soon as you can."

She looked after him as he hurried on to other patients, and her first
feeling was one of indignation. Then it occurred to her that his going
so soon must mean that her patient was less hurt than she had feared.
But why was Wynne so long insensible? She knelt beside him again, and
as she did so he opened his eyes.

"Where am I?" he cried feebly.

He tried to start up, but fell back with a groan.

"There has been an accident," she said hurriedly. "It's all right now.
You are safe. Are you in much pain?"

"Are you hurt?" he demanded almost fiercely.

"No, no; never mind me."

He struggled again to rise, but fell back with a groan. She put her
hand on his shoulder.

"Lie still," she commanded authoritatively. "I'll see what can be done.
Lie still while I look about."

A second car was burning, and the whole place was aglare with yellow
light. The wild groups stood out black against the trodden and dingy
snow, while overhead rolled clouds of sooty smoke. It occurred to
Berenice that the accident had taken place so near Brookfield that many
persons must have come from the town. She seized a respectable-looking
man by the arm, and asked him if he knew of any way in which she could
get an injured friend to Brookfield. He stared at her a moment as if it
was impossible at such a time to receive words in their ordinary
meaning, but when the question had been repeated he answered that there
were some hackmen from town in the crowd. He helped her to find one,
and as Mrs. Morison was well known, Berenice had little further
difficulty. Wynne submitted to being half led, half carried through the
crowd, and when at last with the assistance of the hackman Berenice got
him into the carriage he fainted again.

Singular and frightful to Berenice was that ride. The terrors through
which she had passed, the shock, mental and physical, which she had
undergone, had almost prostrated her. As soon as she was in the
carriage she broke out into hysterical tears. The fainting of her
companion, however, called her attention from herself, forcing her to
think of him. She supported his head on her shoulder, lifting his
wounded arm on to her lap; and into her heart came that thrill of
interest and compassion which is the instinctive response of a woman to
the appeal of masculine helplessness. A woman's love is apt to be half
maternal, and she who nurses a man is for the time being in place of
his mother. Berenice's thoughts were in a whirl, but pity for the hurt
man at her side was her most conscious feeling. She remembered the
words of her rescuer, and endowed Wynne with the nobility which
belongs to him who risks his life for another. What had happened she
could not tell. She remembered the awful terror of the collision, and
mistily of being hurled into his arms; but after that came a blank
until the moment of her rescue. It was evident that Wynne had in some
way been hurt in protecting her, and the very vagueness of the service
he had rendered made the deed loom larger in her imagination. She felt
his breath warm on her cheek, and suddenly into her dispassionate
musings there came a fresh sense, which made her face grow hot. She was
angry at the absurdity of flushing there in the dark, and asked herself
why the mere breath on her cheek of an insensible and wounded man
should set her to blushing like a self-conscious fool! Then she
remembered how he had held her in his arms, and she grew more self-
conscious still. A jolt made her companion moan, and in a twinkling all
else was forgotten in the anxiety of getting to shelter and aid.

When the carriage stopped before the house of Mrs. Morison, the old
lady and a servant appeared instantly, rushing out to see what the
arrival meant. Almost before the carriage had come to a stand-still,
Berenice put her head out of the window and called as cheerily as she
could:--

"All right, grandmamma."

She could not keep her voice steady, and she could only try to carry
off her emotion by a laugh which was rather shaky and hysterical. She
could not rise, for Wynne's head was on her shoulder. The carriage door
was torn open, and she felt her grandmother's arms about her in the
darkness.

"My darling! My darling!" she heard murmured in a sobbing voice.

"Look out, grandmother," she said, embracing Mrs. Morison with her one
free arm; "I've brought a man with me, and he's hurt. I think he's
fainted."

There is nothing so efficacious in restraining the outpouring of
emotion as the necessity of attending to practical details. The need of
getting Wynne out of the hack and into the house as speedily and as
safely as possible restored Mrs. Morison to calmness, and although for
the rest of the evening and for many days after she and her
granddaughter had a fashion of rushing into each other's arms in the
most unexpected manner, they now devoted themselves to the unconscious
young deacon.

Wynne revived again when he was lifted out of the carriage, and when he
had been, with the friendly aid of the driver, got into the house and
given a little brandy, he came once more to his complete if somewhat
shaken senses. He was too weak from the shock and the loss of blood to
resist anything that his friends chose to do to him, and although he
feebly protested against being quartered upon Mrs. Morison, his protest
was not in the least heeded.

"Say no more about it," Mrs. Morison said, with a quiet smile. "You are
here, and you are to stay here. There is nowhere else for you to go,
even if you don't like our hospitality."

"That isn't it," he began feebly; "only I've no claim"--

"There, that will do," Berenice interposed with decision. "Do you
suppose, grandmother, that it's possible to get anybody to come and see
his arm?"

"I'm afraid not, dear," was the answer. "Everybody's at the wreck.
I've been cowering down in the corner of the fire for what seemed to me
years since Mehitabel came rushing in with the news; and all the time
I've heard people driving past the house on their way out of town."

"There ain't a man left," put in Mehitabel, a severe elderly servant,
who had the air of being personally responsible for her mistress, and
of being bound to fulfill her duties faithfully, even if the effort
killed her. "I see Dr. Strong go gallopin' past first, and the other
doctors was all after him; even to that little squinchy electrical
image that's round the corner on Front Street."

"Electrical image?" repeated Berenice.

"She means the eclectic physician," explained Mrs. Morison. "I'm sure
that there's no use in sending for the doctors now. Later we will see.
We must manage the best we can. If I hurt you, Mr. Wynne, you must tell
me."

Berenice looked on, sick with the sight of the blood, while her
grandmother examined the wounded arm. Wynne shrank a little, but
Berenice noted that he bore the pain pluckily. The sleeve was cut to
the shoulder, and his arm laid bare. A jagged cut was revealed reaching
from the wrist to the elbow; a cut so ugly in appearance that the girl
went faint again.

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