"But you wrong the church," he interrupted eagerly. "The church makes marriage a sacrament; it recognizes its purity; it"—

"Then what are you doing," she burst in, "with your exceptions to the theory of the church? It is you who degrade it—Pardon me, cousin," she added in a calmer voice, coming to him and laying her fingers lightly on his shoulder. "I am speaking out of my heart. I have the shame of knowing that I once failed to realize how high and how noble a thing marriage is. I am older than you, and I have suffered as I hope you may never have to suffer; the end of it all is that I have learned that there is nothing else on earth so blessed as the real love of husband and wife. Of course," she concluded, as he would have interrupted, "I talk as a woman, and I cannot decide what you are to do. Only I would like you to believe that I would help you if I could, and that what I say of marriage is the thing which seems to me the truest thing on earth."

Then without waiting for reply, she went away and left him to his thoughts.



IX

HIS PURE HEART'S TRUTH Two Gentlemen of Verona, iv. 2.

"Who is Mr. Rangely?" Ashe inquired one morning at breakfast.

Mrs. Herman looked at her husband as if she expected him to reply, although the question had been addressed to her.

"Fred Rangely," Grant Herman answered, "is a writer. He writes for the magazines and is a newspaper man. He's written one or two novels, and the first one was pretty successful. He's written plays too."

Helen smiled.

"Grant is too good-natured to tell you what you really want to know," she commented. "Mr. Rangely was once in some sort a friend of his, in the old days when there was still something like an artistic brotherhood in Boston, and he can't bear to say things that are not to his credit. Now I should have answered your question by saying that Fred Rangely is a warning."

"A what?" Ashe asked, while Herman sighed.

"A warning. A dozen years ago he was one of the most promising men about. He had made a good beginning, he was clever and popular, and both as a novelist and as a playwright we hoped for great things from him."

"And now?"

"Now he is a failure."

Herman looked up almost reprovingly.

"I don't think he would recognize that," he observed.

"No, he wouldn't; and that's the worst of it. Ten years ago if anybody had said of Fred Rangely: 'Here's a fellow that has started out to do good work, but has found that there's more money in sensationalism; who despises the popular taste and caters to it; who writes things he doesn't believe for the newspapers and spends the money in running after society,' he would have pronounced such a fellow a cad. Now he would say: 'Well, a man must live, you know; and the public will only pay for what it wants.' It's lamentable."

"You put it rather worse than it is," her husband responded. "We are all in the habit of judging men as if their degradation was deliberate, which as a matter of fact I suppose it never is. Rangely hasn't coolly accepted the choice between honesty and Philistinism. It's all come gradually."

"Like learning to pick pockets," she interpolated.

"Besides," Herman continued, "we over-estimated in the beginning both his character and his talent. He found he couldn't do what was expected of him, and he was weak enough to do then what was most comfortable instead of what seemed to him highest. It is what nine men out of ten do."

"Of course," Helen assented, "but after all it has come about by his giving in on one thing after another. There was always a good deal that is attractive about him, but he never showed much moral stamina. He could never have married as he did if he had possessed fine instincts."

"And his wife?" Ashe inquired.

"Oh, he married a New York girl, who"—

"There, there," broke in Herman good-naturedly. "It is just as well not to go into a characterization of Mrs. Rangely. I own that there isn't much good to be said of her; so it is as well to let her pass."

"Well, so be it," his wife assented, smiling. "I have only to say," she added, turning to her cousin, "that when Grant declines to have a woman discussed it is equivalent to a condemnation more severe"—

"Nonsense," protested Herman. "Don't believe her, Ashe. As for Mrs. Rangely, it's enough to say that she is merely an imitation in most things, and that she has called out the worst of her husband's nature instead of the best. I'm sorry to say it, but I'm afraid it's true."

Mrs. Herman looked at him with a smile which seemed to tease him for having been betrayed into saying a thing so much more severe than were his usual judgments. Then with true feminine instinct she brought the talk back to its most significant point.

"Why did you ask about his wife?" she inquired of Philip.

"I—I did not know," he returned, so evidently disconcerted that she did not press the matter.

Had Helen been a gossip she might have added that Rangely had acquired the reputation of being always philandering with some woman or other. Before his marriage he had been the slave of Mrs. Staggchase, and now, after devotion to all sorts of society women, he had come to be counted as one of the train of admirers who offered their devotion at the shrine of Mrs. Wilson. Where a Frenchwoman prides herself on the intensity of the devotion of some man not her husband, an American of the same type glories in the number of slaves that her charms ensnare. In either case the root of the matter is vanity rather than passion. The American fashion is at once the more demoralizing and the less dangerous. Mrs. Wilson in the early days of her married life had tried to make her husband jealous by allowing the desperate attentions of a single lover. She never repeated the experiment. The lover went abroad to recover from the sting of having been made hopelessly ridiculous, and Mrs. Wilson learned that in marrying she had found a master. Fortunately she had married for love, and no woman loves a man less for finding him able to control her. In these days Mrs. Wilson amused himself by having a troop of admirers, and perhaps prided herself upon being able to outdo the wiles of the other women of her set in securing and holding her captives; but she discussed them with her husband with the utmost frankness, mocking them to their faces if they made a step across the line which she drew for them. They were kept in a state of marked but respectful admiration. It was expected of them that they should pretend to be consumed by a passion as violent as they might please, but always a passion which was hopeless, which asked for no reward but to be allowed to continue; which found in mere admission to her presence joy enough at least to keep it alive.

It may be that Rangely had more vanity than the rest of Mrs. Wilson's followers, or it may be that he was more resolute. Certain it is that he was more presuming than the rest, and that his devotion had not failed to produce a good deal of talk. Little as Mrs. Herman was accustomed to pay attention to social gossip, she had not failed to hear tattle about Elsie Wilson; and while she probably did not much heed it, she was at heart too conscientious not to feel shame and irritation. That a woman in the position of Mrs. Wilson should allow herself to give rise to vulgar gossip moved her to deep disapproval; while she could not but feel contempt for the man who neglected his own wife to wait upon the caprices of one whom Helen looked upon as a heartless and vain creature.

Behind the question which Ashe had asked about Rangely lay an incident which had occurred the day previous. He was now called upon to see Mrs. Wilson frequently in relation to matters connected with the election, and with that instinct which was inborn she had carelessly exercised upon him her arts of fascination. There is a certain sort of woman in whom the mere presence of anything masculine awakens the rage for conquest. It is as impossible for such women not to exert their fascinations as it is for a magnet to cease to attract. It is the destiny of woman to love, and dangerous is she who is inspired only with the desire to be loved, the woman who instead of loving man loves love. Elsie was saved from being such a monster by the fact that she had a husband strong enough to subdue and control her nature; but nothing could prevent her from trying her wiles on every man she met.

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.

"There, there, Miss Bee," old Mehitabel said, taking her by the shoulder. "You've had enough of this sort of thing for one night. You'll dream gray hairs all over your head if you don't get out."

But Berenice refused to give up her place. She stood beside Wynne while her grandmother examined the arm, handing the things that were wanted; fighting with the faintness that came over her in waves.

"No, Mehitabel," said she. "I'm made of better stuff than you think."

In her heart she had a half unconscious feeling that she had been inclined to hold this man in contempt because of his priestly garb; and that she owed him this reparation. She did not know what had occurred in that overturned car; but she looked back to it as to a horror of great darkness in which Wynne had risked his life for hers. She felt that she could not do less than to stand by while the wound he had received in her service was being attended to. It was Wynne himself who put her away.

"You are too kind, Miss Morison," he said; "but you are not fit to do this. I beg that you'll not stay. Your face shows how hard it is for you."

The first thought that shot through her mind was one of relief that she now might properly leave her self-inflicted task; the second was a pang of self-reproach that she should wish to leave it; the third and lasting was a sense of pleasure that even in his pain he had not failed to note her face and divine her feelings.

"Mr. Wynne is right," Mrs. Morison added decisively. "Mehitabel can help me, my dear. Go into the other room and let Rosa get you a cup of tea."

"It won't be much of a cup of tea," Mehitabel commented grimly. "That fool of a girl's got it into her head that it's a good time to cry for her doxy, because he's a brakeman on some other train."

Berenice smiled at the characteristic crispness and the absurd speech of the old servant. She remembered Mehitabel from the days when in pinafores she used to visit here, and when she looked upon the tall, gaunt woman with an awe which was saved from being terror only by the fact that she had learned to associate with that abrupt speech an after gift of crisp cakes. Mehitabel was to her as much a part of the establishment as were the tall chairs, the lion-headed fire-dogs, or the silver which had belonged to her grandmother's grandmother.

Passing into the dining-room Berenice summoned the afflicted Rosa, who came with face all be-blubbered with tears, and who sniffed audibly as soon as she caught sight of the visitor.

"How do you do, Rosa? I wouldn't cry, if I were you," Berenice said. "Mehitabel says that this wasn't his train."

"Oh, I know it, Miss," responded Rosa, with more tears; "but I can't help thinking how dreadful it would be if it was; and me not to know whether he was dead or alive. It don't seem to me I could ever marry him, not to be able to tell whether he'd come home any day dead or alive. I'll have to give him up, Miss; and he's real kind and free- handed."

Her tears flowed so freely at the thought of giving up her lover that they splashed on Berenice's hand as Rosa leaned over to reach for something on the table.

"Well, Rosa," Miss Morison remarked, smiling at the absurdity of the maid, and wiping her hand, "I'm sorry that you feel so bad; but I don't like to be deluged with tears."

"Indeed, Miss," Rosa returned penitently, "I didn't mean to cry on you; but tears come so easy in this world. We're all born crying."

Berenice laughed in spite of herself.

"If we are born crying," she said, "that's reason enough for our smiling when we've outgrown being babies."

"That's all well enough for you," Rosa retorted with fresh tears. "You've got your man here all safe if he is hurt a little; and I don't know"—

Berenice broke in with indignant amazement, feeling her face burn.

"My man!" she exclaimed. "How dare you speak to me like that! Mr. Wynne is nothing to me. He's only a clergyman that was hurt saving my life."

She broke off with a laugh somewhat hysterical. Her nerves were not under control yet.

"I'm sure I didn't mean," wailed the girl, "to say anything wrong."

"There, there, Rosa," the other interrupted. "We are both upset. You shouldn't take so much for granted, or talk to me about 'men.'"

But in her mind the phrase repeated itself vexatiously: "your man."



XI

IN PLACE AND IN ACCOUNT NOTHING 1 Henry IV., v. 1.

The power of self-torture which the human heart possesses is well-nigh infinite. When one considers how futile are self-reproaches, self- examinations, remorses for faults and weaknesses; how vanity puts itself upon the rack and conscience inflicts envenomed wounds; how self tortures self until the whole man writhes in anguish, and in the end nothing is altered by all this pain, one might almost thank the gods for moral insensibility. Yet New England was founded upon the principle that this temper of mind develops manlihood; that inward struggles are the only discipline which can fit a human being for the outward conquest of life. The Puritans had power to subdue the wilderness, to overcome whatever obstacles interposed to the founding of a state and the establishing of the truth as they conceived it, because all these difficulties were accidents, outward and of comparative insignificance when set against the real life, which was within. If a heritage of self-consciousness has come down with the noble gifts which the forefathers have left to their children, it is at least part of the price paid for great things.

To Maurice that night only the pain and misery of his Puritan inheritance made themselves felt. Through the long hours he lacerated his heart and soul with repentance, with remorseful self-reproaches, enduring agony intense enough to be the reward meet for a crime. Fevered with the loss of blood, racked with the smart of bodily wounds, bruised and sore from the injuries of the accident, unable to move without torture in every joint, he yet forgot physical in mental suffering.

The weakness and disorder of his body confused and distorted his thoughts, but it was in any case inevitable that with his training he should be wrung with bitter self-condemnation. He flushed and thrilled at the remembrance of the pressure of Berenice against his breast; the warmth of her breath, the odor of her hair, seemed to come back to him even out of the tumult and reek of the burning car. He remembered how it had seemed to him—to him, a priest—sweet to die if he might die clasping unrebuked this woman in his arms. The blood throbbed in his temples as he recalled the wild thoughts that had swirled in a mad throng through his brain in those moments which had seemed like hours; the blood throbbed, too, in his wounded arm, so that a groan forced itself through his parched lips. He was constantly throwing himself to and fro as if to escape from some teasing thought, always to be by the sharp pang in his wound brought to a sense of his condition. The whole night passed in an agony of mind and body.

There were moments, too, when he seemed to stand outside of himself and judge dispassionately this human creature, wounded, broken, rent in body and in soul; moments in which he sometimes seemed to smile in supreme contempt of the wretch so weak, so wavering, so utterly to be despised; sometimes to protest in angry pity against the unmerited anguish which had been heaped upon the sufferer. He had instants of delirious clearness and exaltation in which he felt himself lifted above the ordinary weaknesses of humanity; to see more clearly, and to take a view broader than any to which he had ever before attained. It shocked and startled him to realize that in these intervals which seemed like inspiration,—intervals in which he felt himself illuminated with inner light,—he cast from him the ideals which he had hitherto cherished. As if for the first time seeing clearly, he felt that men should not be hampered by dogmas which cramp and restrain. A line he had seen somewhere, and which he had put aside as irreverent and irreligious, kept repeating itself over and over in his head—

"He had crippled his youth with a creed."

Life stretched out before him futile and meaningless unless love should light it, unless he could win Berenice; and he protested feverishly against any vow that would thwart or restrain him. He had crippled his youth with a creed unnatural and deforming; it was time for the manhood within him to shake off its fetters and assert its strength. He told himself wildly that now for the first time he saw life as it was; that now first he understood the meaning of existence, and that life meant nothing without freedom and love.

The beliefs of years, however, or even those habits which so often pass for beliefs, are not to be done away with in a night. Even love cannot completely alter the course of life in a moment. At the last, worn out with the conflict, but with a supreme effort to regain spiritual calm, Maurice flung his whole soul into an agony of supplication, as he might have flung his body at the foot of a cross, and prayed to be delivered from this too great temptation. He would renounce; he would pluck up by the roots this passion which had sprung and grown in his heart; at whatever cost he would tear it up, and be faithful to his high calling. As a child casts itself upon the bosom of its mother, he cast himself upon the Divine, and with an ecstatic sense of pardon, of peace, of perfect joy, he fell asleep at last.

Maurice awoke in broad daylight, with a confused sense that the world was falling in fragments about his ears, and that his name was being shouted by the angel of the last trump. He found that the physician who could not be had on the previous night had now been brought to his chamber by Mehitabel.

"Here's the saw-bones at last," was the characteristically uncompromising introduction of the woman.

"Dr. Murray's come to tell you that all Mis' Morison did last night was wrong, and that probably you'll have to have your arm cut off 'cause of it."

Wynne sat up in bed dazed and uncomprehending, but the smile of the doctor brought him to a sense of where he was. The latter was not in the least surprised by Mehitabel's manner of speech.

"If you'd had anything to do with it, Mehitabel," was Dr. Murray's comment, "I've no doubt the arm would have had to go; but when Mrs. Morison does a thing, it's another story."

"Humph!" sniffed she. "You've got some small amount of sense, if it ain't much. Now, young man, set your teeth together and put out your tongue—your arm, I mean."

Maurice smiled, not so much at the humor of the error as at the fact that it was so evidently intentional on the part of the elderly virgin, who cunningly glanced at him and at the doctor to discover if the rare stroke of wit were properly appreciated.

"Jocose as ever, Mehitabel," observed the doctor, going to work at once with swift and delicate precision. "You've a nasty cut here, Mr. Wynne; but you're lucky to get off with nothing worse. It's a good deal to come through such an accident without a permanent injury."

"That's true," Maurice responded cheerfully. "I dreamed in the night that I was all in bits."

"Plenty of poor fellows were. It was the most terrible smash-up for years."

"How is Miss Morison?" Wynne asked, wondering if his voice betrayed the inward agitation without which he could not pronounce her name.

"Oh, she's all right. Nervous and shaky, of course; but she's a sound, wholesome creature, and it won't take her long to recover her tone."

"Yes; I brought her up," interposed Mehitabel, with grim self- complacency. "Don't pull that bandage so tight, doctor. You want to have me running over after you in an hour to come and loosen it."

"That's it, Mehitabel; teach your grandmother to suck eggs. I come here, Mr. Wynne, chiefly to learn my profession from her."

"She seems willing to teach you," Wynne replied, and then, with a boyish doubt if she might not take offense, he added, "which of course is very kind of her."

Mehitabel chuckled in high good-humor.

"Kind it is and unappreciated it is; and little is the credit he does to his training. Men are all alike; if they owned half they owe to women they'd be too ashamed to show their heads in daylight."

The droll airs of the old woman entertained Wynne so greatly that he bore with exemplary fortitude the painful attentions of the physician, the harder to bear because the wound had had time to inflame. The arm was dressed at last, and the doctor took himself away with a parting passage of arms with Mehitabel.

"The thing for you to do, young man," she said, when Dr. Murray had departed, "is to stay in bed where you are, and that's reason enough for a man to want to get up."

"I'm not fond of staying in bed," Maurice responded with a smile; "and besides that I must get back to Boston."

She regarded him with an expression of marked disfavor.

"Humph," said she. "Quarters ain't good enough for you, I suppose."

"On the contrary, it is I who am not good enough for the quarters."

Mehitabel went on with her work of arranging the curtains and putting the room to rights as she answered:—

"Well, I dare say you ain't; but what special thing've you done?"

"Special thing?" Maurice repeated, somewhat confused. "Oh, I see. The fact is, I don't think I've any right to impose on the hospitality of Mrs. Morison."

"Well," assented she again, "I dare say you ain't; but if she's willing, you ain't no occasion to grumble, 's I see. She ain't a-going to hear of your starting out hot-foot, 's if she wouldn't keep you. It'd look bad for the reputation of the family."

"But," began he, "I"—

"Besides," the old woman continued, ignoring his attempt to speak, "you ain't got much to wear. Them petticoats you come in, which ain't suitable for any man to wear, without it's the bearded lady in the circus if she's a man, which I never rightly knew, is so torn to pieces by the grace of heaven that you can't go in them, and all the rest of your clothes are all holes and blood."

"I suppose my clothes were pretty well used up," he replied, divided between a desire to laugh and a feeling that he should resent the affront to his clerical garb; "and of course my baggage is nowhere. Can I get clothing here, or shall I have to send to Boston?"

"You can't get men's petticoats," Mehitabel retorted uncompromisingly, "nor none of them Popish things. If it's good, plain God-fearing pants and such, there ain't no trouble, and the price is reasonable."

"Plain God-fearing trousers and coat will do," Maurice answered, bursting into a laugh. "Do you think that you could send for some if I give you the size?"

She was evidently pleased at the success of her attempts to be funny, for her face relaxed, but she set her mouth primly.

"I'd go myself," was her reply. "I'd trust myself to pick out things, and it might give the girls ideas to go traipsing round buying pants and men's fixings."

When she was gone Maurice lay in a pleasant half-doze, smiling at the absurd old servant with her labored determination to be thought witty, and wondering at the caprices of existence. He was interrupted by the arrival of his breakfast, and after that had been disposed of he received a visit from Mrs. Morison. She was a fine old lady with snowy hair, her sweet face wrinkled into a relief-map of the journey of life, her eyes as bright and sparkling as those of her granddaughter. Wynne could see the family likeness at a glance, and said to himself that some day when time had wrinkled her smooth cheeks and whitened her hair Berenice would be such another beautiful dame. Mrs. Morison brought with her an air of brisk yet serene individuality, as of the fire which on a winter evening burns cheerily on the hearth, warming, invigorating, suggesting wholesome and happy thoughts. She was so kindly and yet so thoroughly alive to the very tips of her fingers that her age almost seemed rather a merry disguise like the powdered hair of a young girl.

"Good-morning," she greeted him cheerily. "The doctor says that you are doing well. I hope that you feel so."

"Thank you," he answered. "I don't seem to have as many joints as I used to have, but I'm doing famously, thanks to the skillful treatment I had last night."

"It was not too skillful, I'm afraid; but Dr. Murray says I did no harm, and that's really a good deal of a compliment from him."

"I cannot thank you enough for your kindness," Maurice said. "It is so strange to be taken care of"—

He broke off suddenly, awkward from shyness and genuine feeling. He looked up, however, to meet a glance so reassuring that he felt at once at ease.

"It is time that it ceased to be strange," she returned. "We must try before you go to make you more accustomed to being looked after a little."

He returned her kind look with a grateful smile.

"You are too generous," he said. "I must not trespass on your good- nature. I think that I could manage to get back to Boston to-day if the trains are running."

"The trains are running, but that is no reason why you should think of running too. We mean to mend you before we let you go."

"But"—

"There is no 'but' about it," Mrs. Morison declared, speaking more seriously. "Berenice and I have settled it, and we are accustomed to having our own way. You are selfish to wish that we should be left with all the obligation on our shoulders."

"Obligation?" repeated he. "How on earth is there any obligation but mine?"

"Do you think that there is no obligation in owing to you Bee's life?"

He stared at her in complete confusion. He made a vain effort to recall clearly what had happened in the car. He remembered the crash, the din, the pain, the horrible clutch on his arm, the choking reek of the smoke, his frantic fear for Berenice, but all these things seemed blurred in his mind like a landscape obscured by a night-fog. Only one memory stood out clear and sharp; that was the joy of holding Berenice clasped in his arms, and of thinking that they would die together. He felt the blood mount in his cheek at the thought, and he hastened to speak, lest his hostess should divine what was in his mind.

"Why do you say that?" he asked. "It was not I that saved her. I was not even conscious when she was taken out."

Mrs. Morison smiled, and touched lightly with the tip of her finger the bandaged arm which lay on the outside of the coverlid.

"We won't dispute about it," said she. "The proof is here. Let it go, if you like; but we shall remember."

"But," protested Maurice, "it wouldn't be honest for me to let you think that I did anything for Miss Morison. I should have been only too glad to help her, but I couldn't. I wish what you think could have been true; but since it isn't, I can't let you think it is."

Mrs. Morison let the matter drop, but her kind old eyes were brighter than ever. She contented herself with saying that at least he was to remain with them, and need not try to escape; then she led the talk to more indifferent matters. Her hand, worn and thin, the blue veins relieved under the delicate skin, lay on the white coverlid like a beautiful carving of ivory. As Maurice looked at it, it brought into his mind the hand of his mother, as in her last days, when he sat by her bedside, it had rested in the same fashion. The tears sprang in his eyes at the memory, half-blinding him. As he tried to brush them away unseen he caught the sympathetic look of his hostess, and its sweetness overpowered him still more. Meeting his glance, she leaned forward tenderly, taking his fingers in her own.

"What is it?" asked she softly.

"Your hand," he answered simply. "It looked so like my mother's."

"Poor boy," she murmured.

He returned the pressure of her clasp, and then the masculine dislike for effusiveness asserted itself.

"I'm afraid I'm weaker than I thought," he said shamefacedly. "I'm almost hysterical."

She glanced at him shrewdly, and smiling, rose.

"For all that," she returned, "you are to get up. Dr. Murray says that it will be better, and you would get hopelessly tired of bed before to- morrow morning. I'll send you something in the way of clothing, and we'll let you play invalid in a dressing-gown to-day. If Mehitabel can help you, you've only to ring. I dare say that you can do something with one hand."

"One never knows until he tries," Wynne answered.

Maurice wished to ask for a barber, but could not pluck up courage. When he was alone he gazed ruefully into the mirror at his stoutly sprouting black beard, which so little understood the exigencies of the situation that it persisted in growing as vigorously as ever.

"If I stay here a couple of days without shaving," he mused, "I shall simply be hideous. Well, my vanity very likely needs a lesson. What did Mrs. Morison mean by my saving Miss Morison's life? I certainly could not have said so when I was unconscious. It must be from something she herself has said. If I could only remember what did happen after the car went over!"

His bath and toilet were difficult and unsatisfactory enough. The linen with which he was provided, however, smelled sweetly of lavender, and the odor seemed to bear him away into a pleasant reverie, in which he was chiefly conscious of the pleasure of being near—of being near, he assured himself, so delightful and sympathetic an old lady as Mrs. Morison. A feeling of well-being, of content, saturated him. Behind his thought of his hostess and his denial to himself that the presence under the same roof of Berenice was the true source of his happiness, lay the consciousness that the latter regarded him as her preserver. He resolutely thrust the thought down deep into his heart, but he could not forget it.

Before he was ready to leave his chamber Mehitabel brought him a telegram from Mrs. Staggchase, to whom he had sent a line announcing his safety. It was merely a friendly word with an offer to come to him if he needed her; but it changed the whole current of his thoughts. He seemed to see the mocking smile of his cousin as she read that he was staying with the Morisons, and to hear again her words about his period of temptation. He resolved, however, to put the whole question of the future out of his mind. Somehow there must be a way to steer safely between his duty and his inclination. He failed to reflect that he who decides to compromise between duty and desire has already sacrificed the former.

Berenice greeted him on his appearance in the library, whither he descended rather shakily. She held in her hand a telegram when he entered under the escort of Mehitabel, and her cheeks were flushed. Instantly into his mind came the feeling that her color was connected with the message which the yellow paper brought, and he became jealous in a flash. There was no possible reason why he should scent a rival in the mere presence in his lady's hand of a telegram, unless there were an intangible shade of self-consciousness in her manner. He had come downstairs eager to see her and to assure himself that she was really no worse for the accident, but the sight of the paper instantly changed his mood. In crossing the half-dozen steps from the door to the fire Maurice shifted from frank eagerness to aggrieved distrust. He said good-morning as he entered in the tone of a lover; he spoke as he reached the hearth with the formality of an acquaintance.

He was too keenly alive to the change in his feelings not to know that he showed it. He endeavored to hide his perturbation under an appearance of simple politeness, but he was sure that she watched him and that she was puzzled.

"Well," she said, as she arranged a cushion in the big easy-chair beside the crackling wood fire, "you have the genuine scarred veteran air."

"Please don't bother to wait on me, Miss Morison," he answered, trying to speak naturally, and painfully aware that he did not succeed. "I'm all right, except for the scratch on my arm."

"Scratch, indeed," she returned with a smile which almost disarmed him. "How many stitches did the doctor have to put in?"

"'Bout enough for a week's mending," interpolated Mehitabel, putting him into the chair with an air of authority, and preparing to retire. "There, now stay there till you want to go upstairs again, and then send for me."

"Indeed," he protested, laughing, "I am not helpless. You can't make a baby of me just for a disabled arm."

"I suppose," Berenice said, "that I ought to be willing to say that I had rather the wound were in my back, where it would have been but for you; only as a matter of fact I shouldn't be telling the truth. I am sorry for you, Mr. Wynne; but I can't help being glad for myself."

She seemed to be setting herself to win him from his ill-humor, and he had to look into the fire away from her lips and eyes to prevent himself from yielding. He fortified his resistance, which he felt to be weakening, by the reflection that it was his duty not to be carried away by her charm. He called upon his religious scruples to aid him in holding to his passion-born jealousy.

"There," Miss Morison said, when he had been properly ensconced and Mehitabel had departed, "now it is my duty to entertain you. What shall I do? My accomplishments are at your service. I can read, without stopping to spell out any except the very longest words. I can play two tunes on the mandolin, only that I've forgotten the middle of one and the other has a run in it that I always have to skip. The piano is too far off across the hall to be available; so that the little I can do in that way doesn't count. I can—let me see, I can teach you three solitaires, or play cribbage, or—I beg your pardon, I forgot."

"You forgot what?" he asked, so intent upon watching the sunlight filtering through her hair that he had hardly noticed what she said.

She looked at him questioningly.

"You don't play cards, perhaps?" she said tentatively.

"No," he answered. "In the country in my boyhood they weren't held in high repute, to say the least; and naturally we don't play at the Clergy House."

There was a brief interval of silence, during which he watched her, while she in her turn looked into the fire. When she spoke again it was in a different tone.

"I know," said she, "that you must think me frivolous, and that I can't be anything else; but"—

"Oh, no," he interrupted, "I never thought you frivolous."

She made an impulsive little gesture with one of her hands.

"Oh, you wouldn't put it in that way, I dare say. You'd call it being worldly, I suppose; but it comes to much the same thing."

Wynne could not understand what was the direction of her thoughts, and he was taken entirely by surprise when she leaned forward impulsively and took in hers his free hand.

"At least," she said, quickly and eagerly, "I can't forget that you saved my life, and I thank you from my heart if I don't know just how to do it in words."

He returned the pressure of her fingers, longing to cover them with kisses.

"I'm afraid," responded he, "that I've very little claim to glory on account of anything I did for you. I certainly don't deserve the credit of having saved you. I only wish I did."

She laughed gayly, springing up from her seat, and he realized that his voice had lost all trace of unfriendliness. He told himself recklessly that he did not care; that if he were a thousand times a priest he could not but be kindly to Berenice.

"Come," she laughed, "we have been through a real adventure; and that's more than happens to most people if they live to be a hundred." Suddenly she became grave. "I can't bear to think of it, though," she added. Then she turned toward him, and spoke with seriousness. "At least, Mr. Wynne, I am not so flighty that I do not thank God for my escape yesterday."

"Amen," he responded.

She walked over to the window, and stood looking out at the sunny day. The fire burned cheerfully on the wide, red hearth, and Maurice looked into its glowing heart thinking gratefully of his preservation and of the friendly refuge into which he had been brought. No reverent man can come face to face with death and escape without some feeling of awe and of gratitude to the power which has preserved him; and Maurice was filled with a sense of how great had been the hand which could bring him through such peril, how kind the protection which had preserved Berenice unscathed. Humility and tenderness overflowed his heart, and the inward thanksgiving which his spirit breathed was as sweet and as unselfish as if a personal passion had never invaded his breast.

"It seems to me," Berenice remarked from her place by the window, "that the woods on the hills over there are already beginning to show signs of spring. There is a sort of delicate change of color in them that means buds beginning to grow."

Before he could reply, the door opened, and Mehitabel presented herself with a card.

"Oh," said Berenice, as she received it, "already!"

There seemed to Maurice something of impatience or dismay in her tone. She excused herself and went out, leaving the old servant with Wynne. As soon as the door closed, Mehitabel turned upon him at once.

"Do you know him?" she demanded.

"Know whom?"

"This sprig that's come from Boston to see Miss Bee?"

Maurice looked at her with a sharp sense that he ought not to allow her to go on, yet with a desire to know more so burning that he could not refrain.

"I didn't even know that anybody had come from Boston to see Miss Morison," he replied; "so that it isn't easy to say whether I know him or not."

"His name is Parker Stanford, and he's all the signs of being better'n his grandfathers and knowing it through and through. He's too fond of his looks to suit me."

"I don't know him," Maurice answered, "except that I've heard my cousin, Mrs. Staggchase, mention his name. He's very rich, I believe, and a good deal of a leader in society."

"Humph," sniffed Mehitabel. "He may be a leader in society, but he's as selfish as a sucking calf!"

"You seem to know him pretty well," commented Maurice. "I suppose you've seen him often."

"Never saw him in my life till this minute. Young man, I'll tell you this, though. Every woman with any brains knows what a man is the minute she claps eyes on him; only if he's good-looking, or awful wicked, or makes love to her, or forty thousand other things, she'll deny to herself that she knows any bad about him."

"Then it seems to be much the same thing as if your sex weren't gifted with such extraordinary insight," Maurice responded, laughing.

"If women didn't cheat themselves there wouldn't be no marriages," Mehitabel retorted, grinning, and retired in evident delight over her success in repartee.

As for Maurice, he became wonderfully grave the moment he was left alone.



XII

THE ONLY TOUCH OF LOVE Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii. 7.

To be is an irregular verb in all languages, but always regular is the verb to love. There are many sides to the existence of mortals; but to love is the same for high and low. Any mortal knows little enough about himself; but a mortal in love knows nothing. Love is a bewildering and a bedazzling fire, wherewith the eyes of youth are so blinded that they are able to see clearly neither within nor without. Often it happens, indeed, that the first intimation the heart has of the presence of the divine flame is the bewilderment which fills the mind.

Berenice had long been contentedly and unenthusiastically convinced that, she was to marry Parker Stanford. She approved of him; he was wealthy, well-born, agreeable enough, and apparently very fond of her. She had not, it is true, become formally engaged to him. When he had asked her to become his wife she had teasingly asked for time for deliberation; but this was not because she felt any especial doubt about ultimately accepting him. She was pleased, maiden-like, to dally, and shrank from being formally bound. Her pulses had not yet stirred with the unrest which love awakens. Her vanity had been pleasantly aroused, and for the rest she was in all the ignorance of those whom passion has not yet made wise. She regarded marriage rather as an abstract thing; she was familiar with the idea that it was a matter of social arrangement and necessity, to be looked upon as a part of life. She had, it is true, some vaguely sentimental notion that love was a necessity, and being persuaded that the match before her was a desirable one, was persuaded also that she was in love with Stanford. At least she was sure that he was in love with her, and as she liked him, that answered. To find a man amusing, agreeable, handsome, and fulfilling the social requirements of a desirable husband seemed to her unsophisticated mind to love him. She was pleased with her lover; she was not insensible of the triumph of having won the attentions of one of the most sought-after men in her set; to pass her life in the well- ordered establishment which he would provide seemed to her a decorous and desirable method of fulfilling the destiny of a woman. She was willing that the event should be postponed indefinitely, it is true; and the man himself in her considerations of the future was something of a shadow; a shadow pleasant enough, yet so remote as to count for nothing intimately important. She was somewhat less sophisticated than most modern girls, inheriting that New England nature which is slow to understand emotion and endowed with the power rather of tenacity than of spontaneity of passion.

When on the day previous Stanford had come to the train to see Berenice off, she had been especially gracious. She had been in particularly good spirits, full of amusement that Mr. Wynne was to be her neighbor on the train, and that he did not know it. She had chanced to send for tickets with Mrs. Wilson, the pair had laughingly planned the arrangement, and Berenice had promised herself some entertainment in teasing the young cleric on the journey. It pleased her, too, that Stanford should take the trouble to come to the station, especially as Kate West, who had tried so hard to secure him despite the fact that she was ten years his senior, chanced to be meeting a friend and to be there to see. She allowed herself to smile on her lover with more warmth than usual, and was a little vexed as well as a little amused by it afterward. On the train she reflected that if she were to be so gracious Stanford would press his suit more warmly than she wished; yet on the other hand it occurred to her that if she were to be engaged to him, she might as well get it over. Why not marry in the spring and go abroad? She wished much to go to Bayreuth for the Wagner operas in the summer, and the aunt with whom she had hoped to travel was not willing to go. Besides, she really could not afford the trip, and at least Stanford had plenty of money. The idea of marrying with a thought to his wealth was distasteful, and she at once said to herself that she could not do that; but if she were to marry him—As the train rolled on she had filled in the talk with Wynne with speculations whether it might not be as well to let Stanford propose once more, and have matters settled.

These cogitations, however, she interspersed with reflections that her traveling companion had a beautiful eye and a finely cut nostril; that he was on the whole a fine-looking man, handsome and well made, if he were not disguised in that detestable clerical garb; and that his hands were distinctly those of a gentleman. She liked the tones of his voice and the carriage of his head, smiling to herself at the thought that in the latter there was hardly so much meekness as was to be expected in one of his profession. She laughed at him almost openly, for to the young woman of to-day there is apt to be something bordering on the ludicrous and unmanly in a youth who is preparing to take orders, no matter how great her respect for the completed clergyman. Berenice felt something not entirely free from a trace of good-natured contempt for deacons in the abstract, not dreaming that she might be led to make an exception in favor of this especial deacon in the concrete. She became more and more alive to the attractions of Wynne, although up to the time of the accident she hardly realized the fact.

From the moment, however, that the rescuer said to her that Maurice had saved her life, her feeling was changed. She felt that she had failed to do Wynne justice; that she had allowed his cassock to be the sign of a lack of manhood; she accused herself of having wronged him. She began now to exalt him in her thoughts, and to regard him as a hero. She had long been aware of the effect that she had on him. From the morning when she had encountered him at the North End, and had met the quick, troubled glance of his eye, full of doubt and of fire, she had been conscious that he was not indifferent to her presence. She had not reasoned about it; but it gave her pleasure. It was a passing breath of homage, pleasing like a breath from some rose-bed passed in a walk. Up to the moment, however, when she said to herself that he had risked his life for her, Berenice had never consciously thought of Maurice as a lover. When she saw him lying insensible, depending upon her, a new feeling kindled in her breast. She would not think of it; she shrank from it, and refused to acknowledge it to herself. Yet for her the world was altered, and however she might try to hide the fact from her heart, secretly she felt it fluttering and throbbing deep within her breast.

When the telegram came in the morning announcing the visit of Stanford, her first thought was one of gratification. The act was friendly, and it gave her a pleasant sense of importance. The reaction came instantly. The purport of the visit flashed upon her. She remembered how she had smiled on Stanford yesterday,—Yesterday that now seemed so far away that she looked back to it over distances of emotion which made it strangely remote. She felt that she must receive him; but she found herself seeking for the means of making him understand that what he hoped was forever impossible. She certainly could never marry him. She was sure that the thought could never have been seriously in her mind. The idea of belonging to him, of having no right to think of another man with tenderness, became all at once too repugnant to be endured. She would not consider why her attitude was so different from that of yesterday; she only insisted vehemently in her thought that now first she really knew her own mind. Her cheek burned at the reflection that Stanford was probably sure of her consent to be his. It seemed to give him a claim upon her; to shut the door upon all other possibilities; to smutch the whiteness of her soul and render her unworthy of any man whom she might some day come to love. To remember that in her secret thought she had actually contemplated being Stanford's wife made her cringe.

She stood by the window with the telegram in her hands, twisting it to and fro, wondering what it was possible for her to do. She thought of excusing herself from her visitor when he should come, but the evasion seemed to her unworthy, and she was eager to free herself from even the suspicion of belonging to him. She felt that she could not breathe freely until she were clear of the faintest shadow of any claim, even in Stanford's secret thought. She must belong once more to herself.

It was at this point in her musings that Wynne came into the library. He was pale and sunken-eyed, and the tinge of his sprouting beard gave to his face a certain virility which startled her. It imparted a trace of something perhaps remotely animal and brutal, subtly altering his whole expression. He became in appearance at once more vigorous and more human. For the first time Berenice saw a suggestion of the possibility that this man might be a master; and the strength in man that makes a woman tremble also makes her thrill. Some inward voice cried in her ear: "Here is the reason why Parker Stanford is repugnant!" But she denied the accusation indignantly in her mind, putting the thought by, and refusing to see in Wynne anything more than the man to whom she had cause to be grateful. Yet in that part of her mind where a woman keeps so many things which she declines to confess to herself that she knows, Berenice from that moment kept the fact that this man before her had touched her heart.

She made a strong effort to greet Wynne frankly, and to conceal from him the feeling which his coming excited. She would have died rather than show him how glad she was that he had come. She saw the eagerness of his glance when he entered, and she felt the warmth of his greeting. She noted the change in his manner, and fancied it arose from his fear lest he betray himself. She set herself to overcome his reserve; and when she had succeeded she sprang up with a gay laugh, light-hearted and full of a delicious, incomprehensible pleasure. She wanted to break out into singing, so sweet is the delight of new love unrecognized save as simple joy in living.

The entrance of Mehitabel with the card of Mr. Stanford brought her back to earth.

"Already?" she said, feeling as if she were defrauded that thus her moment of enjoyment was cut short.

She could not trust herself for more than a word of excuse to Wynne, but hurried to her chamber to collect her thoughts and to examine her toilet before she descended to her visitor. Some inward personality seemed to be trying properly to frame the speech by which she should make Stanford understand that it was idle for him to hope longer; while all the time she was thinking of the man whom she had just left.

Stanford was holding out his hands to the blaze in the fireplace when she entered the parlor, for the morning was a sharp one. Berenice saw with appreciation how satisfactory he was in all his appointments and in his bearing; how well kept and how well bred. She felt, however, for the first time that he was perhaps a little too faultlessly attired for a man, and she glanced at his cleanly shaven cheek with an acute memory of the stout black stubble on the face she had left behind her, yet carried still in the eye of her mind.

"Good-morning," she said, giving the visitor her hand, and making her manner at once as cordial and as unemotional as possible. "It was too good of you to come all the way up here in this cold weather, just to see me."

He pressed her hand with eagerness, and so meaningly that the color flushed into her cheeks. His air seemed to her to have in it a suggestion of intimacy which was irritating beyond endurance.

"There was nothing good about it," he answered. "I had to assure myself by actual sight that you were safe; and, besides, it gave me an excuse for coming, and I was only too glad of that."

"Sit down," Berenice said, ignoring the compliment. "It really was frightful; but I came through safe. Grandmother wouldn't let me see the paper this morning; but I know the details must have been horrible."

She grew grave as she spoke. She seemed again to see the whole terrible sight. The wreck, thrusting out tongues of fire, the dead and the dying strewn about on the snow; Wynne, at her feet, insensible and ghastly in the uncertain light. She shuddered and drew in her breath.

"Oh, don't let's talk about it!" she exclaimed. "I can't bear to think of it, and I feel as if I should never get it out of my head!"

Stanford was silent a moment, pulling his mustache as if trying to find the right word.

"It must have been awful," he said hesitatingly; "and I'll never speak of it again if you don't wish. Only I must say that it was dreadful to me too. The thought of how near I came to losing you is more than I can stand."

She leaned back in her chair, suddenly chilled, yet moved by the feeling in his voice. Her conscience reproached her that she had allowed a false hope to grow up in his mind. She felt as if he were establishing a claim upon her, and that at any cost she must make him see things as they were.

"You are very kind," she responded, trying to keep her tones from being too cold; "but of course we always feel a shock when any friend has been through a great danger."

Her eyes were cast down, but she could divine his regard of disquiet and surprise.

"And especially those we love," he added, leaning forward, and endeavoring to take her hand.

"Oh, of course, Mr. Stanford," she said hastily. "That is of course true. Were people in Boston much excited about the accident?"

She felt herself a hypocrite, yet she could not help this one more effort to avoid the explanation she dreaded.

"I suppose so. I don't know. I was so taken up with thinking about you, that I paid very little attention to anything else."

"I'm afraid I didn't deserve it. I wasn't thinking of anybody but myself. It was very good of you."

"Of course you weren't thinking of anybody," Stanford responded, pulling his mustache more furiously than ever; "but I was at the club instead of being in a burning car. I was half crazy at the thought that my future wife"—

"Stop!" Berenice broke in. "You mustn't say such things. I'm not your future wife!"

"Forgive me. I know I haven't any right to say that when you haven't promised; but I can't help thinking of you so, and"—

"Oh, please don't!" she cried.

A wave of humiliation, of repulsion, of terror, swept over her. That this man had thought of her as his wife seemed almost like an inexorable bond. She shrank away from him with an impulse too strong to be controlled.

"But, Berenice, I"—

She sprang up and faced him.

"I have never promised you!" she declared with hurried vehemence. "I never will promise you! I can't marry you. If I've made you think so, I didn't mean to. I didn't know my own mind. I thought—O Mr. Stanford, if I have deceived you, I beg your pardon. I"—

The tears choked and blinded her. She broke off, and put her handkerchief to her eyes; but when she heard him rise and hurry toward her, she went on hastily.

"I've let you go on thinking I'd marry you; I know I have. I thought so myself; but I've found out that it's all a mistake. I didn't realize what I was doing. I'm so sorry. I do hope you'll forgive me."

He regarded her in amazement not unmingled with indignation.

"You have let me think so," he said. "Now I suppose there's somebody else."

"Oh, I shall never marry anybody," she answered quickly.

"When a girl tells one man she never'll marry," retorted he bitterly, "there's sure to be another man in her mind."

She felt herself burn with blushes to her brow; and then in very shame and anger to grow pale again. Her first impulse was to leave him; but she controlled herself. He was her guest, he had come all the way from Boston to assure himself that she was safe, and more than all she was sorely aware that she had not treated him well. To have injured a man is to a woman apt to be an excuse for continuing to treat him ill; but when the opposite occurs she can be very forbearing.

"There is no other man," she said with dignity. Then she added, more mildly: "Badly as I may have treated you, I don't think you've quite the right to say such a thing as that to me."

"I haven't," he acknowledged contritely. "I beg your pardon; but I surely have a right to ask what I've done to change you so. You were not like this yesterday."

Berenice forced herself to meet his eyes, but she ignored his question. She sank back into the chair from which she had risen to face him.

"Come," said she, trying to speak lightly, "I don't see why we need stand. We are not rehearsing private theatricals. It was very kind of you to take the trouble to come all the way up here, but you must see that my nerves are all on edge. The shock has completely upset me."

"Poor girl!" he said.

There was a genuine ring in his voice which irritated while it touched her. She hated to feel that he was really hurt. It made her seem the more deeply guilty, and she unconsciously desired to discover in him some excuse for her own shortcomings.

"Oh, it's over now," she responded. "Let's talk of something else."

"I'd be glad to," Stanford replied, "but I can't seem to. I want to know how you escaped. I won't ask you to tell me now, but I keep thinking about it."

"I'm afraid I can't tell you much. I remember a tremendous crash, and being thrown against Mr. Wynne"—

"Mr. Wynne?"

The tone showed Berenice that Stanford did not attach especial importance to the question, but asked only from a natural curiosity. Nevertheless she could not keep her voice from, hurrying a little as she answered:—

"Mr. Wynne is a young clergyman who was in the seat next to mine. He's a cousin of Mrs. Staggchase."

"Oh, a clergyman," Stanford echoed.

The tone seemed to her excited mood to be full of intolerable superiority.

"He may be a clergyman," she retorted with unnecessary warmth, "but he is a gentleman and a hero. He saved my life!"

"Oh, he did!"

The exclamation stung her beyond endurance. She sprang up with flashing eyes.

"Mr. Stanford," she exclaimed, "I don't know what you mean to insinuate, but you will please to remember that you are speaking of the man that saved me, and of my grandmother's guest."

"Your grandmother's guest? Do you mean that he is staying here?"

"Certainly he is. Why shouldn't he be?"

The young man rose, and stood looking at her a moment; then he began to pace up and down, his gaze fixed on the floor. Berenice felt herself being swept away by tumultuous feelings which she could neither compel nor understand. Her mind was in confusion, out of which rose most definitely the desire that Stanford would go and leave her in peace.

"There is no reason why I should question the right of Mrs. Morison to choose her own guests," said Stanford at length, pausing, and speaking with an evident effort to be entirely calm; "and as I know nothing of this Mr. Wynne, I shouldn't in any case have a right to say anything about him. You can't wonder, though, that I'm jealous of him for having had the luck to save your life, or that when I come here and find you so suddenly different and this man staying in the house and a hero in your eyes"—

"I wish that you wouldn't keep calling Mr. Wynne 'this,'" she interrupted hastily. "It sounds dreadfully superior. Come," she added, softening her tone, and pleased at having prevented him from going on, "there is no need that we should quarrel about him. He is a priest, or going to be, and he's to take the vows of celibacy, so that it is absurd for anybody to think of being jealous of him. If I seem different to-day, it isn't any wonder after what I've been through."

"I beg your pardon," he said, coming quickly forward and extending his hand. "I'm awfully selfish. Of course I understand that what you've been saying isn't to be taken seriously. We stand as we did before. Only," he added, his voice deepening, "you are to remember that the danger of losing you has shown me how fond I am of you. Good-by."

He stooped and kissed her hand, and before she could speak, he was gone. She stood where he had left her, hearing him leave the house, and the tears came into her eyes.

"Oh," she moaned to herself, "I've made it worse than it was before. I wanted to be honest, and he wouldn't let me!"

She stood a moment disconsolately, then she shrugged her shoulders as if to throw off all care.

"Well," she told herself, "I've given him fair warning. Now it is time to go and entertain grandmother's guest."



XIII

A NECESSARY EVIL Julius Caesar, ii. 2.

While the advocates of Father Frontford were laboring, the friends of other candidates were not idle. By the middle of January, however, the contest had practically narrowed itself down to a struggle between the supporters of the Father and those of the Rev. Rutherford Strathmore. Other names had been suggested, but in the end it was felt that there was no doubt that one or the other of these men would succeed to the vacant bishopric. Even church politicians are human, and most divisions are sure sooner or later to arouse the vanity of contestants. The struggle, which begins without consciously personal motives, is apt to be strongly tempered by the determination not to be beaten. For thousands who can accomplish the difficult feat of triumphing humbly, there is hardly one who can submit to defeat generously; and against the humiliation of failure the human being instinctively strives with every power. Those who upheld the rival candidates were undoubtedly convinced that they had the best interests of the church at heart; but that meant the election—even at some cost!—of their favorite.

There could be no question that Mr. Strathmore was the more generally popular candidate. He was a man who appealed strongly to the common heart, both by his sympathy and by flexibility of character and temperament which made it impossible for him to be repellantly stern or austere. He preached the high ideals which are dear to the best thought of the children of the Puritans; he demanded high purpose and high life, noble aims and unfailing charity; while he laid little stress on dogmas, and allowed an elasticity of individual interpretation of doctrine which made the creed easy of adoption by all who believed anything. His enemies—for he was by no means so insignificant as to be without enemies—declared that he carried the doctrine of "mental reservations" to the extent of rendering the articles of faith mere empty forms of words; his defenders protested that he was but wisely conforming in non-essentials to the progressive spirit of the age. Bitterly attacked by the more conservative members of his own denomination, he was looked up to by the general public as a great spiritual leader, and loved with an affection exceedingly rare in this unpriestly age. Those who urged his elevation had the support of the body of the laity, and also of the public outside of the church, which for once was interested in church politics on account of affection and reverence for the candidate.

Mr. Strathmore himself had the discretion not to express himself freely in relation to his own feelings in the matter. The enthusiastic assertions of his friends that no one save him could fill the vacant office he had answered by observing with a smile that the church was indeed fallen upon evil times if there was in it but one man fit to be made a bishop. He had added, it is true, that if it were the will of Providence that he be the one chosen he should accept the office as a duty given him by Heaven, and should devote himself to it with all his ability. It was by no means the least of Mr. Strathmore's gifts that he had the grace of speaking always without any suggestion of cant. There was an impression of candor and enthusiasm in everything he said, so that words which might on the lips of another sound conventional or meaningless became on his spontaneous and vital. "He is too modest and self-forgetful to wish for the honor," his friends commented now; "but he is too conscientious not to put aside his personal preferences for the good of the church. He may shrink from the high places, but he is the ideal man for them." As much of this sort of thing was said in the public print, it is not impossible that the Rev. Rutherford Strathmore was aware of it; but he had the good taste to ignore it, even in conversation with his nearest friends, and the tact to carry himself without self-consciousness or the appearance of humility with which a smaller man would have shown that he knew that he was being praised.