The Puritans

by Arlo Bates

VII

THE SHOT OF ACCIDENT
Othello, iv. 1.

"I knew that she was to send me tickets," Maurice Wynne said, standing with an open note in his hand. "She insisted upon that; but why should she send parlor-car checks too?"

"It is all part of your temptation," Mrs. Staggchase responded, smiling. "Of course if you go as the representative of Mrs. Wilson it is fitting that you go in state. If you were to represent the church now"—

"If I don't go as a representative of the church," he responded, as she paused with a significant smile, "I go as nothing."

"Oh, I thought that it was Elsie that was sending you. However, it's no matter. The point is that you are becoming acquainted with the luxuries of life. You are being tried by the insidious softness of the world."

He regarded her with some inward irritation. He had a half-defined conviction that she was mocking him, and that her words were more than mere badinage. He was not without a suspicion that his cousin was sometimes histrionic, and that many things which she said were to be regarded as stage talk. He did not know how far to take her seriously, and this gave him a feeling at once confused and uncomfortable. To be played with as if he were not of discernment ripe enough to perceive her raillery or as if he were not of consequence sufficient to be taken seriously, offended his vanity; and the man whom the devil cannot conquer through his vanity is invulnerable. Wynne had no answer now for the words of Mrs. Staggchase. He contented himself with a glance not entirely free from resentment, at which she laughed.

"I wonder, Cousin Maurice," she said, "if you realize how completely you have changed in the ten days you have been here. It is like bringing into light a plant that has been sprouting in the dark."

He did not answer for a moment, trying to find it possible to deny the charge.

"The fact that you know me better makes me seem different," he answered evasively.

"How much has the fact that you don't know yourself so well to do with it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, anything you like. I merely suspect that you are not so sure of your vocation as you were in the Clergy House. Even a deacon is human, I suppose; and if life is alluring, he can't help feeling it. Are you still sure that the clergy should be celibate, for instance?"

He felt her eyes piercing him as if his secret thoughts were open to her, and he knew that he was flushing to his very hair. He hastened to answer, not only that he might not think, but that she might not perceive that he had admitted any doubt to his heart.

"More than ever," he responded. "It is impossible not to see that a clergyman who is married must have his thoughts distracted from his sacred calling."

Mrs. Staggchase leaned back in her chair and regarded him with the smile which he found always so puzzling and so disconcerting.

"You did that very well," she said, "only you shouldn't have put in the word 'sacred.' That made it all sound conventional. However, you probably meant it. She is distracting."

The hot blood leaped into his face so that he knew that it was utterly impossible to conceal his confusion.

"I don't know what you mean," he stammered.

Instantly his conscience reproached him with not speaking the truth. He responded to his conscience that it was impossible in circumstances like these to say the whole, and that what he had said was not untrue. He could not know what his cousin meant by her pronoun, and if the thought of Miss Morison had come instantly into his mind, it by no means followed that it was she of whom Mrs. Staggchase was thinking. Life seemed suddenly more complex than he had ever dreamed it possible; and before this remark the unsophisticated deacon became so completely confused that for the instant it was his instinctive wish to be once more safely within the sheltering walls of the Clergy House, protected from the temptations and vexations of the world. He was after all of a nature which did not yield readily, however, and the next thought was one of defiance. He would not yield up his secret, and he defied the world to drag it from him. His companion smiled upon him with the baffling look which her husband called her Mona Lisa expression, and then she laughed outright.

"My dear boy," she said, "you are no more a priest than I am; and you are as transparent as a piece of crystal. Well, I am fond of you, and I'm glad to have a hand in proving to you that you are not meant for the priesthood before it's too late."

"But it hasn't been proved to me," he cried, not without some sternness.

"Oh, bless you, it's in train, and that's the same thing. 'Not poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of the east' could put you to sleep again in the dream you had in the Clergy House. It will take you a little longer to find yourself out, but the thing is done nevertheless."

As she spoke, a servant came to the door to announce the carriage. Mrs.
Staggchase held out her hand.

"Good-by," she said, as Maurice rose, and came forward to take it. "I hope that we shall see you again in a couple of days. I have still a good deal to show you."

He had recovered his self-possession a little, and answered her with a smile:—

"You make it so delightful for me here that I am not sure you are not right in saying that you are my temptation."

"Oh, I've already given up the office of tempter," she responded quickly. "I found a rival, and that I never could endure. You'll have your temptation with you."

It seemed to Maurice when he came to take his seat in the parlor car that his cousin was little short of a witch. In the chair next to his own sat Berenice Morison. She greeted him with a friendly nod and smile.

"Mrs. Wilson told me that you were going on this train," she said, "and she got a chair for you next to mine so that you should take care of me."

He bowed rather confusedly, but with his heart full of delight.

"I shall be glad to do anything I can for you," he answered, vexed that he had not a better reply at command.

He saw the dapper young man across the aisle regard him curiously, and a feeling of dissatisfaction came over him as he reflected upon the singularity of his garb, and the incongruity between the clerical dress and the squiring of dames. Religious fervor is nourished by martyrdom, but it is seldom proof against ridicule. It is not impossible that the faint shade of amusement which Maurice fancied he detected in the eyes of the stranger opposite was a more effective cause for discontent with his calling than any of the influences to which he had been exposed under the auspices of Mrs. Staggchase.

He could not help feeling, moreover, that there was a gleam of fun in the clear dark eyes of Miss Morison. She was so completely at ease, so entirely mistress of the situation, that Wynne, little accustomed to the society of women, and secretly a little disconcerted by the surprise, felt himself at a disadvantage. It touched his vanity that he should be smiled at by the trimly appointed dandy opposite, and that he should be in experience and self-possession inferior to the girl beside him. He began vaguely to wonder what he had been doing all his life; he reflected that he had not in his old college days been so ill at ease, and it annoyed him to think that two years in the Clergy House should have put him so out of touch with the simplest matters of life. He said to himself scornfully that he was a monk already; and the thought, which would once have given him satisfaction, was now fraught with nothing but vexation and self-contempt. He had a subtile inclination to give himself up to the impulse of the moment. He felt the intoxication of the presence of Miss Morison, and he yielded to it with frank unscrupulousness. He resolved that he would repent afterward; yet instantly demanded of himself if this were really a sin. He was after all a man, if he had chosen the ecclesiastic calling. If indeed he were transgressing he told himself half contemptuously that as he did penance doubly, once that imposed by his own spiritual director and again that set by the Catholic at the North End, he might be held to expiate amply the pleasure of this hour. He at least was determined to forget for the once that he was a priest, and to remember only that he was a man, and that he loved this beautiful creature beside him. He noted the curve of her clear cheek and shell-like ear; the sweep of her eyelashes and the liquid deeps of her dark eyes. He let his glance follow the line of her neck below the rounded chin, and became suddenly conscious that he was fascinated by the soft swell of her bosom. The blood came into his cheeks, and he looked hastily out of the window.

The train was already clear of the city, and was speeding through the suburbs, rattling gayly and noisily past the ostentatious stations and the scattered houses. Maurice felt that his companion was secretly observing him, although she was apparently looking at the landscape which slid precipitately past. He wished to say something, and desired that it should not be clerical in tone. He would fain have spoken, not as a deacon, but as a man of the world.

"Are you going to New York?" he asked.

"I shall not have the pleasure of your company so far," she returned with a smile.

"No," he responded naively. "I am going only to Springfield."

"Ah," she said, smiling again; and too late he realized that she had meant that she was not going through.

He was the more vexed with himself because he was sure that his confusion was so plain that she could not but see it, and that it was with a kind intention of relieving his embarrassment that she spoke again.

"I am going to visit my grandmother in Brookfield."

He replied by some sort of an unintelligible murmur, and was doubly angry with himself for being so shy and awkward. He glanced furtively at the trim young man opposite, and was relieved to find that that individual was reading and giving no heed. He wondered why he should be so completely thrown out of his usual self-possession by this girl, so that when he talked to her, and was most anxious to appear at his best, he was most surely at his worst. There came whimsically into his head a thought of the wisdom of training the clergy to the social gifts and graces, and he remembered the flippant speech of Mrs. Wilson about the need of their being able to pay compliments.

"I seem to be specially stupid when I try to talk to you," he said with boyish frankness.

Miss Morison looked at him curiously.

"Am I to take that as a compliment or the reverse?" she asked.

"It must be a compliment, I suppose, for it shows how much power you have over me."

He was reassured by her smile, and felt that this was not so badly said.

"The power to make you stupid, I think you intimated."

"Oh, no," he responded, with more eagerness than the occasion called for; "I didn't mean that."

She smiled again, a smile which seemed to him nothing less than adorable, and yet which teased him a little, although he could not tell why. She took up the novel which lay in her lap.

"Have you read this?" she inquired.

He shook his head.

"You forget," he answered, "that I am a deacon. At the Clergy House we do not read novels."

"How little you must know of life," returned she.

There was a silence of some moments. The train rushed on, past fields desolate under patches of snow, and stark, leafless trees; over rivers dotted with cakes of grimy ice; between banks of frost-gnawed rock. The landscape in the dim January afternoon was gray and gloomy; and as day declined everything became more lorn and forbidding. Maurice turned away from the window, and sighed.

"How disconsolate the country looks!" said he. "I am country bred, and I don't know that I ever thought of the sadness of it; but now if I see the country in winter it makes me sigh for the people who have to live there all the year round."

"But they don't notice it any more than you did when you lived in it."

"Perhaps not; but it seems to me as if they must. At any rate they must feel the effects of it, whether they are conscious of it or not."

Miss Morison looked out at the dull, sodden fields and stark trees.

"I am afraid that you were never a true lover of the country," said she thoughtfully. "You should know my grandmother. She is almost ninety, but she is as young as a girl in her teens. She has lived in the finest cities in the world,—London, Paris, St. Petersburg, and of course our American cities. Now she is happiest in the country, and can hardly be persuaded to stay in town. She says that she loves the sound of the wind and the rain better than the noise of the street-cars."

"That I can understand," he answered; "but I am interested in men. I don't like to be away from them. There is something intoxicating in the presence of masses of human beings, in the mere sense that so many people are alive about you."

She looked at him with more interest than he had ever seen in her eyes.

"But I don't understand," she began hesitatingly, "why"—

"Why what?" he asked as she paused.

"I don't know that I ought to say it, but having begun I may as well finish. I was going to say that I could not understand how one so interested in men and so sensitive to humanity could be content to choose a profession which cuts him off from so much of active life."

"It was from interest in men, I suppose, that I chose it. I wanted to reach them, to do something for them. Although," Maurice concluded, flushing, "I don't think that I realized at that time the feeling of being carried away by the mere presence of crowds of living beings."

There was another interval of silence, during which they both looked out at the cold landscape, blotted and marred by patches of snow tawny from a recent thaw.

"I doubt if you have got the whole of it," Miss Morison said thoughtfully, turning toward him. "Dear old grandmother is as deeply interested in the human as anybody can be. She always makes me feel that my life in the midst of folk is very thin and poor as compared to hers. She has known almost everybody worth knowing. Grandfather was minister to England and Russia, and she of course was with him. Yet she's content and happy off here in Brookfield."

"Perhaps," Wynne returned hesitatingly, "there's something the matter with the age. I don't suppose that at her time of life she has anything of this generation's restless"—

He broke off abruptly.

"Well?" his companion said curiously.

He smiled and sighed.

"I don't know why I am talking to you so frankly," replied he. "As a matter of fact I find that I'm more frank with you than I am with myself. I've always refused to own to myself that there was anything restless in my feeling toward life; yet here I am saying it to you."

"One often thinks things out in that way. Hasn't that been your experience?"

"Yes," he responded thoughtfully; "although I don't know that I ever realized it before. I see now that I've often reasoned out things that bothered me simply by trying to tell them to my friend, Mr. Ashe."

"Is he your bosom friend and confidant? It is usually supposed to be a woman in such a case."

"Oh, no," was his somewhat too eager rejoinder; "I never talked like this to a woman. I never wanted to before."

A look which passed over her face seemed to tell him that the talk was taking a tone more confidential than she liked. He was keyed up to a pitch of excitement and of sensitiveness; and a thrill of disappointment pierced him. He became at once silent; and then he fancied that she glanced at him as if in question why his mood had changed so suddenly. The train rolled into the station at Worcester, and he went out to walk a moment on the platform, and to try to collect his thoughts. He had forgotten now to question his right to be enjoying the companionship of Miss Morison; he gloated over her friendly looks and words, thinking of how he might have said this and that, and thus have appeared to better advantage, and resolving to be more self-controlled for the remainder of the ride. The open air was refreshing; and a great sense of joyousness filled him to overflowing. When again he took his seat in the car he could have laughed from simple pleasure.

The chat of the latter part of the journey was more easy and unconstrained than at the beginning. It was not clear to Wynne what the change was, but he was aware that he was somehow talking less self-consciously than before. They spoke of one thing and another, and it teased the young man somewhat that when now and then his companion mentioned a book he had seldom seen it. The things which he had read of late years he knew without asking that she would not have seen. Even the names of current writers of fiction were hardly known to him, and an allusion to what they had written was beyond him. In spite of a word which now and again brought out the difference between his world and hers, however, Maurice thoroughly enjoyed the talk. Now and then he would reflect in a sort of sub-consciousness that the delight of this hour was to be dearly paid for with penance and repentance, but this provoked in him rather the determination at least to enjoy it to the full while it lasted, than any inclination to deny himself the present gratification.

It has been remarked that the ecclesiastical temper is histrionic; and Wynne was not without a share of this spirit. He would have gone to the stake for a conviction, and made a beautifully effective death-scene for the edification of men and angels, not for a moment aware that there was anything artificial in what he was doing. Now he was not without a consciousness that he was playing the role of a lover and a prodigal, sincere in his love and devotion; yet none the less subtly aware how much more interesting is repentance when there is genuine human passion to repent, is renunciation when there is real love to sacrifice; of how much more effective is saintliness set off against a background of transgression. It was a real if somewhat childish joy to be able to sin actually yet without going beyond hope; of being dramatically false to his vows without crossing the line of possible pardon.

"We shall be in Brookfield in ten minutes," Miss Morison said, beginning to look about for her belongings. "We pass the New York express just here."

Hardly had she spoken when suddenly and without warning there was an outburst of shrieks from the whistle of the engine, answered and blended with that of another. Before Maurice could realize what the outburst meant, there followed a horrible shock which seemed to dislocate every joint in his body. Berenice was thrown violently into his arms, flung as a dead weight, and shrieking as she fell against his breast. Instinctively he clasped her, and in the terror of the moment it was for a brief instant no more to him that his embrace enfolded her than if she had been the veriest stranger. A hideous din of yells, of crashing wood and rending iron, of shivering glass, of escaping steam, of indescribable sounds which had no resemblance to anything which he had ever heard or dreamed of, and which seemed to beat upon his ears and his brain like blows of bludgeons wielded by the hands of infuriate giants. The end of the car before him was beaten in; splinters of wood and fragments of glass flew about him like hail; it was like being without warning exposed to the fiercest fire of batteries of an implacable enemy. A woman was dashed at his very feet torn and bleeding, her face mangled so that he grew sick and faint at the sight; pinned against the seat opposite, transfixed by a long splinter as with a javelin, was the dapper young man, horribly writhing and mowing, and then stark dead in an instant, staring with wide open eyes and distorted face like a ghastly mask. Moans and shrieks, grindings and roarings, howlings and babbling cries that were human yet were piercingly inarticulate filled the air with an inhuman din which drove him to a frenzy. It seemed as if the world had been torn into fragments.

Yet all this was within the space of a second. Indeed, although all these things happened and he saw and heard them clearly, there was no pause between the first alarming whistle and the overturning of the car which now came. He was lifted up; he saw the whole car sway with a dizzying, sickening motion, and then plunge violently over. Fortunately it so turned that he and Miss Morison were on the upper side. He fell across the aisle, striking the chair opposite, but somehow instinctively managing to protect Berenice from the force of the concussion. She no longer cried out, but she clung convulsively about his neck, and as they swayed for the fall he saw in her eyes a look of wild and desperate appeal. He forgot then everything but her. The desire to protect and save her, the feeling that he belonged absolutely to her and that even to the death he would serve her, swallowed up every other feeling. As they went over a vise-like grip caught his arm, and amid all the infernal confusion he somehow connected that despairing clutch with a succession of shrill and piercing shrieks which rang in his ear, seeming to be close to him. He remembered that in the chair behind his had been a young girl, and he felt a pity for her that choked him like a hand at his throat. Then as they went down he instinctively but vainly tried to shake off the hold, which was as that of a trap. It was like being in the actual grip of death.

All sorts of loose articles fell with them from the upturned side of the car to the other; they were part of a cataract of falling bodies, involved as in a crushing avalanche. Wynne found himself in this falling shower crumpled up between two chairs, one of his feet evidently thrust through a broken window and the other still held by that convulsive clasp. Miss Morison was half above him, partly supported by a chair which still held by its fastenings to the floor. He could not see her face, and his body was so twisted that he could not move his head with freedom. Berenice was evidently insensible, but whether stunned from the shock or more seriously hurt he could not tell. He struggled fiercely to free himself, straining her to his breast. There were still movements in the car after it had overturned. It rocked and settled; for some time small articles continued to fall. He drew the face of the unconscious girl more closely into his bosom to protect it. As he did so he was aware that his arm was hurt. A burning, biting pain singled itself out from all the aches of blows and contusions. He seemed to remember that a long time ago, some hours nearer the beginning of this catastrophe which had lasted but a moment, he had felt something rip and tear the flesh; but he had been so absorbed in the attempt to shield Berenice that he had not heeded. Now the anguish was so great that it seemed impossible to endure it. He set his teeth together, determined not to cry out lest she should hear him and think that he lacked courage. Then it seemed to him that he was swooning. He struggled against the feeling; and for what seemed to him an interminable time he wavered between consciousness and insensibility. It was either growing darker or he was losing the power to see. He could not distinguish clearly any longer that human hand, smeared with blood, sticking ludicrously in the air from amid a pile of bags, coats, and all sorts of things thrown together just where the position of his head constrained him to look. He had been seeing that hand for a long time, it seemed to him, and only now that the darkness had so increased as to cut it off from his sight did he realize what it was and what it must mean.

He still retained a consciousness of the face of Berenice, warm against his bosom, and with each wave of faintness he struggled to keep his senses that he might protect her. The din of noises seemed far away, the cries somewhere at a distance ever increasing. The moans that had seemed to him those of the girl who clutched his arm grew fainter, until they were lost in the buzz and whirr of a hundred other sounds. Then the clasp which held him relaxed as suddenly as if a rope had been cut away. It came into his mind with a wave of horror that the girl who had held him was dead. The thought that Berenice might be dead also followed like a flash, and aroused his benumbed senses. He spoke to her; he tried to move; to release her from her position. He seemed buried under a mound of debris, and she gave no sign of life. He exhausted himself in frantic attempts to escape; to get his arms free; to turn his head far enough to see her face; to thrust back the rubbish which had fallen against them. The anguish to his arm was so great that he could not continue; he could do nothing but suffer whatever fate had in store for him. He tried to pray; but his prayers were broken and confused ejaculations.

All at once he distinguished amid the chaos of noises roaring and singing in his ears something which made his heart stand still; which pierced to his dulled consciousness like a stab. It was the cry of "Fire!" He had once seen a servant with her hair in flames, and instantly arose before him the picture of her shriveling locks and the terror of her face. He seemed to see the dear head on his bosom—The thought was more than he could bear, and for the first time he cried out, shouting for help in a transport of frenzied fear. He was so absorbed in his thought of Berenice that he had forgotten himself; but the realization of his own peril revived as a waft of smoke came over him, choking and bewildering. He was then to die here, stifled or wrapped in the torture of flame. Then the wild and desperate thought sprang up that at least if he must die he should die with her on his bosom, clasped in his arms. He might give himself up to the delirium of that joy, since there was no more of earth to contaminate it. But the horror of it! The anguish for her as well as for him! Not by fire! His thoughts whirled in his brain like sparks caught in a hurricane. He scarcely knew where he was or what had happened to him. Only he was acutely aware of the acrid smoke, of how it increased, constantly more dense and stifling.

However the mind may for a moment be turned aside from its usual way by circumstances, habit is quick to reassert itself. The habitual constrains men even in the midst of events the most startling. The mind of Wynne had been too long bred in priestly forms not to turn to the religious view here in the face of death. His conscience cried out that he might be responsible for the peril and disaster which had come upon them. With the unconscious egotism of the devotee, he felt that heaven had been avenging the impiousness of his sin. He had dared to trifle with his sacred calling, to look back to the loves of the world and of the flesh, and swift destruction had overtaken him. And Berenice had been crushed by the divine vengeance which had so deservedly fallen on him. He groaned in anguish, seeming to see how she had perished through the blight of his passion. Not by fire, O God! Not by fire! How long would it be possible to breathe in this stifling reek, heavy with unspeakable odors? It was his crime that had brought her to this death. He, a man set apart and consecrated to the work of God, had turned from heaven to earth, and heaven had smitten with one blow him and the woman who had been unwittingly his temptation. And she so innocent, so pure, so sacred! Through his distraught mind rushed a pang of hatred against the power that could do this. He was willing to suffer for his sin, but where was the justice of involving her in his ruin? It was because this was what would hurt him most! It was the work of a devil! Then this thought seemed to him a new transgression which might lessen the chances of his being able to save her, and he tried to forget it in prayer, to atone by penitence. He offered his own life amid whatever tortures would propitiate the offended deity, but he prayed that she might be spared.

All this time—and whether the time were long or short he could not tell—he had heard continued cries and groans. He had now and then been dully aware of a change in the noises. Now it would seem as if all else was swallowed up in the sound of tremendous blows, as if the car were being struck again and again by a mighty battering-ram. Then a chorus of shouting went roaring up, as if an army cried. Noise and physical sensation were too intimately blended to be separated; his brain struggled in confusion, emerging now and then for a moment of consecutive thought and sinking back into semi-unconsciousness as a spent swimmer goes down, fighting wildly for life. He knew that a light had come into the car. He saw it amid the smoke, and his first thought was that it was flame. Dulled and half asphyxiated, he said to himself now almost with indifference that the end had come. Then with a thrill which for a moment aroused all his energies he recognized that it was the glow of a lantern. He was aware that rescuers were close above him, climbing down through the windows over his very head. He cried to them in a paroxysm of appeal:—

"Save her! Save her!"

Whether he was heeded amid the babble of cries and all the noises which seemed to swell to drown his voice, he could not tell, but in another instant he felt that friendly hands had seized Miss Morison, and were endeavoring to lift her insensible form. He strove to loosen his hold, but the effort gave him agony so intolerable that he could do nothing. A thousand points seemed to rend and tear him as he tried to move, and when a voice somewhere above him shouted: "We'll have to try to lift them together!" he experienced a strange sort of double consciousness as if he stood outside of himself and heard others talking of him. He felt himself grasped under the arms, and the pain of being moved was too horrible to be endured. He shrieked in mortal agony, and then in a whirl of dizzying circles seemed to go down in a tide of blackness sparkling with millions of sharp scintillations.