XIX
'TWAS WONDROUS PITIFUL
Othello, i. 3.
Poor Ashe got home more dead than alive. His passion had shaken him like a delirium. He had been swept away by his emotion, and had thrown to the winds past and future. He felt as the carriage drove away from Mrs. Fenton's as if he had been swung up and down on some monstrous wave and dashed, broken and bleeding, on a rough shore. He could not think; and fortunately for him he was even too benumbed to feel greatly.
He reached the Hermans' in a sort of half-stupor, in which indifference, keen joy, and bitter contrition were strangely mingled. The contrition, however, seemed somehow to belong to the future; it was what he must endure when the time should come for repentance; the joy was a present blessing, tingling in his every fibre.
He met Mrs. Herman in the hall. She exclaimed when she saw him, and he stood smiling at her, swaying as if he were intoxicated.
"What has happened?" she cried. "What have you done to your face?"
The room and his cousin swam before him in a golden mist. He felt that he was grinning idiotically, yet he could not stop. He tried to speak, but his lips seemed too swollen to form words. He put out his hand to grasp a chair, and perceived that he could not reach it.
"I—fall!" he managed to ejaculate.
Mrs. Herman caught him, and supported him to a chair. He felt her arm around him, and he wondered how he came to be thus embraced. He tried to grope back into the dusk of his mind to tell what had happened, and the fiery glow of the moment in which he had kissed the hand of Mrs. Fenton came back to him. He sat suddenly erect.
"Cousin Helen," he said, with husky fervor, "I have been a wretch, and I rejoice in it! I have found out how sweet it is to sin! I am lost, lost, lost!"
He buried his face in his hands, almost hysterical. He felt his cousin's hand on his shoulder.
"Philip," she said decisively, "you must stop this, and tell me what has happened."
"I beg your pardon," he answered, dropping his hands. "Mrs. Fenton was attacked by a drunken man in the North End, and I fought him. I am afraid that I am pretty disreputable looking."
"Yes, you are. I hope that is the worst of it."
She took him by the arm and led him into the library, where she established him in an easy-chair by the fire.
"I'll send for a doctor to look you over," she said, "and meanwhile you are to take what I give you."
She left him, and Philip sat looking into the coals.
"Ah, if the glove had been off!" he murmured half aloud.
He flushed hotly, and struck his clenched hand against his breast, rubbing it back and forth until the haircloth within stung and smarted.
"No, no," he said to himself fiercely. "I will not think about it!"
Helen came back with a tumbler of something hot and fragrant, which made his eyes water as he drank. It sent a strange sensation of warmth through him, and seemed to restore his energy. The doctor, who came in soon after, found nothing serious the matter. Ashe was temporarily disfigured, but had luckily escaped without worse injury. He was sent to bed, and despite his expectation of passing the night in an agony of remorse, he sank almost immediately into a dreamless sleep.
When Philip awoke his first sensation was that of stiffness and soreness,—soreness such as he had felt once when he had slept on the floor with his arms extended in the form of a cross. The thought of penance performed gave him a thrill of happiness, but to this instantly succeeded the remembrance of the events of yesterday, and his brief satisfaction vanished.
His face was discolored, and as he set out after breakfast to seek his spiritual adviser he felt a grim satisfaction in going abroad thus marked. It was in the nature of a mortification and a penance. He repeated prayers as he walked, his eyes cast down, his bosom pricked by haircloth. He felt that he had already begun the expiation of the sin of yesterday.
He found Father Frontford at home, but so occupied as to be unable to listen to him. It would have been impossible for Philip to do as Maurice had done, and go to a man like Strathmore; and indeed, he had come to his Father Superior partly because of the sharpness with which he felt that his offending would be judged. Where Maurice would question, Philip would submit blindly and with ardent faith.
"Good-morning," the Father greeted Ashe kindly, holding out his left hand, while the right held suspended the pen which had already produced a heap of letters. "I am very glad to see you; but you find me extremely busy. There are so many things to be thought of just now, and so many letters to be written."
"Yes?" Philip responded absently.
"The election is so near at hand now," the other continued, "that we cannot leave any stone unturned. I am writing to some of the country clergy this morning. By the way, I wanted to speak to you about Montfield."
Philip wondered at himself for the remoteness which the affairs of the church had for him, so absorbed had he been in his own experiences.
"It seems to me," Father Frontford went on with fresh animation, "that perhaps you can do something there. Can't you go down and talk with Mr. Wentworth? He's inclined to support Mr. Strathmore. You should be able to influence him; you are his spiritual son."
Mr. Wentworth was the rector in Philip's native town, and under him both Ashe and Wynne had come from Congregationalism into the Church.
"It is possible," Philip said doubtfully. "Mr. Wentworth is, however, rather inclined to disagree with me nowadays. He is completely carried away by Mr. Strathmore."
A strange look came into the face of the old priest. He laid down his pen, and pressed together the tips of his white fingers, thin with fasting and self-denial.
"Did you not once tell me," he asked, "that Mr. Wentworth has hoped for years that he might bring your mother also into the fold?"
"Yes."
"And you are her only child?"
"Yes."
Father Frontford cast down his eyes; then raised them to flash a glance of vivid intelligence upon Ashe. Then again he looked down.
"I think that you had better run down and see your mother," he said. "It is possible that she may be even now leaning toward the truth; and in any case you might arouse Mr. Wentworth to fresh activity. It is of much importance that the country clergy should be pledged not to support Mr. Strathmore in the convention."
Philip went away confused and baffled. He said to himself that his feeling was caused solely by his disappointment that he had found no opportunity to talk with the Father Superior about his own affairs; but it was impossible for him to put out of his mind the way in which his mission to Montfield had been spoken of. He was willing to go down and do what he could to arouse Mr. Wentworth to the gravity of the situation, but he could neither forget nor endure the hint that he should make of the hope of his mother's conversion to the church a bribe. He could not think of this without being moved to blame Father Frontford; and he set himself to argue his mind into the belief that there was no harm in the suggestion. He walked along in a reverie as deep as it was painful, trying to see that the occasion called for the use of all lawful means, and that it was natural for the Father to suppose that Mrs. Ashe might be influenced more readily if the rector yielded to the wishes of her son in voting for Frontford.
"My dear Ashe, what have you been doing to yourself?" a strong voice asked him.
He came with a start to the consciousness of where he was, and that he had almost run into the Rev. De Lancy Candish. The thought flashed through his mind that Father Frontford had been too deeply absorbed in his plans to notice the bruised face of his deacon.
"How do you do?" he exclaimed impulsively. "Providence has sent you to me. Can you spare me a little of your time?"
"Certainly," the other answered, with some appearance of surprise. "I'm on my way home now."
They walked in silence toward the home of Mr. Candish, Ashe trying to frame some form of words by which he could confess the sin of his heart without betraying Mrs. Fenton. He wondered if Maurice Wynne could have helped him, and reflected how they had been in the habit of confiding everything to one another. Now he shrank from opening his heart to his friend, and was almost seeking out a confidant in the highways and hedges.
"You have not told me what sort of an accident you have had," Candish observed, as he fitted the latch-key into the lock of his door.
"I was attacked by a man in the North End," Philip answered, obeying the wave of the hand which invited him to enter. "He had insulted Mrs. Fenton, and"—
"Mrs. Fenton!" echoed Candish.
The tone made Ashe turn quickly. Into his mind flashed the words of Helen and of Mrs. Wilson connecting the name of Candish with that of Mrs. Fenton. In his longing for comfort and advice he had seized upon the rector of the Nativity without remembering that he was the last person to whom he should come.
"Ah," he said, "it was true!"
Candish did not answer, and they went into the study in silence. The host sat down in the well-worn chair by his writing-table, while Philip took a seat facing him.
"What a foolish thing for me to say," Ashe broke out; then surprised at the querulousness of his tone he stopped abruptly.
"Mr. Ashe," Candish said gravely, "if there is anything I can do for you will you tell me what it is?"
Philip rose quickly, and took a step towards him, leaning down over the thin, homely face.
"I have found you out!" he cried with exultation. "I came to confess my sin to you, and I find that you love her too!"
"Don't be hysterical and melodramatic," was the cool response. "Sit down, and let us talk rationally if we are to talk at all."
The manner of Candish recalled Philip to himself. He sat down heavily.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "Since that fight I have been half beside myself. I am like a hysterical girl."
The other regarded him compassionately.
"Mr. Ashe," responded he, "there is no good in my pretending that I didn't understand what you meant just now. You and I are both given to the priesthood. If we both love a woman"—
"I love her," burst in Philip, half defiantly, half remorsefully, "and
I have told her so! I have condemned myself"—
"Stop," Candish interrupted. "First you have to think of her."
Philip stared in silence. It came over him how entirely he had been thinking of himself, and how little he had considered Mrs. Fenton in his reflections upon the events of the previous evening. Here was a man who could love her so well as to think of her first and himself last.
"But I have given her up," Philip stammered.
"Was she yours to give up?"
There was nothing bitter or sneering in the words; they were said simply and dispassionately.
"No," Philip answered, dropping his voice; "she was not mine."
The older man rose and walked to the fire, where he stood looking down at the flaming coals.
"After all," he said, "we are pretty much in the same plight. I knew her when her husband brought her here a bride, the loveliest creature alive. Arthur Fenton was a clever, selfish, wholly irreligious man; and I could not help seeing how completely he failed to understand or appreciate his wife. She was kind to me, and when her trouble came she turned to me for comfort and sympathy. It is my weakness that I love her; but she will never know it."
"And does she love nobody?" demanded Ashe jealously.
Candish turned upon him a look of rebuke.
"What right have you or I to ask that question?" he retorted sternly. "I do penance for loving her, and God is my witness how carefully I have hidden it. It is not for me to question her right to love if she please."
Philip rose, and went to the other, holding out his hand.
"Mr. Candish," said he earnestly, "you have taught me my lesson. I have been a weak fool, and worse. I will pray for strength to lay my passion on the altar and forget it."
The rector took the extended hand, looking into Philip's eyes with a glance so wistful, so humble, and so tender that the remembrance went with Ashe long.
"And forget it?" he repeated. "I do not know that I could do that!"
He dropped the hand of Ashe, and shook himself as if he would shake off the mood which had taken possession of him.
"Come," he declared resolutely, "this will not do. This is not the sort of mood that makes men. Let me give you a single piece of advice,—I am older, you know; don't pity yourself, whatever else you do. In the first place, that would be equivalent to saying that Providence doesn't know what is best for you; and in the second, it spoils all one's sense of values."
As Ashe that afternoon journeyed down to Montfield, he recalled all the details of this interview. The more he considered the more he respected Candish and the less satisfaction he found in his own conduct. Yet perhaps the human mind cannot cease self-justification at any point short of annihilation, and Philip still had in his secret thought a deep feeling that the church should more absolutely settle the question of the celibacy of its clergy, so that there might be no more doubts. He honored the attitude of Candish, and he resolved to imitate it. He who has never shaken hands with the devil, however, can have little idea how hard it is to loose his grasp; and Philip groaned at the thought of how far he was even from wishing to put his love out of its high place in his heart.
His mind was calmer as he sat that evening talking with his mother. Mrs. Ashe was a plain, sweet-faced woman, with gray hair brushed smoothly under her cap of black lace. There was in her pale, faded face little beauty of feature or coloring; yet the light of her kindly and delicate spirit shone through. Maurice Wynne had once said that she was like a sweet-pea,—born with wings, but tethered so that she might not fly away. Philip, with his exquisite sensitiveness, found an unspeakable comfort in her presence; a soothing sense of rest and peace so blissful that it seemed almost wrong. There are even in this worldly age many women who hide under the covering of uneventful, commonplace lives existences full of spiritual richness,—women who find in religion not the mechanical acceptance of form, not a mere superstition which encrusts an outworn creed, but a vital, uplifting force; a power which fills their souls with imaginative warmth and fervor. The worth of an experience is to be estimated by the emotional fire which it kindles; and to the lives of such women the dull, colorless round of their daily existence gives no real clue. Theirs is the life of the spirit, and for them the inner is the only true life. It is when the sunken eye shines with a glow from deep within; when the thin cheeks faintly warm with the ghost of a flush and the blue veins swell from the throbbing of a heart stirred by a spiritual vision, that the observer gets a hint of the realities of such a life.
Mrs. Ashe was a type of the saintly woman that the spirit of Puritanism bred in rural New England. Such women are the living embodiment of the power which has inspired whatever is best in the nation; the power which has been a living force amid the worldliness, the materialism, the crudity that have threatened to overwhelm the people of this yet young land, so prematurely old. In her face was a look of high unworldliness that marks the mystic, the inheritance from ancestors bred in a faith impossible without mysticism in the very fibres of the race. The heroic self-denial, the persistent belief, the noble fidelity to the ideal which is the salvation of a nation, shine in such a countenance, and make real the high deeds of a past generation the narrowness of whose creeds too often blinds us to-day to the greatness of their character.
She smiled a little on hearing the object of her son's visit.
"I am glad to see you on any terms," she observed, "but I cannot say that I think your coming very wise."
"But, mother," he urged, "don't you see that it is a matter of so much importance that we ought not to neglect any chance?"
"My dear boy," questioned she, "do you really think that it is of so much importance who is bishop?"
"It is of the greatest possible importance," he returned earnestly. "Of course you don't agree with me as to the importance of forms of worship, but suppose that it were your own church, and the question were of having a man put into a place so influential. Wouldn't you be troubled if one were likely to be chosen who taught what you regarded as heresy?"
She smiled on him still, but he saw the seriousness in her eyes.
"Yes," she said, "I suppose I should; but doesn't it ever occur to you, Philip, that we are all too much inclined to feel that everything is going wrong if Providence doesn't work in our way? We can't help, I suppose, the habit of regarding our plans as somehow essential to the proper management of the universe."
He laughed and shook his head.
"You always had a most effective way of taking down my conceit," he responded. "I don't mean that it is necessary that Father Frontford shall be bishop because I want him, but"—
"But because you believe in him," his mother interrupted with a little twinkle in her eye. "Well, we cannot do better than to follow our convictions, I suppose."
She ended with a sigh, and Philip knew that it was because into her mind came the sadness she felt at his defection from the faith of his fathers.
"Yes, you trained me from the cradle to do what I thought right without considering the consequences."
They fell into more general talk after that; and after the news of the family and the neighborhood had been pretty well exhausted, Mrs. Ashe said:—
"I have asked Alice Singleton to make me a visit."
"Alice Singleton! Why, mother, I cannot think of a person I should have supposed it less likely you would want to stay with you."
"I'm afraid that I don't want her very much; but she wrote me that she was very lonely, that she hadn't any plans, and that Boston seemed to her a very homesick place. Her mother was my nearest friend, you know; and if Alice needs friendship it's very little for me to do for her."
"I didn't know she'd been in Boston," Philip commented thoughtfully. "She never seemed to me honest, mother. I never could be charitable to her at all."
The sweet face of his mother took on a curious expression of mingled amusement and contrition.
"If I must confess it, Phil," she said, "neither could I; and I'm afraid that there was more notion of doing penance in my asking her than of real hospitality. She is after all not to blame for her manner, and no doubt we do her wrong."
"If you have come to doing penance, mother, there's no knowing how soon you will be with me."
"No, Phil," she answered softly, "do you remember what Monica told her son? 'Not where he is, shalt thou be, but where thou art he shall be.'"
He shook his head, sighing.
"I ought not to have touched on that matter, mother. You know that I am trying to follow my conscience."
"Yes, I cling to that. I should be miserable if I did not believe that your way and my way will come together somewhere, on this side or the other; and I bid you Godspeed on whatever way you go with prayerful conviction."
A sudden impulse leaped up within him, and it was almost as if some voice not his own spoke through his lips, so little was he conscious of meaning to ask such a question.
"Even if the way led to Home?"
Mrs. Ashe grew paler, but her eyes steadfastly met those of her son.
"I trust you in the hands of God," she said.
Late that night Philip woke from a heavy sleep into which fatigue had plunged him. He reached out his arm, and drew aside the curtain near his bed, so that he might see the window of his mother's chamber. A faint light was shining there; and he knew that the beams of the candle fell on his mother on her knees.