XXV
WHOM THE FATES HAVE MARKED
Comedy of Errors, i. I
Maurice soon heard from his lawyer that the missing desk had passed into the hands of his sister-in-law, Mrs. Singleton, and that that lady was staying at Montfield as the guest of Mrs. Ashe. He determined to go down himself, feeling unwilling to trust business so important to any other. In order to leave the Clergy House, it was necessary to have permission from the Father Superior, and on Monday of Shrove week Wynne requested what the deacons jestingly called among themselves a dispensation. He did not think it honest to conceal the reason for his wishing leave of absence, and briefly related the story of his finding his old nurse and of her revelation.
"Poor old Norah is dead," he concluded, "but I had her affidavit taken, and if the will can be found there should be no difficulty in establishing it. The other witnesses are alive." They were sitting in the Father's study, a room severely plain in its furnishings, like all the apartments in the Clergy House. The table by which the Superior sat was covered with papers and letters, the signs of the large correspondence which Wynne knew Frontford to keep up with members of his order in England and this country. The furniture was stiff and uncompromising, the windows covered only by plain shades, while the bookshelves took an austere air from the dull leather of the bindings of their tall, formal volumes. Father Frontford leaned back in his uncushioned chair and pressed together his thin finger-tips in the gesture which was habitual with him, regarding the young man with keen eyes.
"This property, if I understand you rightly, is now in the possession of the church?"
"It was given by the will that was found to the church and to missions. Some of it went to the founding of a home for invalid priests. My aunt was the one of my relatives who was a churchwoman."
"And if you succeed in finding and establishing this new will, you mean to divert the money to your own use?"
"If the will is valid, is not the money mine?"
The Father looked at him a moment before he answered. Then he sighed.
"My son," he asked, "would you have put that question six months ago?"
Maurice flushed, but he did not wish to show that he understood.
"Why not?" he demanded.
"There was not then in your heart a wish to wrest property from the church that you might enjoy it yourself."
"I haven't any wish now to take from the church anything which is not mine already."
"By divine right or by human?" the Father inquired with cold inflexibility.
Maurice began to be irritated. He felt that he was being treated with too high a hand.
"Have I no rights as a man?" demanded he warmly.
The other sighed once more, and a look of genuine pain came into his face.
"My son," he said with a gentleness which touched Maurice in spite of himself, "when you gave yourself to the church, did you keep back part of the price? Was not your gift all you were and all you might possess?"
Maurice was silent. He could not for shame answer, that he did not then know that he had so much to give, and he realized too that this would then have made no difference. He felt as if he were now being held to a pledge which he had never meant to make, yet he could not see what reply there was to the words of the Superior. He cast down his eyes, but he said in his heart that he would not yield his claim; that the demand was unjust.
"I have for some time," Father Frontford went on, "in fact ever since your return, seen with pain that your heart is no longer single to the good of the church. An earthly passion has eaten into your soul. Your confessions are evidently attempts to satisfy your own conscience by telling as little as possible of the doubts which you have been harboring in your heart. Now there is given you an opportunity to see for yourself, without the possibility of disguise, what your true feeling is. The question now is whether you are seeking your own will or the good of religion. Will you fail us and yourself?"
Maurice was touched by the tone in which this was said. While he had been growing to be less and less in sympathy with Father Frontford and with the ideals which the brotherhood represented, he had never for an instant ceased to believe in the sincerity of the Superior. He might think him narrow, mistaken, even at times so blinded by desire for the success of the brotherhood as to become almost Jesuitical in method; but he felt that the Father lived faithful to his belief, ready, if the cause required, to sacrifice himself utterly. He could not but be moved by the appeal which the priest made, and by the genuine feeling which rang through every word.
"Father," he said, raising his eyes to the face of the other, "I cannot deny that I am less satisfied about our faith than I used to be. I can see now that I perhaps have not been entirely frank in confession, though I hadn't recognized it before. I cannot go into a discussion of my doubts now. I am not in a mood to talk with you when we must look at so many things from different points of view. I haven't hidden from you anything that has happened, and you could not be persuaded that all the change in me has not come from the fact that I—has not come from my feeling toward—my feeling about marriage. This is not true. Everything has changed; and while I may be wrong, I have been trying to act conscientiously. I feel that it is right for me to follow up this matter of my aunt's will; and if I cannot make you share my feeling, I can only say that I don't wish to do anything that seems to me wrong."
The other smiled sadly.
"What does that mean in plainer words?" asked he. "It means that you do not wish to do wrong because whatever you desire will seem to you right."
"You are unjust!" Maurice retorted, flushing.
The face of the Father grew stern. "Since when did the rule of the order allow you to use such language to your superiors? If you are not thinking of evading your vows, you do evade them daily; and the throwing them off can be nothing but an affair of time."
Maurice felt that he could not endure this longer without breaking out into words which he should afterward repent. He rose at once.
"Will you permit me to retire?" he said. "I shall be glad of your answer to my request for leave of absence, but I cannot go on with this conversation."
The other stretched out his hand with a gesture infinitely tender.
"My son!" he entreated. "Do not stray into the wilderness!"
Maurice looked at the outstretched hand. His eyes moistened, but he could not yield. He felt tenderness for Father Frontford, but he was more and more at war with the Father Superior. For an instant they remained thus, and then the thin hand dropped.
"You are then still resolute in asking leave?" the Father said, in his coldest voice.
"It seems to me my duty to see that if possible the last wishes of my aunt be carried out."
"Is that your only motive?"
Maurice flushed hotly, but he looked the other boldly in the face.
"I must allow you to impute to me any motive you please. The point is whether I am to have your permission."
"Under the circumstances I do not feel justified in granting it. We will speak of the matter again, when you have examined your heart more carefully."
Maurice bowed and left the room in silence, his spirit hot within him. That he should be denied had not entered his mind. He was now confused by the conflict in his thoughts. To disobey would be equivalent to nothing less than a defiance of the authority of the Father Superior. To assert his right to decide this matter could only mean a resolve to break away from the brotherhood altogether. He was hardly prepared for a step so extreme; yet he could not but ask himself whether he were willing to accept the conditions involved in remaining. He realized for the first time what the vow of obedience meant. He had received the slight sacrifices involved thus far in his novitiate as right and proper; simple things which had marked his willingness to yield to the authority which by his own choice was above him. Now he said to himself that to continue this life was to become a mere puppet; to give up independence and manhood itself.
On the other hand, he had not been bred in theological subtilties without having come to see that the act cannot be judged without the motive, and he had been more nearly touched by the words of Father Frontford than he would have been willing to confess. He knew that he had been hiding from his confessor the extent to which a longing for the world had taken possession of him; that there was in this wish to secure the will and through it the property an eagerness to be independent of control and to take his place in the world as a man among men. The thought that the money was now in the hands of the church to which he had pledged himself tormented him. There came into his mind the question what he would do with the wealth if he obtained it. He had vowed himself to poverty, at least in his intention. If he had this fortune and became a priest, he would be pledged to endow the church with all his worldly goods.
He faced his inner self with sudden defiance, as if he had thrown off a disguise cunningly but weakly worn. He confessed with frankness that he had secretly desired this money that he might be in a position to gain Berenice. He pleaded with himself that he did not mean to abandon the priesthood; that he had simply discovered that he had not a vocation for the existence he had contemplated. He tried to see some way in which he might gain the end he desired without giving up the faith he professed; and in the end he succeeded only in getting his mind into a confusion so great that it seemed impossible to think of anything clearly.
He had an errand at Mrs. Wilson's on Shrove Tuesday, and she invited him to accompany her to midnight service at the Church of the Nativity. When he repeated the request to Father Frontford, he was given permission to go.
"It is an unusual, and even an extraordinary request," the Superior said; "but Mrs. Wilson is so deeply interested in the welfare of the brotherhood that it is better to make a concession. What time are you to meet her?"
"She is to send her carriage for me at half past eleven. She was so sure that you would not object that she told me not to send any word."
"It is not well to have her treat so great a departure from rules as a matter of course," the Father answered gravely. "I will send her a note which will show her this. You have permission not to retire at the usual hour."
The carnival season was celebrated at the Clergy House with a meal better than usual, and with some gayety on the part of the young deacons. The light-hearted Southerner improved to the full the permission to talk at dinner, and chatted away with a volubility which seemed to Maurice to indicate a nature too buoyant or too shallow to be deeply stirred. Father Frontford was absent, and there was nothing to throw a shadow of restraint over the feast, the other priests being almost as boyish as the deacons.
"Here's Wynne," the Southerner said laughing, "is as glum as if he were Lent incarnate, come six hours too soon. You must have a good deal on your conscience to be so solemn."
Maurice smiled, trying to shake off his depression.
"It isn't always what is on one's conscience," he retorted, "so much as how tender the conscience is."
"Good! He has you there, Ballentyne," one of the deacons cried.
"Oh, not at all. If a conscience is tender, it must be because it is harrowed up. Now Wynne has probably vexed his so that it is habitually sore."
Maurice was out of the mood of the company, but he tried to answer with a light word. The jesting seemed to him trifling; and his companions, compared to the men he had seen during his stay with Mrs. Staggchase, appeared like boys chattering at boarding-school. He wondered where they had been for their absence; then he remembered that they had all told him, and that he had forgotten. He had had no real interest in them after all, he reflected; and at the thought he reproached himself with egotism and a lack of brotherliness. He glanced at Ashe, and was struck by the paleness of his friend. His look was perhaps followed by Ballentyne, for the latter commented on the downcast aspect of Philip.
"Ashe," the young man said, "looks ten times more doleful than Wynne. What have you fellows been doing? One would think that you had been eating the bitterest of all the apples of Sodom."
"They have been in the gay world," another rejoined.
"Then they might be set up as a warning against it," was the retort.
Laughter that one cannot share is more nauseous than sweets to the sick; and this harmless trifling was intolerable to Maurice. He got away from it as soon as it was possible, and passed the heavy hours in his chamber, waiting for the coming of the carriage. He tried at first to read and then to pray; but in the end he abandoned himself to bitter reverie.
He did not attempt to reason, he merely gave way to gloomy retrospect, without sequence or order. Seen in the light of his experiences during the past weeks, his life looked poor, and dull, and misdirected. It was little comfort to assert that he had at least been true to ideals high, no matter how mistaken.
"It is not what one does," he thought, "but the intention with which he does it. Only that does not excuse one for being stupid, and raw, and ignorant. When a man is a weakling and a fool, he always takes refuge in the excuse that he is at least fine in his intentions. Bah! No wonder she laughed at me! I have shut myself up with ideas as mouldy as a mediaeval skeleton, and when I come to daylight all that I can say is that I meant well. I suppose an idiot means well from his point of view!"
He looked about for something which should divert him from thoughts so tormenting. His eye fell upon his Bible, and he took it up half mechanically. On the title page was written the name of his aunt, to whom it had once belonged. The name brought back the interview with Father Frontford, and the refusal of his request for leave of absence.
"Nothing belongs to me," he said to himself. "I am a thing, a sort of thing like a numbered prisoner. How could she care for a chattel, a creature without even identity! I will go down to Montfield. I am not yet so completely out of the world that I can't have a word in the disposition of my own property."
He threw himself on the bed and tried to sleep, but sleep was impossible. He only thought the more hotly and wildly. The hours stretched on and on interminably before he heard the bell ring, and knew that the carriage had come. Rising hastily, he adjusted his cassock and his tumbled hair, and went down.
"Perhaps I may find peace at the mass," he sighed with a great wistfulness.
The fresh, cool air of night was grateful, and as he was driven along the quiet streets, a new hopefulness came to him. He had supposed that he was to be taken to Mrs. Wilson's, and when the carriage stopped was surprised to find himself before a large building which he did not recognize.
"But I was to meet Mrs. Wilson," he said doubtfully to the footman who opened the carriage door.
"Mrs. Wilson is here, sir," was the answer. "She said to carry you here. James is inside to tell you what to do."
A footman was indeed within, waiting for him.
"Mrs. Wilson says will you please come to her, sir," the man said, and led the way upstairs.
The sound of gay music, growing louder as he advanced, filled Wynne's ears. He began to feel disquieted, and once half halted.
"Are you sure there is no mistake?" he asked.
"Oh, no mistake at all, sir," his guide answered. "Mrs. Wilson has arranged everything. Leave your hat and cloak here, sir, if you please."
Maurice mechanically did as requested, but as he threw off his outer garment the opening of a door let in a burst of music which seemed so close at hand that he was startled. He was in what was evidently a coat-room, the attendant of which regarded him with open curiosity; and he realized suddenly that he must be near a ball-room.
"Where am I?" he demanded.
"It's the ball, sir, that they has to end the season before Lent. It's
Lent to-morrow, sir, as I thought you'd know."
Maurice stared at him in amazement and anger.
"There is a mistake," he said. "Give me my cloak."
"Indeed, sir," the man said, holding back the garment he had taken, "Mrs. Wilson said, sir, that I was to say that she particular wanted you to come fetch her in the ball-room, sir; and I was to bring you without fail."
"You may send her word that I am here."
"Please, sir," the man returned, in a voice which struck Maurice as absurdly pleading, "she was very particular, and it's no hurt to go in, sir. She'll blame me, sir."
Maurice looked at him, and laughed at the solemnity of the man's homely face. A spirit of recklessness leaped up within him. He said to himself that at least Mrs. Wilson should not think that he dared not come.
"Very well," he said. "Show me the way."
"Thank you, sir," the servant said, as if he had received a great favor. "It's not easy to bear blame that don't belong to you."
He opened a door into an anteroom thronged with people laughing and chatting. The sound of the music was clear and loud, with the voices striking through its cadences. Across this he led Wynne, to the wide door of a ball-room flooded with light and full of moving figures.