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.