LIKE COVERED FIRE
Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 1.
Philip Ashe found himself less and less able either to understand or to
sympathize with the politics of Mrs. Wilson. He believed in the
righteousness of her cause, and was keenly alive to the peril of the
appointment of Mr. Strathmore to the vacant bishopric. It is an
inevitable and necessary condition of enthusiasm that it shall be
narrow; and religious fervor would be impossible to a mind open to
conviction. To accept the possibility of any opposed truth is to be
secretly doubtful of the creed which one holds; and tolerance is of
necessity the child of indifference. Had Ashe been able to perceive
that the church would go on much the same no matter which of the rival
candidates was chosen, it would have been impossible for him to be so
deeply concerned for the success of Father Frontford. As it was he was
as much in earnest as Mrs. Wilson, and thus he felt forced to acquiesce
in the strangeness of her methods of work. He said to himself that he
supposed this electioneering to be a necessity, no matter how
unpleasant; and he added the reflection that in any case it was not in
his power to prevent it.
Other feelings were, moreover, completely absorbing his mind. Although
he was not yet conscious that anything had come between him and the
church, priesthood in which had been his highest earthly ideal, the
truth was that his passion for Mrs. Fenton waxed steadily. Chance threw
them together. Mrs. Fenton had been appointed to a committee on
charities, and it happened that Ashe was a visitor in the North End in
a region which the committee were making an especial field of labor. He
was called into consultation with her, and sometimes they even went
together to visit some of the poverty-stricken families which evidently
existed chiefly to be subjects for philanthropic manipulation. Day by
day Ashe felt her speak to him more easily and familiarly; and although
their talk was strictly impersonal and unemotional, none the less did
it feed his growing love.
The nature which does not sometimes try to deceive itself is an
abnormal one; and Ashe was not behind his fellows in devising excuses
for the joy which he found in Mrs. Fenton's presence. He dwelt in his
musings upon her devotion to the church, her good works, her visitings
of the poor and sick. He assured himself with a vehemence too feverish
not to be fallacious that he was instigated only by entirely
disinterested feelings; by the desire to assist in deeds of Christian
helpfulness, and by pleasure in the society of one whose devotion to
godliness was so marked. He argued with himself as eagerly as if he
were struggling to convince another, protesting to his own secret heart
as earnestly as he would have protested to a friend.
A man seldom really deceives himself, however, save in thinking that he
can deceive himself. There were moments in which his inner self rose up
and laughed him to scorn; moments in which his sin glowed before him in
colors blood-red. He saw himself apostate, false to his vows, drawn
away by his earthly lusts and beguiled. There were nights when he cast
himself upon the ground in an agony of self-abasement, beating his
breast and praying in a passion of remorse; times when by the cruelty
of his self-accusings he involuntarily sought to do penance for the
sweet sin which festered in his bosom.
Worse than all was the color which was imparted to his passion by the
self-imposed prohibitions which he was violating. The insistence upon
the earthly side of love which is an inevitable accompaniment to the
idea that woman is a temptation, cannot but degrade the relation of the
sexes in the mind of the professed celibate. To keep before the
thoughts the theory that passion is a snare and a pollution is to
render it impossible to love with purity and self-abandonment. Poor
Philip, endowed at birth with a nature of instinctive delicacy, could
not free himself from the taint of his training; yet he shrank as from
hot iron from the blasphemy of connecting any shadow of earthliness
with the woman who had become his ideal. His only resource was to take
refuge in repeating to himself that he did not love Mrs. Fenton; but
even in denying it he felt that he was defending himself from a charge
which was a degradation to her as well as to himself. He fell into that
morbid state of mind where whatever he tried as a remedy made his
disease but the worse; where the idea of love was the more horrible to
him the more it possessed and pervaded his whole being.
Mrs. Herman was not unobservant of his condition, although she was far
from understanding his state of mind. She felt that there was little
use in forcing his confidence, but she gave him now and then an
opportunity to confide in her, feeling sure that he would be the better
for freeing his heart in speech.
She was sitting one afternoon alone in the library when Ashe came home
from a missionary expedition. The day was gray and gloomy, and the
early twilight was shutting down already, so that the fire began to
shine with a redder hue. Mrs. Herman was taking her tea alone, and as
it chanced, she was thinking of her cousin.
"You are just in time for tea," she greeted him. "It is hot still."
"But I seldom take tea," he answered, seating himself by the fire with
an air of weariness which did not escape her.
"That is so much more reason that you should take it now. It will have
more effect. I can see that you are tired out. One lump or two?"
He yielded with a wan smile, and, resuming his seat, sat sipping his
tea in silence for some moments. At length he sighed so heavily that
she asked with a smile:--
"Is it so bad as that?"
"Is what so bad?" he returned, looking at her in surprise.
"You sighed as if all life had fallen in ruins about your feet, and I
couldn't help wondering if there were really no joy left to you."
He smiled rather soberly, and did not at once reply. The fire burned
cheerily on the hearth, noiseless for the most part, but now and then
purring like a cat full of happy content; the shadows showed themselves
more and more boldly in the corners, daring the firelight to chase them
to discover their secrets. The colors of the room were softened into a
dull richness; the dim gilding on the old books which had belonged to
Helen's father, dead since her infancy, caught now and then a gleam
from a tongue of flame which sprang up to peer into the gathering dusk;
the copper tea equipage reflected a red glow, and gave to the picture a
certain suggestion of comfort and cheer.
"I was thinking how comfortable it is here," Philip said at length.
"And that made you sigh?"
"Yes; I'm ashamed to say that it came over me how far away from me all
this is."
"If it is," she returned slowly, "it is simply because you choose that
it shall be."
He turned his face toward her as if about to protest; then looked again
into the fire. The conversation seemed ended, until Mrs. Herman spoke
again as if nothing had been said.
"You have been slumming this afternoon?"
"I do not like the name, but I suppose I have."
"It isn't a cheerful day to go poking about alone among the tenement
houses."
"I was not alone," Ashe answered with a hesitation which she could not
help noting and with a significant softening of voice. "Mrs. Fenton was
with me."
"Ah!"
The exclamation was involuntary. In an instant there had flashed upon
Helen's mind a suspicion of the true state of things. The despondency
of her cousin, the reflection upon the comfort of domesticity,
connected themselves in her thought with trifling incidents which had
before come under her observation; and his manner of speaking brought
instantly to her mind the conviction that Ashe was thinking of Mrs.
Fenton with more than the friendliness of acquaintanceship. When Philip
looked up with a question in his eyes, however, she was already on her
guard.
"The weather is so doleful," she hastened to add, "that I should think
that even philanthropy might lose its power of amusing."
"Cousin Helen," returned he, with some hesitation, "I do not like to
hear you speak in that way of what is part of my life work."
She smiled; then sighed and shook her head.
"My dear Philip," replied she, "I had certainly no intention of
wounding you; and if you'll let me say so, I think you are going out of
your way to find cause of offense. Philanthropy isn't a thing so sacred
that it is not to be spoken of with a smile."
"No; but"--
"But what?"
He did not answer at once. He put down his empty cup absently, and then
sat staring into the fire as if he were trying there to read the
solution of the riddle of existence.
"Come," Helen observed, after waiting for a little, "you have something
on your mind. What is it? It will do you good to tell it, even if I'm
not clever enough to help you."
"I am sure that you could help me," he began eagerly; and then in a
changed voice he added, "if anybody could."
She left her place behind the tea-table and came nearer to him, sitting
directly before the fire. The light fell on her convincing face and on
her wavy hair. She folded her hands in her lap, and looked at him.
"Well?" she said.
"I do not know how to say it," Philip responded slowly. "I am afraid
that you have not much sympathy with my views of life."
"I probably have more than you realize. It's true that I do not believe
as you do, but we are both Puritans at heart, so that in the end our
theories come to much the same thing."
He looked up with evident inability to follow her meaning.
"I don't understand," he said.
"Very likely I couldn't make myself clear if I tried to explain.
Suppose we give up abstractions and come to the concrete. What is the
especial thing in which you think that my theories are different from
yours?"
"I do not think," he answered, hesitating more than ever, "that you
have much sympathy with asceticism."
"None whatever," she declared uncompromisingly. "Nobody could have more
honor for a sacrifice to principle than I have; but I believe that a
sacrifice to an idea is apt to be the outcome of nothing but vanity or
policy."
"But what is the difference?"
"Why, an idea is a thing that we believe with the head; don't you know
the way in which we think things out while we secretly feel altogether
different?"
"I do not think I follow you; but surely self-denial is a sacrifice to
principle."
"Not necessarily. I'm afraid I may seem to you profane, Philip, but I
must say that it seems to me that asceticism is one of the worst
plague-spots which ever afflicted humanity. The root of it is the pagan
idea of propitiating a cruel deity by self-torture."
"How can you say so!" he cried. "It is the pure devotion of a man to
the good of his higher nature and to the good of the race."
"As far as the race goes, vicarious suffering can't be anything, so far
as I see, except an effort to placate an unforgiving deity. As for the
devotion of a man to his higher nature, you will never convince me that
to go against nature and to indulge in morbidness is improving to
anything. But here we are, swamped in a bog of great moral propositions
again. We can't agree about these things, and the thing which we really
want to say will be lost sight of entirely."
He turned his face away from her again, either troubled by what she had
been saying or unable to find words and confidence to go on with the
confession of his trouble.
"Is it," Helen inquired, "that you have found that you have yourself a
doubt of the value of asceticism?"
"No, not that," he answered, dropping his voice; "but--but I begin to
doubt myself."
She leaned forward in her chair. Some power outside of her own will
seemed to constrain her.
"Philip," she said, bending over and touching his hand, "has love made
you doubt?"
The question evidently took him entirely by surprise. She wondered what
impulse had made her speak and how her question would affect him. He
flushed to his forehead, and cast at her a look so full of pathetic
appeal that she felt the tears come into her eyes. It was the look of a
hunted creature which sees no way of escape, yet which has not the fury
of resistance, which pleads its own weakness. She knew that Philip
could not equivocate and that the secret of his heart lay bare before
her. She shrank from what she had done, and a flood of pity and
sympathy filled her mind.
He gave her no more than a single look, and then buried his face in his
hands.
"I have betrayed my high calling," he exclaimed in a voice of bitter
suffering. "I have put my hand to the plough and looked back. I am too
weak to be worthy to"--
"Stop," she interposed brusquely, although she was deeply touched. "I
can't listen to that sort of talk. It isn't wholesome and it isn't
manly. If you have fallen short of your ideal, your experience is that
of the rest of the race. I suppose the secret of our making any
progress is the power of conceiving things higher than we can reach. It
keeps us trying."
"But I devoted myself to"--
"My dear boy," she interrupted him again, "you are like the rest of us.
You told yourself that you would be above all the passions and emotions
of common humanity, and you are discouraged to find that you're human
after all. That's really the whole of it."
"But to allow yourself to love"--
It was not necessary for her to interrupt him now. He stopped of his
own will, casting down his eyes and blushing like a school-boy. It
seemed to her that it might be better to try raillery.
"To allow yourself, O wise cousin!" she cried. "Men do not allow or
disallow themselves to love. It's deeper business than that."
"But I should have had strength not to yield."
"Is there anything discreditable in loving?" she demanded.
"There is for a priest."
"If there were, you are not a priest."
"In intention I am; and that is the same in the sight of Heaven."
She could not repress a gesture of impatience. She felt at once an
inward annoyance and a secret admiration. The temper of his mind was
exasperatingly like her own in its tenacity of conviction. He would not
excuse himself by any shifts, no matter how convincing they might seem
to others. The matter must be met fairly and frankly, and she must
reach his deepest feelings if she would move him. She reflected how
best to deal with him, and with her thoughts mingled the question
whether Edith Fenton could return Philip's love. The young man was well
made and sufficiently good-looking, although paled by study and
austerities. He was of good birth and property, and from a worldly
point of view not entirely an unsuitable match for the widow, should
she think of a second husband. He was somewhat younger than Mrs.
Fenton; and Helen was not without the thought that this passion might
be on his part no more than the inevitable result of his coming in
contact with a beautiful woman after having been immured in the
monastic seclusion of the Clergy House; a passion which would pass with
a wider acquaintance with the world. The whole matter perplexed and
troubled her, and yet she earnestly longed to help her cousin.
"Dear Philip," she said, "I can't tell you how I enter into your
feeling. I don't agree with you, but we are not so far apart in
temperament, if we are in doctrine. I'm afraid that you'll think that
I'm merely tempting you when I say that it seems to me that your
conscientiousness is entirely right, and that your conviction is all
wrong."
"Of course I know that you do not hold the same faith that I do."
"But one of your own faith might remind you that your own church
upholds the marriage of the clergy."
"Yes," he assented with apparent unwillingness, "but my conscience does
not."
"Do you mean that you find your conscience a better guide than the
church? That seems to put you on my ground, after all."
"Oh, no, no! Certainly I do not put myself above the authority of the
church."
"The eagerness with which you disclaim any common ground with me isn't
polite," she retorted, glad of a chance to speak more lightly and
smilingly; "but it's sincere, and that is better."
"I wasn't trying to disclaim thinking as you do; but to insist that I
do not set myself above the church."
"Then I repeat that the church sanctions the marriage of the clergy. If
you don't agree, I don't see why you do not really belong in the Roman
Catholic Church."
There was a long pause, during which she watched her cousin narrowly.
He seemed to be thinking deeply, with eyes intent on the fire. She was
so little prepared for the direction which his thought took that she
was startled when he said at last with a sigh:--
"I do sometimes find myself envying the absolute authority with which
the Roman Catholic Church speaks."
"Authority!" she repeated indignantly. "Do you mean that you wish to
give up your individuality?"
"No; not that; but it must be of unspeakable comfort in times of mental
doubt to repose on unquestioned and unquestionable authority."
Helen rose from her place by the fire and walked to the window. She
felt that she was on very delicate ground, and she would gladly have
escaped from the discussion could she have done so without the feeling
of having evaded. She stood a moment looking out into the darkening
street, dusky in the growing January twilight, bleak and dreary. Then
with a sudden movement she went to her husband's desk and took up a
picture of her boy, a beautiful, manly little fellow of three years, of
whom Philip was especially fond. Crossing to her cousin, she put the
picture in his hand, at the same time turning up the electric light
behind him.
"See," she said, with feminine adroitness. "I don't think I've shown
you this picture of Greyson."
He looked at it earnestly, and sighed.
"It is beautiful," said he. "Greyson is a son to be proud of and to
love."
"Well?" she asked significantly.
"What do you mean?" returned he. "What has Greyson's picture to do with
what we were talking about?"
She took the photograph from his hand, extinguished the light, and
walked back toward the desk. The room seemed darker than before now
that the firelight only was left. Suddenly she turned, with an outburst
almost passionate:--
"O Philip!" she exclaimed. "Can't you see? My son! Surely if there is
anything in this world that is holy, that is entirely pure and noble,
it is parentage. Do you suppose that all the churches in the world,
with authority or without it, could make Grant and me feel that there
is anything higher for us than to take our little son in our arms and
thank God for him!"
He did not answer, and she controlled her emotion, smiling at her own
extravagance, while she wiped away a tear. She kissed the picture, and
put it in its place; then she returned to her chair by the fire.
"I don't expect you to understand my feeling," she said. "You never can
until you have a son of your own. If a little cherub like Grey puts his
baby hands into your eyes and pulls your hair, you'll suddenly discover
that a good many of your old theories have evaporated."
"But, Cousin Helen," he began hesitatingly, "certainly there is often
sin"--
She interrupted him indignantly.
"There is no sin in faithful, loving, self-respecting marriage," she
insisted. "That is what I am talking about. It is the holiest thing on
earth. Anything may be degraded. I've even heard of a burlesque of the
sacrament. I don't see why I shouldn't speak frankly, Philip. You are
in a state of mind that is morbid and self-tormenting. If you love a
woman, tell her so honestly and clearly; and if she is a good woman and
can love you, go down on your knees, and thank God."
He leaned his forehead on his hands, as if he were struggling with
himself. The firelight shone on his rich hair, auburn like her own.
Helen watched him anxiously, wondering if she had said too much, and
whether she were taking too great a responsibility in the advice she
gave. Certainly anything must be good that took him out of his
unhealthy mood.
"Come," she said, rising, and turning on the electric light again. "It
is time for Grant to be at home, and for me to be dressing. We are to
dine at the Bodewin Rangers to-night."
He put up his hand to arrest her, and said in a tone that wrung her
heart:--
"But, Cousin Helen, I cannot speak of love to a woman until I am ready
to give up for her my priestly calling."
"Until you are willing to give up your unwholesome idea of celibacy and
asceticism, you mean."
"It would be sacrificing a principle to a passion."
Helen sighed.
"I could reason with you," she returned, half-humorously, "but how
shall I get on with all the Puritan ancestors who prevail in you and
me! The thing that I say isn't that you are to give up your notions
about the celibacy of the priesthood in order to marry, but because
they are unwholesome and abnormal. The thing that most closely links
you to humanity is the thing that best fits you to be of use in the
world."
He regarded her with a glance of painful intensity.
"But suppose," he suggested, "that the woman I loved could not love me?
Then I should come back to the church, and lay on the altar only a
discarded and worthless sacrifice."
"Come back to the church!" she echoed. "You don't leave it. If marriage
takes you out of the church, then the sooner such a church is left the
better! Do you realize what you are doing, Philip? Do you remember that
you insult the good name of your mother by the view you take of
marriage? I am sick of all this infamous condemnation of what to me is
holy! If the church cannot rise to a noble and pure conception of it,
the sooner the church is done away with, the better for mankind!"
"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.