THIS DEED UNSHAPES ME
Measure for Measure, iv. 4.
So much was Maurice absorbed in his thought of the will and his
inquiries after it that he gave little consideration to the disquieting
plan of Father Frontford for the securing of Miss Morison's cooperation
in the election schemes. Several days having gone by without farther
allusion to the matter, he decided that his remonstrances had been
effective, and was greatly relieved to be freed from a task so
repugnant under any circumstances and made intolerable by his feeling
for Berenice. It was with a most painful shock, therefore, that he one
day received from the Father the information that Miss Morison had
returned to Boston. He met the Father Superior in the hall one morning
after matins, and although it was a silent hour the latter spoke.
"It is better to see her at once," he added. "Mrs. Frostwinch is very
low, and the sooner the thing is settled the better."
"But," stammered Maurice, "I"--
"I think," the other went on, ignoring the interruption, "that it will
be best for you to call on her this afternoon at exercise hour. She is
likely to be at home then, and it will be rather early for other
visitors."
Maurice struggled with himself, endeavoring to shake off the influence
which this man always exercised over him. He determined to speak, and
to decline the hateful errand.
"Father Frontford," he said with an effort, "I cannot undertake this."
"My son," the other responded with gentle severity, "you forget that
this is a silent hour. Although I may speak to you on affairs
concerning the church, that does not give you the right to answer
irrelevantly."
"It is not irrelevantly," Maurice protested, feeling his growing
irritation strengthen his resolve. "I"--
The voice of the old priest was more stern as he interrupted.
"You seem to forget entirely your vow of obedience. There is little
merit," he added, his tone softening persuasively, "in service which is
easy and pleasant. It is in the sacrifice of self and our own
inclinations that we gain the conquest of self. Go, my son, and pray to
be forgiven for pride and insubordination. Do you think that you would
be objecting if it were not for the wound to your vanity which this
work inflicts? You may repeat ten _paters_ for having violated the rule
of silence."
Maurice moved away, feeling that he dared not trust himself to speak
again. To be thus treated like a willful child galled his pride and
quickened all the obstinacy of his nature.
"The rule of silence!" he said to himself angrily as he went. "Are we
in the Middle Ages?"
It came to him as a sort of jeer from an outside intelligence that
after all they were trying to ape mediaeval discipline. He had been for
weeks coming to the point where the whole monastic life seemed to him
fantastic and theatrical; and now that his personal liberty was so
sharply assailed, his self-respect so threatened, he was prepared to
see everything in the most unfavorable light. He laughed bitterly in
his mind at the tangle he was in, and contempt for himself and for the
community took hold of his very soul.
Yet he was not ready to throw off allegiance. The bonds of habit are
strong; the power of old belief is stronger; and strongest of all is
that vanity which holds a man back from the avowal that he has been
mistaken in his most ardent professions. It is one thing to change a
conviction; it is quite another to acknowledge that a belief formerly
upheld with ardor is now outgrown. It is not simply the ignoble shame
of fearing the opinion of others that is involved in such a case, but
that of losing confidence in one's own judgment, of standing convicted
of error in that inner court of consciousness where all disguises are
stripped away and all excuses vain. To see that even the most
passionate conviction may have been mistaken is to feel profound and
disquieting doubt of all that human faith may compass; it is to seem to
be helpless in the midst of baffling and sphinx-like perplexities.
Maurice was already at the point where he could hardly be regarded as
holding his old opinions, but he had not reached that of being ready to
confess that he had been wrong in a matter so vital that error in it
would involve the whole reordering of his life and leave him with no
standards of faith.
He was, moreover, noble in his impulses, and he had too long been bred
in introspection not to perceive now that he was greatly influenced by
his inclinations. He was too honest not to be aware that there was as
much passion as reason in his revulsion from the monastic life, and
that Berenice Morison's perfections weighed as heavily in the scale as
any shortcomings of theology. He reproached himself stoutly, in
thoroughly monkish fashion, and ended by resolving that obedience was a
duty; that the errand on which he was sent was one which would abase
his sinful pride and must be executed for the benefiting of his
spiritual condition.
He said this to himself sincerely, yet he was human, and behind all was
the consciousness that in this bad business there was at least the
consolation that he should be face to face with Berenice. If
humiliation was doubly bitter by being wrought through his love, at
least his love might find some scanty comfort in the very means of his
humiliation.
When the hour for exercise, four in the afternoon, came, Maurice set
out on his mission. He had blushed at himself in the mirror for the
solicitude with which he regarded his image, but he had tried to
believe that this arose only from a disinterested anxiety to appear at
his best in behalf of the object which he was sent to accomplish.
Miss Morison was living with Mrs. Frostwinch, and as Maurice walked
buoyantly along, forgetting his errand and only remembering that he was
to see her, he recalled how on the day when they had first met he had
walked home with her from Mrs. Gore's. He recalled the pretty, willful
turn of her head and the saucy side-glance of her eyes, the proud curve
of her neck, the color on her cheeks delicate as the first
peach-blossom in spring. That he had no right thus to be thinking of a
woman perhaps added a certain piquancy to his thought; but he quieted
his conscience with the reflection that he was in the path of duty, and
of a duty, moreover, which was likely to prove sufficiently hard and
humiliating.
Miss Morison was at home, and would see Mr. Wynne.
The high reception room in which he waited for her had a gloomy
formality, a sort of petrified respectability, most discouraging. On
the wall was a large painting, evidently a copy from some famous
original, although Maurice did not know what. The picture represented a
painter with a model in the dress of a nun. The artist was evidently
engaged in painting a saint for some convent, a beautiful sister had
been chosen as his model, and he was improving the opportunity to make
love to her. Her reluctant and remorseful yielding was evident in every
line of her figure as she allowed the painter to steal his arm around
her waist and bend his lips toward hers. Wynne looked at the picture
with vague disquiet. Here was the struggle of the natural human impulse
against the constraint of ascetic vows; the irresistible yielding to
nature and to the call of a passion interwoven with the very fibres of
humanity. The sombre Boston parlor vanished, and he seemed to be in
some old-world nunnery with the unknown lovers. He felt all their
guilty bliss and their scalding remorse. He sighed so deeply that the
soft laugh behind him seemed almost an echo. Turning quickly, he found
Berenice watching him with a teasing smile on her lips.
"I beg your pardon for startling you," she said, holding out her hand,
"but you were so absorbed in Filippo and his Lucretia that you paid no
attention to me."
"I beg your pardon," he responded, taking her hand cordially. "I was
looking at the picture and wondering what it represented."
"It is that reprobate Filippo Lippi and Lucretia Buti, the nun that he
ran away with. Why it pleased the fancy of my grandfather, I'm sure I
can't imagine. Sit down, please. It is a long time since I have seen
you, and now that Lent is coming, I suppose that you will be lost to
the world altogether."
He sat down facing her, but he did not answer. His voice had deserted
him, and his ideas had vexatiously scattered like frightened wild
geese. He looked at her, beautiful, witching, full of smiles; then
without knowing exactly why he did so, he turned and looked again at
the Lucretia. Berenice laughed frankly.
"Are you comparing us?" she asked gayly. "Or are you trying to decide
what I would have done in her case? I can tell you that."
"What would you have done?"
"Done? I would have run away from him and the convent both! Do you
think I was made to be cooped up in a nunnery if I could escape?"
"No," he answered with fervor, "you were certainly not made for that."
"That is an unclerical answer from a monk."
"I am not a monk."
She put her head a little on one side with delicious coquetry.
"Would it be rude to ask what you are, then?"
He regarded her a moment, and then with explosive vehemence he broke
out:--
"I am a deacon who has not taken the vows, and I am a man who loves you
with his whole soul!"
She paled, and then flushed to her temples. She cast her eyes down, and
seemed to be struggling for self-control. He did not offer to touch
her, although his throat contracted with the intensity of his effort to
maintain his outward calm. Then she looked up with a smile light and
cold.
"We are not called upon to play Filippo and Lucretia in reversed
parts," she said. "I am not trying to tempt you away from your calling.
Wouldn't it be better to talk about the weather?"
He was unable to answer her, but sat staring with hot eyes into her
face, feeling its beauty like a pain.
"It has been very cold for the season during the past week," she went
on.
"Miss Morison," he retorted hotly, "I had no right to say that, but you
needn't insult me. It is cruel enough as it is."
Her face softened a little, but she ignored his words.
"Tell me," she remarked, as if more personal subjects had not come into
the conversation, "what are the chances of the election? I hear so many
things said that I have ceased to have any clear ideas on the subject
at all."
Maurice sat upright, throwing back his shoulders. This girl should not
get the better of him. He lifted his head, his nostrils distending.
"It is too soon to speak with certainty," he responded; "but it is in
regard to that that I came--that I was sent to see you this afternoon.
We are under vows of obedience at the Clergy House."
He said this defiantly, fancying he saw in her face a smile at the idea
of his servitude.
"You will regard what I say as the words of a messenger."
"All?" she interrupted.
He flushed with confusion, but he was determined that he would not
again lose control of himself.
"All that I _shall_ say," he responded. "What I have said is to be
forgotten."
"By me or by you?" she asked, dimpling into a smile so provoking that
he had to look away from her or he should have given in.
"By you," was his reply; but he could not help adding under his breath:
"If you wish to forget it."
She laughed outright.
"I will consider the matter. But this errand from the powers that be at
the Clergy House; I am curious about that."
"You will remember," he urged, his face falling, "that it is only a
message for which I have no responsibility."
"Certainly; although you would of course bring no message of which you
didn't approve."
"I am not asked whether I approve or disapprove. It is the decision of
the Father Superior that it should be said; and that is the whole of
it."
"Well," she inquired, as he paused, unable to go on, "after this
tremendous preamble, what is it?"
It seemed to Maurice that he could not say it; but he cleared his
throat, and forced himself to look her in the face.
"It has to do with your inheritance of the--your inheritance through
Mrs. Frostwinch."
"My inheritance? What do you mean?" she demanded, suddenly becoming
grave.
As briefly as possible he explained to her the errand which had been
given to him. He could see indignation gathering in her look.
"But who has told Father Frontford that Mrs. Frostwinch is so ill?" she
broke out at last. "Cousin Anna is not so well since she came from the
South, but that is all. It is shameful to be speculating on her death
and disposing of her property as if she were buried already! I wonder
at you!"
Wynne smiled bitterly.
"I have already said that I had nothing whatever to do with the
matter," he answered.
"You had no right to come to me with such a message. It puts me in the
position of waiting for her death! Oh, it's an insult! It's an insult
to me and to Cousin Anna! What will she think?"
"She will think nothing," he said, roused by a sense of her injustice,
"because she will never know."
"Why will she not?"
"Because if it is cruel for me to say a thing which harms nobody except
me for bringing the message, it would be a thousand times more cruel
for you to tell your cousin that her death was counted on."
He rose as he spoke, and stood looking down on her with the full
purpose of constraining her to his will. She sprang up in her turn.
"Very well; I will not tell her. You may say to Father Frontford from
me that it will be time enough for him to undertake the disposal of my
property when it is mine. I thank him for his officiousness!"
"You are unjust to Father Frontford. I have made his wish seem
offensive by the way I have put it, I suppose. At any rate, he is
simply seeking the good of the church."
"And to have himself made bishop."
"He would vote to-morrow for any man that he thought would do better
than he can do. He would support Mr. Strathmore himself if he believed
it well for the church. I do not find myself in sympathy with
everything that he does, but I know him, and of one thing I am sure: he
would be burned alive in slow fires to advance the good of the church."
She looked at him curiously. Then she turned away in seeming
carelessness, and began to arrange some pink roses which stood in a big
vase on a table near at hand.
"Good-by," he said. "I am sorry to have offended you."
"Must you go?" responded she with a society manner which cut him to the
quick. "Let me give you a rose."
She broke one off, and handed it to him. He took it awkwardly, wholly
at a loss to understand her.
"They are lovely, aren't they?" she said. "Mr. Stanford sent them to me
this morning."
He looked at her until her eyes fell. Then he laid the rose on the
table near the hand which had given it to him, and without further
speech went out.