THIS IS NOT A BOON
Othello, iii. 3.
It was Mrs. Wilson who was the immediate means of bringing about an
understanding between Maurice and Berenice. Mrs. Wilson was never so
occupied that she was not able to attend to any new thing which might
turn up, and her interest in the spring races did not prevent her from
having a hand in the affairs of the lovers. While she was in town
attending to the luncheon for Marion Delegass she dined with Mrs.
Staggchase, and Maurice took her down.
"I understand that you are a renegade," she remarked vivaciously as
soon as they were seated. "I wonder you dare look me in the face."
"Because you are the church?" he demanded.
"Certainly not now that that Strathmore is bishop," she retorted,
tossing her head. "However, I always said that you were too good to be
wasted in a cassock."
"Thank you. What would you say if I made such a reflection on the
clergy?"
"Oh, I've no patience with the clergy!" she declared. "They bore me to
death. There's that solemn-faced friend of yours, Mr. Ashe--his name
ought to be Ashes!--he actually lectured me on my worldliness! _My_
worldliness, if you please, and I working myself to a shadow for the
election of Father Frontford!"
"He has imagination, you see," Maurice suggested, smiling.
"Now you are sneering, Mr. Wynne. I shall talk to the man on the other
side."
She was good as her word, and left Maurice to devote himself to the
lady on his right. He had the American adaptability, and a couple of
months had sufficed to make him reasonably at ease at a dinner. The
continuous delight he felt in his freedom, moreover, inspired him with
an inclination to be frank and communicative, so that if he did not
talk like the conventional man of the world, he managed not to sit
silent. His neighbor to-night was Mrs. Thayer Kent, and he chatted
easily with her about the West, where for a couple of years she had
been living on a ranch. Something in Mrs. Kent's talk reminded him of
Berenice, and he sighed inwardly that the latter's mourning prevented
her from going out. As if the thought had been spoken aloud, Mrs.
Wilson recalled herself to his attention by saying in his ear:--
"It is such a pity Berenice Morison isn't here. Have you seen her since
the Mardi Gras ball?"
"Yes," he answered, turning quickly, and vexed to feel himself flush.
"I saw her yesterday at the consecration."
"Did you go? How immoral! I stayed at home and gave a luncheon for
Marion Delegass."
"So I heard; but everybody hadn't such a moral thing as that to do."
"Oh, no; very likely not. By the way, you have never apologized for
deserting me in the middle of the service that night."
"I had to take care of that girl. She fainted."
"Oh, you did? Who was she? What did you do with her? However, I don't
care. It's none of my business. I wonder, though, what sort of a story
you'd have told Berenice if she'd been there."
Wynne was too confused to answer this sally, although he wanted to say
something about the cruelty of taking him into the ball-room. His
confusion increased Mrs. Wilson's amusement.
"I think I should like to be in at the death," she said. "She is coming
down to stay with me next week. Come down and make love to her. I won't
tell about the girl you carried out of church in your arms."
More and more disconcerted and self-conscious, Maurice could only
stammer that Mrs. Wilson flattered him if she supposed that Miss
Morison would tolerate any love-making on his part.
"You are adorable when you blush like that," was the reply which he
got. "I have almost a mind to set you to make love to me. However, that
wouldn't be fair. I will take it out in seeing you and her. You must
surely come down."
Maurice regarded the invitation as merely part of Mrs. Wilson's
badinage, but in due time it was formally repeated by note. He opened
the letter at the breakfast table, and was advised by his cousin to
accept.
"Mrs. Wilson," she commented, "is like a banjo, more exciting than
refined, but she isn't bad-hearted. She has the old Boston blood and
traditions behind her."
"They are sometimes rather far behind," interpolated Mr. Staggchase
dryly. "She wasn't a Beauchester, you know. However, she has her
ancestors safe in their graves so that they can't escape her."
Mrs. Staggchase smiled good-naturedly at the little fling at her own
family pretensions.
"You are wicked this morning, Fred," was her reply. "Elsie is something
of a sport on the ancestral tree; but she is worth visiting. Berenice
Morison is going down there sometime soon. Perhaps she will be there
with you, Maurice."
"I thought," Mr. Staggchase observed, "that old Mrs. Morison didn't
approve of Mrs. Wilson."
"Nobody approves of Elsie," was Mrs. Staggchase's calm reply. "I'm sure
I don't; but after all she is a sort of cousin of Berenice, and she
can't very well refuse to visit her. Really, there is nothing bad about
Elsie. She is startling, and she certainly does things which are bad
form. That's half of it because she married as she did."
Nothing more was said, and Maurice kept his own counsel in regard to
the fact that he knew that Miss Morison was to be his fellow-guest. He
was full of wild hopes. He reproached himself that he was wrong to
forget that Berenice was rich and he was poor; yet not for all his
reproaches could he keep himself from feeling Mrs. Wilson had not
seemed to see any insurmountable obstacle to his wooing; that she had
appeared rather to be ready to help his suit. He must not, of course,
try to win Berenice; yet he was going to Mrs. Wilson's to meet her, to
be with her, to revel in the delicious pleasure of hoping, of fearing,
of loving.
The house of the Wilsons at Beverly Farms was on a bluff overlooking
the sea. It was reached by a long avenue winding through pines mingled
with birches and rowan trees; and stood in a clearing where all the day
and all the night the sound of the waves on the cliff answered the
whispering of the wind in the pine-tops. The broad piazzas of the house
looked out over the sea, and gave views of the islands off shore, the
ever-changing water, the beautiful curves of the sea marge, now high
with defiant rocks, and now falling into sandy beaches. A level lawn,
velvety and green, stretched from the house to the edge of the cliff,
with here and there a rustic seat or a century plant stiff and arrogant
in its lonely exile from warmer climes.
On this piazza Maurice found himself, just before dinner on the evening
of his arrival, walking up and down with Berenice. It was still cool
enough to make the exercise grateful.
"It is so delightful to have the weather warm enough to be out of doors
without being all bundled up," she said, looking over the sea, cold
green and gray in the declining light.
"The water doesn't look very warm," Maurice responded, following her
gaze.
"No, it isn't exactly summer yet," she replied lightly. "Do you know,"
she added, turning to meet his eyes, "I can't help thinking how
different this is from the last time we were together away from Boston."
"When we were at Brookfield?"
"Yes."
"It is different; more different to me than you can have any idea of.
Then I was a cog in a machine; now I am my own master."
They walked to the end of the piazza, turned, and came down again. They
were facing the light now, and her face shone with the pale glow of the
declining day. In her black dress, with a soft shawl thrown about her,
she was dazzling; and Maurice found it difficult not to take her in his
arms then and there.
"It must have been a strange feeling," she observed thoughtfully, "to
know that you were not master of your own movements, but had to do as
you were told, whether you approved of it or not."
"Strange," he echoed, a sense of slavery coming over him which was far
stronger than anything he had felt while the bondage lasted, "it was
intolerable!"
"Yet you endured it?" she returned, regarding him curiously.
"Yes, I endured it. In the first place, I thought that it was my duty;
and in the second, it was not so hard until I had seen"--
"Well, until you had seen?"--
"Until I had seen you, I was going to say."
Berenice flushed, and tossed her head.
"You have caught a pretty trick of paying compliments, Mr. Wynne."
"No," he answered with gravity, "I have only the mistaken temerity to
say the truth."
She regarded him with a mocking light in her deep, velvety eyes.
"And is it the truth that you have given up your religion because you
have seen me?"
Maurice wondered afterward how he looked when she sped this shaft, for
he saw her shrink and pale. She even stammered some sort of an apology;
but he did not heed it. Although he was sure that he should sooner or
later have come to the same conclusion whether he had met Berenice or
not, he knew in his secret heart that there was in her words some savor
at least of truth. He felt their bitterness to his heart's core, and
could only stand speechless, reproaching her with his glance. If they
were true it was cruel for her to say them. He regarded her a moment,
and then turned toward the long French window by which they had come
out of the house. Berenice recovered herself instantly, and behaved as
if nothing had occurred to mar the serenity of their talk.
"Yes," she said in an even voice, "you are right. It is becoming too
cold to stay out here."
He held open the window for her, and she swept past him with a soft
rustle and a faint breath of perfume. He did not follow, but drew the
window to behind her and continued his promenade alone until he was
summoned to dinner. All his glorious air-castles had fallen in ruins
about his feet, and he rated himself as a fool for having come to
Beverly Farms to meet this girl who evidently flouted him.
The result of this conversation was to bring Maurice to the resolution
to return to town. All the doubts which had been in his mind arose like
ghosts ill exorcised, more tangible and more insistent than ever. He
realized that he had come here fully persuaded in his secret heart that
Miss Morison must love him, and with the hope of winning some proof of
it. Now he assured himself that she did not care for him and that he
had been a fool to indulge in a dream so absurd. The obstacles which
lay between them presented themselves to him in a dismal array. He
decided that she could have no respect for him, or she could not have
thrown at him the implication that he had apostatized from selfish
motives. With all the awful solemnity with which a man deeply in love
examines trifles, he recalled her looks and words, deciding that he was
to her nothing more than the butt of her light contempt; and secretly
wondering when and where he should see her again, he decided to leave
her forever.
He announced his determination next morning to his hostess. As he could
not well give the real reason for his decision, and had no experience
in social finesse, he came off badly when asked why he had come to this
sudden decision. He could not equivocate; and when Mrs. Wilson asked
him point-blank if Berenice had been treating him badly, he could only
take refuge in the reply that it was not for him to criticise what Miss
Morison chose to do. He persisted in his resolution to return to
Boston, feeling obstinately that he could not with dignity remain where
he was while Berenice was there. A man of the world would at once have
seen the folly of such a course, but Maurice was not a man of the world.
"Well," Mrs. Wilson said, after she had argued with him a little, "you
have retained the clerical obstinacy, whatever else you've given up. I
am not in the habit of pressing my guests to stay if they are tired of
my society. If you choose to go, of course you will go."
"Oh, it is not that I am tired of your society," poor Maurice put in
eagerly.
"If I were a man," his hostess went on, "I never would let a woman see
that I minded how she treated me. You'd soon have her coming down from
her high horse if you showed her that you didn't care."
Maurice flushed painfully. It was impossible for him to talk to Mrs.
Wilson about his feeling for Berenice.
"I am afraid that I had better go," he said, with eyes abased.
She regarded him with a mixture of impatience and amusement struggling
in her face.
"By all means go," she retorted. "I'll tell Patrick to be at the door
in time to take you to the three o'clock train."
She swept away rather brusquely, leaving him disconsolate and uneasy.
He felt that he had bungled matters; but before he had time to consider
Berenice appeared, and joined him on the piazza.
"I am sent by Mrs. Wilson," she announced, "to ask you to stay."
"You take some pains to clear yourself from the suspicion of having any
interest in the matter."
"'I am only a messenger,'" she quoted saucily, seating herself on the
rail of the piazza in the sunshine, and looking so piquant that Maurice
felt resolution and resentment oozing out of his mind with fatal
rapidity.
He flushed at her allusion to his ill-considered interview with her,
but he could not for his life be half so indignant as he wished to be.
"Apparently an indifferent messenger. You evidently do not care whether
I go or I stay."
"Why should I?"
"Why should Mrs. Wilson?" he retorted, not very well knowing what he
was saying.
"Oh, Mrs. Wilson is your hostess. Besides," Bee went on, a delightful
look of mischief coming into her face, "she said that she hated to have
her plans interfered with, and that you were so handsome that she liked
to have you about."
Maurice flushed with a strangely mixed sensation of pleased vanity and
irritation, and was angry with himself that he could not receive her
jesting unmoved. He bowed stiffly.
"I am very sorry," he returned, "that Mrs. Wilson should be deprived of
so beautiful an ornament for her place."
"Then you will go?" Bee demanded, looking at him with mirthful eyes, a
glance which so moved him that he could not face it.
"I see no reason why I should remain."
"There certainly can be none if you see none. Well, I want to give you
something of yours before you leave us."
She drew from the folds of her handkerchief the little grotesque mask
which she had pinned upon her lover's cassock at the Mardi Gras ball.
Maurice flushed hotly at the sight.
"You are determined, Miss Morison, to spare me no humiliation in your
power."
"Humiliation?" she echoed. "Why, I was humiliating myself. Seriously,
Mr. Wynne, I have been ashamed of that performance ever since; and I
most sincerely beg your pardon. The humiliation is mine entirely."
"But where in the world," demanded he, a new thought striking him, "did
you get the thing? You know I threw it on the table."
"Miss Carstair gave it to Mr. Stanford, and I got it from him."
Maurice came a step nearer.
"Why?" he asked, his voice deepening.
"I--I didn't like to have him keep it," Bee murmured, with downcast
face and lower tone.
"Why?" he repeated, so much in earnest that his voice was almost
threatening.
She was for a moment more confused than ever, but rallying she held out
the mask.
"Oh, that I might tease you with it again!" she laughed.
He took the absurd trinket in his hand.
"It is pretty badly dilapidated," he observed.
"Yes," she said demurely. "I crushed it in the carriage on the way home
from the ball. I--I crumpled it up in my hand."
"Why?"
"You keep saying 'why' over and over to me, Mr. Wynne, as if I were on
the witness-stand."
"Why?" he persisted.
He had forgotten all the doubts which had beset and hindered him, the
scruples he had had about wooing, and the fears that she did not love
him. He was conscious only that she was there before him and that he
loved her; that her downcast looks seemed to encourage him, so that it
was impossible to rest until he knew what was really in her mind. The
unspoken message which he had somehow intangibly received from her made
him forget everything else. He loved her; he loved her, and a wild hope
was beating in his heart and seething in his brain. He could not turn
back now; he must know. He saw her grow paler as he looked at her,
standing so close that his face was bent down almost over her bent
head. He felt that her secret, nay, the crown of life itself, was
within his grasp if he did not fail now.
"Why?" he asked still again, hardly conscious that he said it, and yet
determined that he would win an answer at whatever cost.
She raised her face slowly, shyly; her eyes were shining.
"Because," she said, hardly above a whisper, "I was determined to
convince myself that I hated you. But then"--
Her words faltered, yet he still did not dare to give way to the warm
tide which he felt swelling up from his heart. His voice softened
almost to the tone of hers.
"But then?"
The crimson stained her beautiful face, and faded.
"I think I--I kissed it," she murmured, so low that the words were mere
phantoms of speech.
He tried to answer, but the words choked in his throat. He sprang
forward, and gathered her into his arms. It is an art which even
deacons may know by nature.
When the pair came in to luncheon an hour later, Mrs. Wilson looked up
at them, and then without question turned to a servant.
"You may tell Patrick that we shan't need the carriage for the
station," that sagacious woman said coolly.
Maurice was both surprised and touched by the gratification which his
engagement gave to his friends. Mrs. Wilson might be expected to take
satisfaction, since any woman is likely to approve of any match which
she may be allowed to have a hand in promoting; the Staggchases were
delighted, and Mrs. Morison received him with a kindness which moved
him more than anything else. Mrs. Morison treated him much as if he
were her son. She spoke wisely to him about his future, and she had a
word of warning on the subject of his attitude toward religion.
"My dear Maurice," she said, after she had come to call him by that
name, "let me give you a caution. The most fanatical belief is less
evil than dogmatic denial. If you are really the agnostic you claim to
be, your very confession that the truth is too great for human grasp
binds you to respect the unknown."
"But one cannot respect dogmas," he objected.
"We were not speaking of dogmas," she responded with sweet and
dignified earnestness, "but of the mystery of life and the great
unknown that incloses it. The great fault and danger of this age is
that it is all for breaking down. It reforms abuses and improves away
old errors; but it seems to forget the need of providing something to
take the place of what it clears away. Men can no more live without a
belief than without air."
"But it is hard to have patience with what one sees to be false."
"What one believes to be false, you mean. It isn't easy to have
patience with those who hold to theories that we've laid by; but surely
it is impossible not to respect the spirit in which any honest soul
sincerely believes."
"Yes," Maurice assented, somewhat doubtfully; "but it is so hard to
have patience with creeds that are entirely outworn."
The old lady smiled and shook her head.
"Again I have to say 'which seem to you outworn.' A creed is never
really outworn so long as a single man sincerely believes in it.
However, you may have as little patience as you like with them if you
will only remember that after all the creed itself is nothing, while
the attitude of the mind to truth is everything. If you respect
conviction, that is all I ask."
Mrs. Staggchase at another time had also an ethical word for him.
Maurice was deeply moved by the fact that Philip had gone into the
Catholic church and entered a monastery at Montreal. Like his friend,
Ashe had left the Clergy House as soon as he had come to the decision
to which his doubts led. He had seen Maurice, and had talked to him
unreservedly of his faith and of his plans. It was idle to attempt to
move him; and it was after bidding the proselyte good-by that Maurice
was talking of him to Mrs. Staggchase, and lamenting what occurred.
"My dear fellow," she observed in her faintly satirical manner, "I know
that I'm growing old, because whereas my convictions used to be all
right and my actions all wrong, now my actions are right enough, but my
convictions have all evaporated. Mr. Ashe is still young enough to need
convictions, and the more rigid they are the more contented he'll be."
"But with his training, to turn out in this way," responded Maurice.
"It's amazing. Think of a New England Puritan turned Catholic!"
"On the contrary, it is the most natural thing in the world. His
Puritan training is what has made him a Catholic."
Maurice thought a moment in silence.
"I suppose," he said at length, "that in this age there are only two
things possible for a thinking man. One must go over to Rome and rest
on authority, or choose to use his reason, and be an agnostic."
Mrs. Staggchase regarded him with a smile which made him flush a little.
"'No doubt but ye are the people,'" she quoted, "'wisdom shall die with
you.' Yet I have known persons really of intellectual respectability
who haven't found it necessary to do either."
He was too wise to answer her. He remembered that it was time to keep
an appointment with Berenice, and he smiled with the air of one too
happy to be ruffled.
"I suppose," he remarked, as he rose to go, "that if I would give you
the chance you would easily prove that Phil and I both are merely
Puritans more or less disguised!"