The Puritans.
by Arlo Bates.
I
AFTER SUCH A PAGAN CUT Henry VIII., i. 3.
"We are all the children of the Puritans," Mrs. Herman said smiling.
"Of course there is an ethical strain in all of us."
Her cousin, Philip Ashe, who wore the dress of a novice from the Clergy House of St. Mark, regarded her with a serious and doubtful glance.
"But there is so much difference between you and me," he began. Then he hesitated as if not knowing exactly how to finish his sentence.
"The difference," she responded, "is chiefly a matter of the difference between action and reaction. You and I come of much the same stock ethically. My childhood was oppressed by the weight of the Puritan creed, and the reaction from it has made me what you feel obliged to call heretic; while you, with a saint for a mother, found even Puritanism hardly strict enough for you, and have taken to semi-monasticism. We are both pushed on by the same original impulse: the stress of Puritanism."
She had been putting on her gloves as she spoke, and now rose and stood ready to go out. Philip looked at her with a troubled glance, rising also.
"I hardly know," said he slowly, "if it"s right for me to go with you.
It would have been more in keeping if I adhered to the rules of the Clergy House while I am away from it."
Mrs. Herman smiled with what seemed to him something of the tolerance one has for the whim of a child.
"And what would you be doing at the Clergy House at this time of day?"
she asked. "Wouldn"t it be recreation hour or something of the sort?"
He looked down. He never found himself able to be entirely at ease in answering her questions about the routine of the Clergy House.
"No," he answered. "The half hour of recreation which follows Nones would just be ended."
His cousin laughed confusingly.
"Well, then," she rejoined, "begin it over again. Tell your confessor that the woman tempted you, and you did sin. You are not in the Clergy House just now; and as I have taken the trouble to ask leave to carry you to Mrs. Gore"s this afternoon, more because you wanted to see this Persian than because I cared about it, it is rather late for objections."
Philip raised his eyes to her face only to meet a glance so quizzical that he hastened to avoid it by going to the hall to don his cloak; and a few moments later they were walking up Beacon Hill.
It was one of those gloriously brilliant winter days by which Boston weather atones in an hour for a week of sullenness. Snow lay in a thin sheet over the Common, and here and there a bit of ice among the tree-branches caught the light like a glittering jewel. The streets were dotted with briskly gliding sleighs, the jingle of whose bells rang out joyously. The air was full of a vigor which made the blood stir briskly in the veins.
Philip had not for years found himself in the street with a woman.
Seldom, indeed, was he abroad with a companion, except as he took the walk prescribed in the monastic regime with his friend, Maurice Wynne.
For the most part he went his way alone, occupied in pious contemplation, shutting himself stubbornly in from outward sights and sounds. Now he was confused and unsettled. Since a fire had a week earlier scattered the dwellers in the Clergy House, and sent him to the home of his cousin, he had gone about like one bewildered. The world into which he was now cast was as unknown to him as if he had pa.s.sed the two years spent at St. Mark"s in some far island of the sea. To be in the street with a lady; to be on his way to hear he knew not what from the lips of a Persian mystic; to have in his mind memory of light talk and pleasant story; all these things made him feel as if he were drifting into a strange unknown sea of worldliness.
Yet his feeling was not entirely one of fear or of reluctance.
Sensitive to the tips of his fingers, he felt the influences of the day, the sweetness of his cousin"s laughter, the beauty of her face. He was exhilarated by a strange intoxication. He was conscious that more than one pa.s.ser looked curiously at them as, he in his ca.s.sock and she in her furs, they walked up Beacon Street. He felt as in boyhood he had felt when about to embark in some adventure to childhood strange and daring.
"It is a beautiful day," he said involuntarily.
"Yes," Mrs. Herman answered. "It is almost a pity to spend it indoors.
But here we are."
They had come into Mt. Vernon Street, and now turned in at a fine old house of gray stone.
"Is there any discussion at these meetings?" he asked, as they waited for the door to be opened.
"Oh, yes; often there is a good deal. You"ll have ample opportunity to protest against the heresies of the heathen."
"I do not come here to speak," he replied, rather stiffly. "I only come to get some idea of how the oriental mind works."
He felt her smile to be that of one amused at him, but he could not see why she should be.
"I must give you one caution," she went on, as they entered the house.
"It"s the same that the magicians give to those who are present at their incantations. Be careful not to p.r.o.nounce sacred words."
"But don"t they use them?"
"Oh, abundantly; but they know how to use them in a fashion understood only by the initiated, so that they are harmless."
They pa.s.sed up the wide staircase of Mrs. Gore"s handsome, if over-furnished house. They were shown into the drawing-room, where they were met by the hostess, a tall, superb woman of commanding presence, her head crowned with ma.s.ses of snow-white hair. Coming in from the brilliant winter sunlight, Philip could not at first distinguish anything clearly. He went mechanically through his presentation to the hostess and to the Persian who was to address the meeting, and then sank into a seat. He looked curiously at the Persian, struck by the picturesque appearance of the long snow-white beard, fine as silk, which flowed down over the rich robe of the seer. The face was to Philip an enigma. To understand a foreign face it is necessary to have learned the physiognomy of the people to which it belongs, as to comprehend their speech it is necessary to have mastered their language. As he knew not whether the countenance of the old man attracted or repelled him more, and could only decide that at least it had a strange fascination.
Suddenly Ashe felt his glance called up by a familiar presence, and to his surprise saw his friend, Maurice Wynne, come into the room, accompanied by a stately, bright-eyed woman who was warmly greeted by Mrs. Gore. He wondered at the chance which had brought Maurice here as well as himself; but the calling of the meeting to order attracted his thoughts back to the business of the moment.
The Persian was the latest ethical caprice of Boston. He had come by the invitation of Mrs. Gore to bring across the ocean the knowledge of the mystic truths contained in the sacred writings of his country; and his ministrations were being received with that beautiful seriousness which is so characteristic of the town. In Boston there are many persons whose chief object in life seems to be the discovery of novel forms of spiritual dissipation. The cycle of mystic hymns which the Persian was expounding to the select circle of devotees a.s.sembled at Mrs. Gore"s was full of the most sensual images, under which the inspired Persian psalmists had concealed the highest truth. Indeed, Ashe had been told that on one occasion the hostess had been obliged to stop the reading on the ground that an occidental audience not accustomed to anything more outspoken than the Song of Solomon, and unused to the amazing grossness of oriental symbolism, could not listen to the hymn which he was pouring forth. Fortunately Philip had chanced upon a day when the text was harmless, and he could hear without blushing, whether he were spiritually edified or not.
The Persian had a voice of exquisite softness and flexibility. His every word was like a caress. There are voices which so move and stir the hearer that they arouse an emotion which for the moment may override reason; voices which appeal to the senses like beguiling music, and which conquer by a persuasive sweetness as irresistible as it is intangible. The tones of the Persian swayed Ashe so deeply that the young man felt as if swimming on a billow of melody. Philip regarded as if fascinated the slender, dusky fingers of the reader as they handled the splendidly illuminated parchment on which glowed strange characters of gold, marvelously intertwined with leaf and flower, and cunning devices in gleaming hues. He looked into the deep, liquid eyes of the old man, and saw the light in them kindle as the reading proceeded. He felt the dignity of the presence of the seer, and the richness of his flowing garment; but all these things were only the fitting accompaniments to that beautiful voice, flowing on like a topaz brook in a meadow of daffodils.
The Persian spoke admirable English, only now and then by a slight accent betraying his nationality. He made a short address upon the antiquity of the hymn which he was that day to expound, its authorship, and its evident inspiration. Then in his wonderful voice he read:--
THE HYMN OF ISMAT.
Yesterday, half inebriated, I pa.s.sed by the quarters where the vintners dwell, to seek the daughter of an infidel who sells wine.
At the end of the street, there advanced before me a damsel, with a fairy"s cheeks, who in the manner of a pagan wore her tresses dishevelled over her shoulders like a sacerdotal thread. I said: "O thou, to the arch of whose eyebrow the new moon is a slave, what quarter is this, and where is thy mansion?"
She answered: "Cast thy rosary to the ground; bind on thy shoulder the thread of paganism; throw stones at the gla.s.s of piety; and quaff from a full goblet."
"After that come before me that I may whisper a word in thine ear;--thou wilt accomplish thy journey if thou listen to my discourse."
Abandoning my heart, and rapt in ecstasy, I ran after her until I came to a place in which religion and reason forsook me.
At a distance I beheld a company all insane and inebriated, who came boiling and roaring with ardor from the wine of love.
Without cymbals or lutes or viols, yet all filled with mirth and melody; without wine or goblet or flagon, yet all incessantly drinking.
When the cord of restraint slipped from my hand, I desired to ask her one question, but she said: "Silence!"