It seemed to Maurice when he came to take his seat in the parlor car that his cousin was little short of a witch. In the chair next to his own sat Berenice Morison. She greeted him with a friendly nod and smile.
"Mrs. Wilson told me that you were going on this train," she said, "and she got a chair for you next to mine so that you should take care of me."
He bowed rather confusedly, but with his heart full of delight.
"I shall be glad to do anything I can for you," he answered, vexed that he had not a better reply at command.
He saw the dapper young man across the aisle regard him curiously, and a feeling of dissatisfaction came over him as he reflected upon the singularity of his garb, and the incongruity between the clerical dress and the squiring of dames. Religious fervor is nourished by martyrdom, but it is seldom proof against ridicule. It is not impossible that the faint shade of amus.e.m.e.nt which Maurice fancied he detected in the eyes of the stranger opposite was a more effective cause for discontent with his calling than any of the influences to which he had been exposed under the auspices of Mrs. Staggchase.
He could not help feeling, moreover, that there was a gleam of fun in the clear dark eyes of Miss Morison. She was so completely at ease, so entirely mistress of the situation, that Wynne, little accustomed to the society of women, and secretly a little disconcerted by the surprise, felt himself at a disadvantage. It touched his vanity that he should be smiled at by the trimly appointed dandy opposite, and that he should be in experience and self-possession inferior to the girl beside him. He began vaguely to wonder what he had been doing all his life; he reflected that he had not in his old college days been so ill at ease, and it annoyed him to think that two years in the Clergy House should have put him so out of touch with the simplest matters of life. He said to himself scornfully that he was a monk already; and the thought, which would once have given him satisfaction, was now fraught with nothing but vexation and self-contempt. He had a subtile inclination to give himself up to the impulse of the moment. He felt the intoxication of the presence of Miss Morison, and he yielded to it with frank unscrupulousness. He resolved that he would repent afterward; yet instantly demanded of himself if this were really a sin. He was after all a man, if he had chosen the ecclesiastic calling. If indeed he were transgressing he told himself half contemptuously that as he did penance doubly, once that imposed by his own spiritual director and again that set by the Catholic at the North End, he might be held to expiate amply the pleasure of this hour. He at least was determined to forget for the once that he was a priest, and to remember only that he was a man, and that he loved this beautiful creature beside him. He noted the curve of her clear cheek and sh.e.l.l-like ear; the sweep of her eyelashes and the liquid deeps of her dark eyes. He let his glance follow the line of her neck below the rounded chin, and became suddenly conscious that he was fascinated by the soft swell of her bosom. The blood came into his cheeks, and he looked hastily out of the window.
The train was already clear of the city, and was speeding through the suburbs, rattling gayly and noisily past the ostentatious stations and the scattered houses. Maurice felt that his companion was secretly observing him, although she was apparently looking at the landscape which slid precipitately past. He wished to say something, and desired that it should not be clerical in tone. He would fain have spoken, not as a deacon, but as a man of the world.
"Are you going to New York?" he asked.
"I shall not have the pleasure of your company so far," she returned with a smile.
"No," he responded naively. "I am going only to Springfield."
"Ah," she said, smiling again; and too late he realized that she had meant that she was not going through.
He was the more vexed with himself because he was sure that his confusion was so plain that she could not but see it, and that it was with a kind intention of relieving his embarra.s.sment that she spoke again.
"I am going to visit my grandmother in Brookfield."
He replied by some sort of an unintelligible murmur, and was doubly angry with himself for being so shy and awkward. He glanced furtively at the trim young man opposite, and was relieved to find that that individual was reading and giving no heed. He wondered why he should be so completely thrown out of his usual self-possession by this girl, so that when he talked to her, and was most anxious to appear at his best, he was most surely at his worst. There came whimsically into his head a thought of the wisdom of training the clergy to the social gifts and graces, and he remembered the flippant speech of Mrs. Wilson about the need of their being able to pay compliments.
"I seem to be specially stupid when I try to talk to you," he said with boyish frankness.
Miss Morison looked at him curiously.
"Am I to take that as a compliment or the reverse?" she asked.
"It must be a compliment, I suppose, for it shows how much power you have over me."
He was rea.s.sured by her smile, and felt that this was not so badly said.
"The power to make you stupid, I think you intimated."
"Oh, no," he responded, with more eagerness than the occasion called for; "I didn"t mean that."
She smiled again, a smile which seemed to him nothing less than adorable, and yet which teased him a little, although he could not tell why. She took up the novel which lay in her lap.
"Have you read this?" she inquired.
He shook his head.
"You forget," he answered, "that I am a deacon. At the Clergy House we do not read novels."
"How little you must know of life," returned she.
There was a silence of some moments. The train rushed on, past fields desolate under patches of snow, and stark, leafless trees; over rivers dotted with cakes of grimy ice; between banks of frost-gnawed rock. The landscape in the dim January afternoon was gray and gloomy; and as day declined everything became more lorn and forbidding. Maurice turned away from the window, and sighed.
"How disconsolate the country looks!" said he. "I am country bred, and I don"t know that I ever thought of the sadness of it; but now if I see the country in winter it makes me sigh for the people who have to live there all the year round."
"But they don"t notice it any more than you did when you lived in it."
"Perhaps not; but it seems to me as if they must. At any rate they must feel the effects of it, whether they are conscious of it or not."
Miss Morison looked out at the dull, sodden fields and stark trees.
"I am afraid that you were never a true lover of the country," said she thoughtfully. "You should know my grandmother. She is almost ninety, but she is as young as a girl in her teens. She has lived in the finest cities in the world,--London, Paris, St. Petersburg, and of course our American cities. Now she is happiest in the country, and can hardly be persuaded to stay in town. She says that she loves the sound of the wind and the rain better than the noise of the street-cars."
"That I can understand," he answered; "but I am interested in men. I don"t like to be away from them. There is something intoxicating in the presence of ma.s.ses of human beings, in the mere sense that so many people are alive about you."
She looked at him with more interest than he had ever seen in her eyes.
"But I don"t understand," she began hesitatingly, "why"--
"Why what?" he asked as she paused.
"I don"t know that I ought to say it, but having begun I may as well finish. I was going to say that I could not understand how one so interested in men and so sensitive to humanity could be content to choose a profession which cuts him off from so much of active life."
"It was from interest in men, I suppose, that I chose it. I wanted to reach them, to do something for them. Although," Maurice concluded, flushing, "I don"t think that I realized at that time the feeling of being carried away by the mere presence of crowds of living beings."
There was another interval of silence, during which they both looked out at the cold landscape, blotted and marred by patches of snow tawny from a recent thaw.
"I doubt if you have got the whole of it," Miss Morison said thoughtfully, turning toward him. "Dear old grandmother is as deeply interested in the human as anybody can be. She always makes me feel that my life in the midst of folk is very thin and poor as compared to hers. She has known almost everybody worth knowing. Grandfather was minister to England and Russia, and she of course was with him. Yet she"s content and happy off here in Brookfield."
"Perhaps," Wynne returned hesitatingly, "there"s something the matter with the age. I don"t suppose that at her time of life she has anything of this generation"s restless"--
He broke off abruptly.
"Well?" his companion said curiously.
He smiled and sighed.
"I don"t know why I am talking to you so frankly," replied he. "As a matter of fact I find that I"m more frank with you than I am with myself. I"ve always refused to own to myself that there was anything restless in my feeling toward life; yet here I am saying it to you."
"One often thinks things out in that way. Hasn"t that been your experience?"
"Yes," he responded thoughtfully; "although I don"t know that I ever realized it before. I see now that I"ve often reasoned out things that bothered me simply by trying to tell them to my friend, Mr. Ashe."
"Is he your bosom friend and confidant? It is usually supposed to be a woman in such a case."
"Oh, no," was his somewhat too eager rejoinder; "I never talked like this to a woman. I never wanted to before."
A look which pa.s.sed over her face seemed to tell him that the talk was taking a tone more confidential than she liked. He was keyed up to a pitch of excitement and of sensitiveness; and a thrill of disappointment pierced him. He became at once silent; and then he fancied that she glanced at him as if in question why his mood had changed so suddenly. The train rolled into the station at Worcester, and he went out to walk a moment on the platform, and to try to collect his thoughts. He had forgotten now to question his right to be enjoying the companionship of Miss Morison; he gloated over her friendly looks and words, thinking of how he might have said this and that, and thus have appeared to better advantage, and resolving to be more self-controlled for the remainder of the ride. The open air was refreshing; and a great sense of joyousness filled him to overflowing.
When again he took his seat in the car he could have laughed from simple pleasure.