The chat of the latter part of the journey was more easy and unconstrained than at the beginning. It was not clear to Wynne what the change was, but he was aware that he was somehow talking less self-consciously than before. They spoke of one thing and another, and it teased the young man somewhat that when now and then his companion mentioned a book he had seldom seen it. The things which he had read of late years he knew without asking that she would not have seen. Even the names of current writers of fiction were hardly known to him, and an allusion to what they had written was beyond him. In spite of a word which now and again brought out the difference between his world and hers, however, Maurice thoroughly enjoyed the talk. Now and then he would reflect in a sort of sub-consciousness that the delight of this hour was to be dearly paid for with penance and repentance, but this provoked in him rather the determination at least to enjoy it to the full while it lasted, than any inclination to deny himself the present gratification.
It has been remarked that the ecclesiastical temper is histrionic; and Wynne was not without a share of this spirit. He would have gone to the stake for a conviction, and made a beautifully effective death-scene for the edification of men and angels, not for a moment aware that there was anything artificial in what he was doing. Now he was not without a consciousness that he was playing the role of a lover and a prodigal, sincere in his love and devotion; yet none the less subtly aware how much more interesting is repentance when there is genuine human pa.s.sion to repent, is renunciation when there is real love to sacrifice; of how much more effective is saintliness set off against a background of transgression. It was a real if somewhat childish joy to be able to sin actually yet without going beyond hope; of being dramatically false to his vows without crossing the line of possible pardon.
"We shall be in Brookfield in ten minutes," Miss Morison said, beginning to look about for her belongings. "We pa.s.s the New York express just here."
Hardly had she spoken when suddenly and without warning there was an outburst of shrieks from the whistle of the engine, answered and blended with that of another. Before Maurice could realize what the outburst meant, there followed a horrible shock which seemed to dislocate every joint in his body. Berenice was thrown violently into his arms, flung as a dead weight, and shrieking as she fell against his breast. Instinctively he clasped her, and in the terror of the moment it was for a brief instant no more to him that his embrace enfolded her than if she had been the veriest stranger. A hideous din of yells, of crashing wood and rending iron, of shivering gla.s.s, of escaping steam, of indescribable sounds which had no resemblance to anything which he had ever heard or dreamed of, and which seemed to beat upon his ears and his brain like blows of bludgeons wielded by the hands of infuriate giants. The end of the car before him was beaten in; splinters of wood and fragments of gla.s.s flew about him like hail; it was like being without warning exposed to the fiercest fire of batteries of an implacable enemy. A woman was dashed at his very feet torn and bleeding, her face mangled so that he grew sick and faint at the sight; pinned against the seat opposite, transfixed by a long splinter as with a javelin, was the dapper young man, horribly writhing and mowing, and then stark dead in an instant, staring with wide open eyes and distorted face like a ghastly mask. Moans and shrieks, grindings and roarings, howlings and babbling cries that were human yet were piercingly inarticulate filled the air with an inhuman din which drove him to a frenzy. It seemed as if the world had been torn into fragments.
Yet all this was within the s.p.a.ce of a second. Indeed, although all these things happened and he saw and heard them clearly, there was no pause between the first alarming whistle and the overturning of the car which now came. He was lifted up; he saw the whole car sway with a dizzying, sickening motion, and then plunge violently over. Fortunately it so turned that he and Miss Morison were on the upper side. He fell across the aisle, striking the chair opposite, but somehow instinctively managing to protect Berenice from the force of the concussion. She no longer cried out, but she clung convulsively about his neck, and as they swayed for the fall he saw in her eyes a look of wild and desperate appeal. He forgot then everything but her. The desire to protect and save her, the feeling that he belonged absolutely to her and that even to the death he would serve her, swallowed up every other feeling. As they went over a vise-like grip caught his arm, and amid all the infernal confusion he somehow connected that despairing clutch with a succession of shrill and piercing shrieks which rang in his ear, seeming to be close to him. He remembered that in the chair behind his had been a young girl, and he felt a pity for her that choked him like a hand at his throat. Then as they went down he instinctively but vainly tried to shake off the hold, which was as that of a trap. It was like being in the actual grip of death.
All sorts of loose articles fell with them from the upturned side of the car to the other; they were part of a cataract of falling bodies, involved as in a crushing avalanche. Wynne found himself in this falling shower crumpled up between two chairs, one of his feet evidently thrust through a broken window and the other still held by that convulsive clasp. Miss Morison was half above him, partly supported by a chair which still held by its fastenings to the floor.
He could not see her face, and his body was so twisted that he could not move his head with freedom. Berenice was evidently insensible, but whether stunned from the shock or more seriously hurt he could not tell. He struggled fiercely to free himself, straining her to his breast. There were still movements in the car after it had overturned.
It rocked and settled; for some time small articles continued to fall.
He drew the face of the unconscious girl more closely into his bosom to protect it. As he did so he was aware that his arm was hurt. A burning, biting pain singled itself out from all the aches of blows and contusions. He seemed to remember that a long time ago, some hours nearer the beginning of this catastrophe which had lasted but a moment, he had felt something rip and tear the flesh; but he had been so absorbed in the attempt to shield Berenice that he had not heeded. Now the anguish was so great that it seemed impossible to endure it. He set his teeth together, determined not to cry out lest she should hear him and think that he lacked courage. Then it seemed to him that he was swooning. He struggled against the feeling; and for what seemed to him an interminable time he wavered between consciousness and insensibility. It was either growing darker or he was losing the power to see. He could not distinguish clearly any longer that human hand, smeared with blood, sticking ludicrously in the air from amid a pile of bags, coats, and all sorts of things thrown together just where the position of his head constrained him to look. He had been seeing that hand for a long time, it seemed to him, and only now that the darkness had so increased as to cut it off from his sight did he realize what it was and what it must mean.
He still retained a consciousness of the face of Berenice, warm against his bosom, and with each wave of faintness he struggled to keep his senses that he might protect her. The din of noises seemed far away, the cries somewhere at a distance ever increasing. The moans that had seemed to him those of the girl who clutched his arm grew fainter, until they were lost in the buzz and whirr of a hundred other sounds.
Then the clasp which held him relaxed as suddenly as if a rope had been cut away. It came into his mind with a wave of horror that the girl who had held him was dead. The thought that Berenice might be dead also followed like a flash, and aroused his benumbed senses. He spoke to her; he tried to move; to release her from her position. He seemed buried under a mound of debris, and she gave no sign of life. He exhausted himself in frantic attempts to escape; to get his arms free; to turn his head far enough to see her face; to thrust back the rubbish which had fallen against them. The anguish to his arm was so great that he could not continue; he could do nothing but suffer whatever fate had in store for him. He tried to pray; but his prayers were broken and confused e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns.
All at once he distinguished amid the chaos of noises roaring and singing in his ears something which made his heart stand still; which pierced to his dulled consciousness like a stab. It was the cry of "Fire!" He had once seen a servant with her hair in flames, and instantly arose before him the picture of her shriveling locks and the terror of her face. He seemed to see the dear head on his bosom--The thought was more than he could bear, and for the first time he cried out, shouting for help in a transport of frenzied fear. He was so absorbed in his thought of Berenice that he had forgotten himself; but the realization of his own peril revived as a waft of smoke came over him, choking and bewildering. He was then to die here, stifled or wrapped in the torture of flame. Then the wild and desperate thought sprang up that at least if he must die he should die with her on his bosom, clasped in his arms. He might give himself up to the delirium of that joy, since there was no more of earth to contaminate it. But the horror of it! The anguish for her as well as for him! Not by fire! His thoughts whirled in his brain like sparks caught in a hurricane. He scarcely knew where he was or what had happened to him. Only he was acutely aware of the acrid smoke, of how it increased, constantly more dense and stifling.
However the mind may for a moment be turned aside from its usual way by circ.u.mstances, habit is quick to rea.s.sert itself. The habitual constrains men even in the midst of events the most startling. The mind of Wynne had been too long bred in priestly forms not to turn to the religious view here in the face of death. His conscience cried out that he might be responsible for the peril and disaster which had come upon them. With the unconscious egotism of the devotee, he felt that heaven had been avenging the impiousness of his sin. He had dared to trifle with his sacred calling, to look back to the loves of the world and of the flesh, and swift destruction had overtaken him. And Berenice had been crushed by the divine vengeance which had so deservedly fallen on him. He groaned in anguish, seeming to see how she had perished through the blight of his pa.s.sion. Not by fire, O G.o.d! Not by fire! How long would it be possible to breathe in this stifling reek, heavy with unspeakable odors? It was his crime that had brought her to this death.
He, a man set apart and consecrated to the work of G.o.d, had turned from heaven to earth, and heaven had smitten with one blow him and the woman who had been unwittingly his temptation. And she so innocent, so pure, so sacred! Through his distraught mind rushed a pang of hatred against the power that could do this. He was willing to suffer for his sin, but where was the justice of involving her in his ruin? It was because this was what would hurt him most! It was the work of a devil! Then this thought seemed to him a new transgression which might lessen the chances of his being able to save her, and he tried to forget it in prayer, to atone by penitence. He offered his own life amid whatever tortures would propitiate the offended deity, but he prayed that she might be spared.
All this time--and whether the time were long or short he could not tell--he had heard continued cries and groans. He had now and then been dully aware of a change in the noises. Now it would seem as if all else was swallowed up in the sound of tremendous blows, as if the car were being struck again and again by a mighty battering-ram. Then a chorus of shouting went roaring up, as if an army cried. Noise and physical sensation were too intimately blended to be separated; his brain struggled in confusion, emerging now and then for a moment of consecutive thought and sinking back into semi-unconsciousness as a spent swimmer goes down, fighting wildly for life. He knew that a light had come into the car. He saw it amid the smoke, and his first thought was that it was flame. Dulled and half asphyxiated, he said to himself now almost with indifference that the end had come. Then with a thrill which for a moment aroused all his energies he recognized that it was the glow of a lantern. He was aware that rescuers were close above him, climbing down through the windows over his very head. He cried to them in a paroxysm of appeal:--
"Save her! Save her!"
Whether he was heeded amid the babble of cries and all the noises which seemed to swell to drown his voice, he could not tell, but in another instant he felt that friendly hands had seized Miss Morison, and were endeavoring to lift her insensible form. He strove to loosen his hold, but the effort gave him agony so intolerable that he could do nothing.
A thousand points seemed to rend and tear him as he tried to move, and when a voice somewhere above him shouted: "We"ll have to try to lift them together!" he experienced a strange sort of double consciousness as if he stood outside of himself and heard others talking of him. He felt himself grasped under the arms, and the pain of being moved was too horrible to be endured. He shrieked in mortal agony, and then in a whirl of dizzying circles seemed to go down in a tide of blackness sparkling with millions of sharp scintillations.
VIII
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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sured himself with a vehemence too feverish not to be fallacious that he was instigated only by entirely disinterested feelings; by the desire to a.s.sist in deeds of Christian helpfulness, and by pleasure in the society of one whose devotion to G.o.dliness 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 l.u.s.ts and beguiled. There were nights when he cast himself upon the ground in an agony of self-abas.e.m.e.nt, beating his breast and praying in a pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion 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 s.e.xes in the mind of the professed celibate. To keep before the thoughts the theory that pa.s.sion 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 un.o.bservant 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."