Poor Ashe got home more dead than alive. His pa.s.sion had shaken him like a delirium. He had been swept away by his emotion, and had thrown to the winds past and future. He felt as the carriage drove away from Mrs. Fenton"s as if he had been swung up and down on some monstrous wave and dashed, broken and bleeding, on a rough sh.o.r.e. He could not think; and fortunately for him he was even too benumbed to feel greatly.
He reached the Hermans" in a sort of half-stupor, in which indifference, keen joy, and bitter contrition were strangely mingled.
The contrition, however, seemed somehow to belong to the future; it was what he must endure when the time should come for repentance; the joy was a present blessing, tingling in his every fibre.
He met Mrs. Herman in the hall. She exclaimed when she saw him, and he stood smiling at her, swaying as if he were intoxicated.
"What has happened?" she cried. "What have you done to your face?"
The room and his cousin swam before him in a golden mist. He felt that he was grinning idiotically, yet he could not stop. He tried to speak, but his lips seemed too swollen to form words. He put out his hand to grasp a chair, and perceived that he could not reach it.
"I--fall!" he managed to e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e.
Mrs. Herman caught him, and supported him to a chair. He felt her arm around him, and he wondered how he came to be thus embraced. He tried to grope back into the dusk of his mind to tell what had happened, and the fiery glow of the moment in which he had kissed the hand of Mrs.
Fenton came back to him. He sat suddenly erect.
"Cousin Helen," he said, with husky fervor, "I have been a wretch, and I rejoice in it! I have found out how sweet it is to sin! I am lost, lost, lost!"
He buried his face in his hands, almost hysterical. He felt his cousin"s hand on his shoulder.
"Philip," she said decisively, "you must stop this, and tell me what has happened."
"I beg your pardon," he answered, dropping his hands. "Mrs. Fenton was attacked by a drunken man in the North End, and I fought him. I am afraid that I am pretty disreputable looking."
"Yes, you are. I hope that is the worst of it."
She took him by the arm and led him into the library, where she established him in an easy-chair by the fire.
"I"ll send for a doctor to look you over," she said, "and meanwhile you are to take what I give you."
She left him, and Philip sat looking into the coals.
"Ah, if the glove had been off!" he murmured half aloud.
He flushed hotly, and struck his clenched hand against his breast, rubbing it back and forth until the haircloth within stung and smarted.
"No, no," he said to himself fiercely. "I will not think about it!"
Helen came back with a tumbler of something hot and fragrant, which made his eyes water as he drank. It sent a strange sensation of warmth through him, and seemed to restore his energy. The doctor, who came in soon after, found nothing serious the matter. Ashe was temporarily disfigured, but had luckily escaped without worse injury. He was sent to bed, and despite his expectation of pa.s.sing the night in an agony of remorse, he sank almost immediately into a dreamless sleep.
When Philip awoke his first sensation was that of stiffness and soreness,--soreness such as he had felt once when he had slept on the floor with his arms extended in the form of a cross. The thought of penance performed gave him a thrill of happiness, but to this instantly succeeded the remembrance of the events of yesterday, and his brief satisfaction vanished.
His face was discolored, and as he set out after breakfast to seek his spiritual adviser he felt a grim satisfaction in going abroad thus marked. It was in the nature of a mortification and a penance. He repeated prayers as he walked, his eyes cast down, his bosom p.r.i.c.ked by haircloth. He felt that he had already begun the expiation of the sin of yesterday.
He found Father Frontford at home, but so occupied as to be unable to listen to him. It would have been impossible for Philip to do as Maurice had done, and go to a man like Strathmore; and indeed, he had come to his Father Superior partly because of the sharpness with which he felt that his offending would be judged. Where Maurice would question, Philip would submit blindly and with ardent faith.
"Good-morning," the Father greeted Ashe kindly, holding out his left hand, while the right held suspended the pen which had already produced a heap of letters. "I am very glad to see you; but you find me extremely busy. There are so many things to be thought of just now, and so many letters to be written."
"Yes?" Philip responded absently.
"The election is so near at hand now," the other continued, "that we cannot leave any stone unturned. I am writing to some of the country clergy this morning. By the way, I wanted to speak to you about Montfield."
Philip wondered at himself for the remoteness which the affairs of the church had for him, so absorbed had he been in his own experiences.
"It seems to me," Father Frontford went on with fresh animation, "that perhaps you can do something there. Can"t you go down and talk with Mr.
Wentworth? He"s inclined to support Mr. Strathmore. You should be able to influence him; you are his spiritual son."
Mr. Wentworth was the rector in Philip"s native town, and under him both Ashe and Wynne had come from Congregationalism into the Church.
"It is possible," Philip said doubtfully. "Mr. Wentworth is, however, rather inclined to disagree with me nowadays. He is completely carried away by Mr. Strathmore."
A strange look came into the face of the old priest. He laid down his pen, and pressed together the tips of his white fingers, thin with fasting and self-denial.
"Did you not once tell me," he asked, "that Mr. Wentworth has hoped for years that he might bring your mother also into the fold?"
"Yes."
"And you are her only child?"
"Yes."
Father Frontford cast down his eyes; then raised them to flash a glance of vivid intelligence upon Ashe. Then again he looked down.
"I think that you had better run down and see your mother," he said.
"It is possible that she may be even now leaning toward the truth; and in any case you might arouse Mr. Wentworth to fresh activity. It is of much importance that the country clergy should be pledged not to support Mr. Strathmore in the convention."
Philip went away confused and baffled. He said to himself that his feeling was caused solely by his disappointment that he had found no opportunity to talk with the Father Superior about his own affairs; but it was impossible for him to put out of his mind the way in which his mission to Montfield had been spoken of. He was willing to go down and do what he could to arouse Mr. Wentworth to the gravity of the situation, but he could neither forget nor endure the hint that he should make of the hope of his mother"s conversion to the church a bribe. He could not think of this without being moved to blame Father Frontford; and he set himself to argue his mind into the belief that there was no harm in the suggestion. He walked along in a reverie as deep as it was painful, trying to see that the occasion called for the use of all lawful means, and that it was natural for the Father to suppose that Mrs. Ashe might be influenced more readily if the rector yielded to the wishes of her son in voting for Frontford.
"My dear Ashe, what have you been doing to yourself?" a strong voice asked him.
He came with a start to the consciousness of where he was, and that he had almost run into the Rev. De Lancy Candish. The thought flashed through his mind that Father Frontford had been too deeply absorbed in his plans to notice the bruised face of his deacon.
"How do you do?" he exclaimed impulsively. "Providence has sent you to me. Can you spare me a little of your time?"
"Certainly," the other answered, with some appearance of surprise. "I"m on my way home now."
They walked in silence toward the home of Mr. Candish, Ashe trying to frame some form of words by which he could confess the sin of his heart without betraying Mrs. Fenton. He wondered if Maurice Wynne could have helped him, and reflected how they had been in the habit of confiding everything to one another. Now he shrank from opening his heart to his friend, and was almost seeking out a confidant in the highways and hedges.
"You have not told me what sort of an accident you have had," Candish observed, as he fitted the latch-key into the lock of his door.
"I was attacked by a man in the North End," Philip answered, obeying the wave of the hand which invited him to enter. "He had insulted Mrs.
Fenton, and"--
"Mrs. Fenton!" echoed Candish.
The tone made Ashe turn quickly. Into his mind flashed the words of Helen and of Mrs. Wilson connecting the name of Candish with that of Mrs. Fenton. In his longing for comfort and advice he had seized upon the rector of the Nativity without remembering that he was the last person to whom he should come.
"Ah," he said, "it was true!"