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 att.i.tude 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 a.s.sented, 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 att.i.tude 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!"