Part 16 (1/2)

You really are rather insulting to me, if you think of it; but I pardon it because you don't know what you were doing. I suppose you never wanted to kiss a woman's hand or to write a sonnet to her eyebrow?”

Ashe felt the blood rush into his face in so hot a tide that he involuntarily turned away from his tormentor and walked toward the door. The question would in any case have been disconcerting, but it was made doubly so by the word which recalled the phrase from the Persian hymn which was in his mind so closely a.s.sociated with Mrs.

Fenton: ”O thou, to the arch of whose eyebrow the new moon is a slave!”

He had taken but a step, however, before Mrs. Wilson sprang from her seat, clapping her hands again. She interposed between him and the door, her face radiant with fun and mischief.

”Oh, what a blus.h.!.+” she cried. ”Upon my word, there's a woman; there is a woman even in that icebox you keep for a heart!”

She burst into a peal of laughter, while he stood confounded and speechless, trying to look unconscious, and vexatiously aware of how completely he failed. Mrs. Wilson laid the tips of her slender fingers on his arm, and peered up into his eyes.

”I wouldn't have believed it, St. Anthony! Come, make me your mother confessor, and I'll give you good advice. It's part of my mission to take charge of the love affairs of the clergy. Only yesterday I spent half the afternoon trying to find out how deeply Mr. Candish is smitten with a pretty widow.”

Ashe started in amazement and alarm. The words of Mrs. Herman connecting the name of Mrs. Fenton with that of Candish flashed into his mind, and seemed to supply what Mrs. Wilson left unspoken. The jealous pang which he felt at this confirmation of the interest of Candish in the woman he loved was doubled by the resentment he felt that this mocking torment before him should dare even to think of Edith. Almost without knowing it he broke out excitedly into protest.

”How dare you meddle with her affairs?” he cried.

Mrs. Wilson stared at him an instant in amazement, evidently taken completely aback. Then a light of cunning comprehension flashed into her sparkling eyes.

”Ah!” exclaimed she. ”You too! Is Mrs. Fenton so irresistible to the ecclesiastical heart?”

He confronted her in silence. A wave of misery, of helplessness, of weakness, swept over him. He had no right even to be Mrs. Fenton's defender. He was, as Mrs. Wilson intimated, not a real man, but a priest. The very tone of the whole conversation this morning showed how far she was from regarding him as one having any part in her world. He had only injured Mrs. Fenton by his ill-judged outburst, and given this creature who so delighted in baiting him one more opportunity. Worse than all else was the fact that he had given her a chance to jest about the woman whom he loved. The tears rushed to his eyes in the intensity of his feelings, and the beautiful face before him, with its teasing brightness and dancing fun, swam in his vision. He hated its laughter, and he expected fresh mockery for the emotion which he could not help betraying. To his surprise, however, Mrs. Wilson again laid her hand on his arm, and her face lost its gayety.

”You poor boy,” she said, with genuine feeling in her tone, ”is it so real as that? I wouldn't have hurt you for the world, if I had known.

What business had you to be meddling with vows and renunciation until you knew what they meant?”

She moved back to her seat as she spoke, motioning Ashe to resume his place. He was too deeply moved to obey her.

”If you will excuse me,” he said, ”I will see you to-morrow in regard to those delegates. I--I am not quite myself.”

”But you shall not go without saying that you forgive me for my teasing. Really, I am sorry and ashamed. I never intend to hurt you, but I see that my teasing may be taken more seriously than it is meant.”

There was real gentleness and pity in her smile, and as she rose to stand looking into his face with a winning smile of apology he forgot all his bitterness.

”The trouble is with me,” he said. ”I do not understand the world, and I should keep out of it.”

”Oh, not at all,” she retorted briskly. ”You should learn how to live in it.”

A spark of mischief kindled in her glance as she spoke, and she extended to him the back of her hand. Her smile challenged him, and he had been won and moved by the sympathy of her voice. The hand, too, was so beautiful, so slender, so feminine; he had so keen a longing to be comforted, to be soothed by womanly softness, and to a.s.suage his loneliness by woman's sympathy, that it seemed impossible to resist the invitation of those delicate fingers. He took her hand, and raised it half way to his lips. Then he dropped it abruptly, letting his own arm swing lifelessly to his side.

”No,” he said bitterly. ”I am a priest!”

X

A SYMPATHY OF WOE t.i.tus Andronicus, iii. 1.

The first sensation which returning consciousness brought to Berenice Morison, after the shock of the collision and the feeling that the whole train had been hurled confusedly into s.p.a.ce, was that of coming into fresher air as if she were emerging from the depths of the sea.

Opening her eyes without comprehending where she was or what had happened, she found herself on the side of an overturned car. Around her were dreadful noises, yells, groans, cries, shouts; her nostrils were filled with the reek of burning stuffs; the light of lanterns and of torches blinded her eyes; a sense of horror oppressed her; appalling calamity which she could not understand seemed to have overtaken her; and she shuddered with terror unspeakable. Her first impulse was to shriek and to attempt to flee from the fearful things which surrounded her; but instantly the self-control of returning reason made itself felt.

Berenice found herself supported by a couple of men, and it became clear to her in an instant that she had just been lifted from that pit below where she could see the glint of flame and the blinding smother of smoke, and from which came such heartrending cries that she instinctively tried to cover her ears. In the movement she realized that beside the hold which her rescuers had of her, she was grasped by other arms; that she was in the embrace of a man apparently dead. In the dim light her dazed sense did not recognize him, and she struggled to release herself from the hold of this corpse.