Part 55 (1/2)
”It will seem to him a moral catastrophe, a sort of ecclesiastical cataclysm,” Maurice continued, ”if Father Frontford isn't elected; and as far as I can judge there isn't much chance of that.”
”No,” she a.s.sented, ”I don't think there is much chance.”
”He said to me one day,” added Maurice thoughtfully, ”that in the Catholic Church there never could have been any danger of the election of a heretic bishop. I am afraid this will decide him.”
Mrs. Herman regarded him with a smile, studying him as if she were reading the working of his mind.
”You think that a misfortune,” she commented. ”You feel that it is a step farther into the darkness.”
”It is to narrow rather than to broaden his horizon, is it not?”
She played with her fan a moment, smiling to herself in a way which he did not understand, and looking down as if considering some old memory.
Then she met his glance with a look at once kind and wistful.
”It isn't of much use to argue the matter, I suppose,” were her words.
”It seems to me as if in talking to you I see my old mental self in a mirror, if you'll pardon me for saying so. When we come out from any conviction, and most of all from a religious belief, it seems to us a profound misfortune that any man should still believe what we have decided is false. By and by I think you will see that the chief point is that a man shall believe. What he believes doesn't so much matter.
It must be the thing that best suits his temperament.”
”Then to outgrow a dogma is to weaken our power. It certainly weakens our faith in general.”
”Yes,” she a.s.sented, ”that is the price we must pay for freedom; but if Philip can still believe, I have long ago pa.s.sed the place where I should regret it. Perhaps he is to be envied.”
Maurice shook his head.
”We may feel like that in some moods,” he concluded with a smile, ”but certainly nothing would induce you to change places with him.” ”Oh, no,” she cried; ”certainly not. But that is mere womanly lack of logic!”
x.x.xIII
A MINT OF PHRASES IN HIS BRAIN Love's Labor's Lost, i. 1.
The disappointment of Maurice at the failure of his effort to secure his aunt's fortune was perhaps rather more than less keen because the property had never tangibly been his. The t.i.tle of the fancy is that of which men are most tenacious, and the thing which has been held in fee of the imagination is precisely that which it is most grievous to lose.
Maurice returned to Boston completely overcome by the result of his expedition, his mind overflowing with chagrin and anger.
It was not only the money which he had missed, but he had to his thinking lost also the hope of being in a position to press his suit with Berenice. However intangible might be his plans for winning her, they none the less filled his mind. He refused to regard her coldness as enduring. He had in his thoughts imagined so many tender scenes of reconciliation in which he magnanimously forgave her for the sharpness of the repulse of their last meeting or humbly besought pardon for his own offenses, that he came to feel as if all misunderstanding had really been done away with. It had been in his mind that if he were but in a position to meet Berenice on equal terms in regard to fortune all might be well; and to be deprived of this hope was infinitely bitter.
Meanwhile he had before him the problem of reshaping his life. It was necessary that he decide what should take the place of the profession which he had laid down. Fortunately the decision was not difficult, as former inclination had practically settled the matter. The definite shaping of his plans came one day in a talk which he had with his cousin.
”It isn't exactly my affair, Maurice,” Mrs. Staggchase said, ”but I want to know, and that always makes a thing her affair with a woman,--what are you going to do with your life now that you have pulled it out of the mouth of the church?”
”It is good of you to care to ask,” he answered. ”I suppose I shall study law.”
”May I talk with you quite frankly?” she asked. ”Fred does me the honor to say that for a woman I have a reasonably clear head.”
”You may say whatever you like, Cousin Diana. I shall only be grateful.”
”Well, then, in the first place, how much have you to live on?”