Puritans

• Publisher: The Floating Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781776585557
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

At the dawn of the twentieth century, the chasm between religious faith and secular culture was more pronounced than ever before. That's the theme at the heart of Arlo Bates' novel The Puritans, which follows two seminary students as they struggle to reconcile their religious calling with the worldly pleasures that surround them.

XI - In Place and in Account Nothing

*

1 Henry IV., v. 1.

The power of self-torture which the human heart possesses is well-nigh infinite. When one considers how futile are self-reproaches, self-examinations, remorses for faults and weaknesses; how vanity puts itself upon the rack and conscience inflicts envenomed wounds; how self tortures self until the whole man writhes in anguish, and in the end nothing is altered by all this pain, one might almost thank the gods for moral insensibility. Yet New England was founded upon the principle that this temper of mind develops manlihood; that inward struggles are the only discipline which can fit a human being for the outward conquest of life. The Puritans had power to subdue the wilderness, to overcome whatever obstacles interposed to the founding of a state and the establishing of the truth as they conceived it, because all these difficulties were accidents, outward and of comparative insignificance when set against the real life, which was within. If a heritage of self-consciousness has come down with the noble gifts which the forefathers have left to their children, it is at least part of the price paid for great things.

To Maurice that night only the pain and misery of his Puritan inheritance made themselves felt. Through the long hours he lacerated his heart and soul with repentance, with remorseful self-reproaches, enduring agony intense enough to be the reward meet for a crime. Fevered with the loss of blood, racked with the smart of bodily wounds, bruised and sore from the injuries of the accident, unable to move without torture in every joint, he yet forgot physical in mental suffering.

The weakness and disorder of his body confused and distorted his thoughts, but it was in any case inevitable that with his training he should be wrung with bitter self-condemnation. He flushed and thrilled at the remembrance of the pressure of Berenice against his breast; the warmth of her breath, the odor of her hair, seemed to come back to him even out of the tumult and reek of the burning car. He remembered how it had seemed to him—to him, a priest—sweet to die if he might die clasping unrebuked this woman in his arms. The blood throbbed in his temples as he recalled the wild thoughts that had swirled in a mad throng through his brain in those moments which had seemed like hours; the blood throbbed, too, in his wounded arm, so that a groan forced itself through his parched lips. He was constantly throwing himself to and fro as if to escape from some teasing thought, always to be by the sharp pang in his wound brought to a sense of his condition. The whole night passed in an agony of mind and body.

There were moments, too, when he seemed to stand outside of himself and judge dispassionately this human creature, wounded, broken, rent in body and in soul; moments in which he sometimes seemed to smile in supreme contempt of the wretch so weak, so wavering, so utterly to be despised; sometimes to protest in angry pity against the unmerited anguish which had been heaped upon the sufferer. He had instants of delirious clearness and exaltation in which he felt himself lifted above the ordinary weaknesses of humanity; to see more clearly, and to take a view broader than any to which he had ever before attained. It shocked and startled him to realize that in these intervals which seemed like inspiration,—intervals in which he felt himself illuminated with inner light,—he cast from him the ideals which he had hitherto cherished. As if for the first time seeing clearly, he felt that men should not be hampered by dogmas which cramp and restrain. A line he had seen somewhere, and which he had put aside as irreverent and irreligious, kept repeating itself over and over in his head—

"He had crippled his youth with a creed."

Life stretched out before him futile and meaningless unless love should light it, unless he could win Berenice; and he protested feverishly against any vow that would thwart or restrain him. He had crippled his youth with a creed unnatural and deforming; it was time for the manhood within him to shake off its fetters and assert its strength. He told himself wildly that now for the first time he saw life as it was; that now first he understood the meaning of existence, and that life meant nothing without freedom and love.

The beliefs of years, however, or even those habits which so often pass for beliefs, are not to be done away with in a night. Even love cannot completely alter the course of life in a moment. At the last, worn out with the conflict, but with a supreme effort to regain spiritual calm, Maurice flung his whole soul into an agony of supplication, as he might have flung his body at the foot of a cross, and prayed to be delivered from this too great temptation. He would renounce; he would pluck up by the roots this passion which had sprung and grown in his heart; at whatever cost he would tear it up, and be faithful to his high calling. As a child casts itself upon the bosom of its mother, he cast himself upon the Divine, and with an ecstatic sense of pardon, of peace, of perfect joy, he fell asleep at last.

Maurice awoke in broad daylight, with a confused sense that the world was falling in fragments about his ears, and that his name was being shouted by the angel of the last trump. He found that the physician who could not be had on the previous night had now been brought to his chamber by Mehitabel.

"Here's the saw-bones at last," was the characteristically uncompromising introduction of the woman.

"Dr. Murray's come to tell you that all Mis' Morison did last night was wrong, and that probably you'll have to have your arm cut off 'cause of it."

Wynne sat up in bed dazed and uncomprehending, but the smile of the doctor brought him to a sense of where he was. The latter was not in the least surprised by Mehitabel's manner of speech.

"If you'd had anything to do with it, Mehitabel," was Dr. Murray's comment, "I've no doubt the arm would have had to go; but when Mrs. Morison does a thing, it's another story."

"Humph!" sniffed she. "You've got some small amount of sense, if it ain't much. Now, young man, set your teeth together and put out your tongue—your arm, I mean."

Maurice smiled, not so much at the humor of the error as at the fact that it was so evidently intentional on the part of the elderly virgin, who cunningly glanced at him and at the doctor to discover if the rare stroke of wit were properly appreciated.

"Jocose as ever, Mehitabel," observed the doctor, going to work at once with swift and delicate precision. "You've a nasty cut here, Mr. Wynne; but you're lucky to get off with nothing worse. It's a good deal to come through such an accident without a permanent injury."

"That's true," Maurice responded cheerfully. "I dreamed in the night that I was all in bits."

"Plenty of poor fellows were. It was the most terrible smash-up for years."

"How is Miss Morison?" Wynne asked, wondering if his voice betrayed the inward agitation without which he could not pronounce her name.

"Oh, she's all right. Nervous and shaky, of course; but she's a sound, wholesome creature, and it won't take her long to recover her tone."

"Yes; I brought her up," interposed Mehitabel, with grim self-complacency. "Don't pull that bandage so tight, doctor. You want to have me running over after you in an hour to come and loosen it."

"That's it, Mehitabel; teach your grandmother to suck eggs. I come here, Mr. Wynne, chiefly to learn my profession from her."

"She seems willing to teach you," Wynne replied, and then, with a boyish doubt if she might not take offense, he added, "which of course is very kind of her."

Mehitabel chuckled in high good-humor.

"Kind it is and unappreciated it is; and little is the credit he does to his training. Men are all alike; if they owned half they owe to women they'd be too ashamed to show their heads in daylight."

The droll airs of the old woman entertained Wynne so greatly that he bore with exemplary fortitude the painful attentions of the physician, the harder to bear because the wound had had time to inflame. The arm was dressed at last, and the doctor took himself away with a parting passage of arms with Mehitabel.

"The thing for you to do, young man," she said, when Dr. Murray had departed, "is to stay in bed where you are, and that's reason enough for a man to want to get up."

"I'm not fond of staying in bed," Maurice responded with a smile; "and besides that I must get back to Boston."

She regarded him with an expression of marked disfavor.

"Humph," said she. "Quarters ain't good enough for you, I suppose."

"On the contrary, it is I who am not good enough for the quarters."

Mehitabel went on with her work of arranging the curtains and putting the room to rights as she answered:—

"Well, I dare say you ain't; but what special thing've you done?"

"Special thing?" Maurice repeated, somewhat confused. "Oh, I see. The fact is, I don't think I've any right to impose on the hospitality of Mrs. Morison."

"Well," assented she again, "I dare say you ain't; but if she's willing, you ain't no occasion to grumble, 's I see. She ain't a-going to hear of your starting out hot-foot, 's if she wouldn't keep you. It'd look bad for the reputation of the family."

"But," began he, "I"—

"Besides," the old woman continued, ignoring his attempt to speak, "you ain't got much to wear. Them petticoats you come in, which ain't suitable for any man to wear, without it's the bearded lady in the circus if she's a man, which I never rightly knew, is so torn to pieces by the grace of heaven that you can't go in them, and all the rest of your clothes are all holes and blood."

"I suppose my clothes were pretty well used up," he replied, divided between a desire to laugh and a feeling that he should resent the affront to his clerical garb; "and of course my baggage is nowhere. Can I get clothing here, or shall I have to send to Boston?"

"You can't get men's petticoats," Mehitabel retorted uncompromisingly, "nor none of them Popish things. If it's good, plain God-fearing pants and such, there ain't no trouble, and the price is reasonable."

"Plain God-fearing trousers and coat will do," Maurice answered, bursting into a laugh. "Do you think that you could send for some if I give you the size?"

She was evidently pleased at the success of her attempts to be funny, for her face relaxed, but she set her mouth primly.

"I'd go myself," was her reply. "I'd trust myself to pick out things, and it might give the girls ideas to go traipsing round buying pants and men's fixings."

When she was gone Maurice lay in a pleasant half-doze, smiling at the absurd old servant with her labored determination to be thought witty, and wondering at the caprices of existence. He was interrupted by the arrival of his breakfast, and after that had been disposed of he received a visit from Mrs. Morison. She was a fine old lady with snowy hair, her sweet face wrinkled into a relief-map of the journey of life, her eyes as bright and sparkling as those of her granddaughter. Wynne could see the family likeness at a glance, and said to himself that some day when time had wrinkled her smooth cheeks and whitened her hair Berenice would be such another beautiful dame. Mrs. Morison brought with her an air of brisk yet serene individuality, as of the fire which on a winter evening burns cheerily on the hearth, warming, invigorating, suggesting wholesome and happy thoughts. She was so kindly and yet so thoroughly alive to the very tips of her fingers that her age almost seemed rather a merry disguise like the powdered hair of a young girl.

"Good-morning," she greeted him cheerily. "The doctor says that you are doing well. I hope that you feel so."

"Thank you," he answered. "I don't seem to have as many joints as I used to have, but I'm doing famously, thanks to the skillful treatment I had last night."

"It was not too skillful, I'm afraid; but Dr. Murray says I did no harm, and that's really a good deal of a compliment from him."

"I cannot thank you enough for your kindness," Maurice said. "It is so strange to be taken care of"—

He broke off suddenly, awkward from shyness and genuine feeling. He looked up, however, to meet a glance so reassuring that he felt at once at ease.

"It is time that it ceased to be strange," she returned. "We must try before you go to make you more accustomed to being looked after a little."

He returned her kind look with a grateful smile.

"You are too generous," he said. "I must not trespass on your good-nature. I think that I could manage to get back to Boston to-day if the trains are running."

"The trains are running, but that is no reason why you should think of running too. We mean to mend you before we let you go."

"But"—

"There is no 'but' about it," Mrs. Morison declared, speaking more seriously. "Berenice and I have settled it, and we are accustomed to having our own way. You are selfish to wish that we should be left with all the obligation on our shoulders."

"Obligation?" repeated he. "How on earth is there any obligation but mine?"

"Do you think that there is no obligation in owing to you Bee's life?"

He stared at her in complete confusion. He made a vain effort to recall clearly what had happened in the car. He remembered the crash, the din, the pain, the horrible clutch on his arm, the choking reek of the smoke, his frantic fear for Berenice, but all these things seemed blurred in his mind like a landscape obscured by a night-fog. Only one memory stood out clear and sharp; that was the joy of holding Berenice clasped in his arms, and of thinking that they would die together. He felt the blood mount in his cheek at the thought, and he hastened to speak, lest his hostess should divine what was in his mind.

"Why do you say that?" he asked. "It was not I that saved her. I was not even conscious when she was taken out."

Mrs. Morison smiled, and touched lightly with the tip of her finger the bandaged arm which lay on the outside of the coverlid.

"We won't dispute about it," said she. "The proof is here. Let it go, if you like; but we shall remember."

"But," protested Maurice, "it wouldn't be honest for me to let you think that I did anything for Miss Morison. I should have been only too glad to help her, but I couldn't. I wish what you think could have been true; but since it isn't, I can't let you think it is."

Mrs. Morison let the matter drop, but her kind old eyes were brighter than ever. She contented herself with saying that at least he was to remain with them, and need not try to escape; then she led the talk to more indifferent matters. Her hand, worn and thin, the blue veins relieved under the delicate skin, lay on the white coverlid like a beautiful carving of ivory. As Maurice looked at it, it brought into his mind the hand of his mother, as in her last days, when he sat by her bedside, it had rested in the same fashion. The tea...