IN WAY OF TASTE Troilus and Cressida, iii. 3.
The two deacons were together again in the Clergy House. Maurice frankly confessed to himself that he did not like it, and he wondered if Philip were also dissatisfied. It was a question too delicate to ask, however; and he contented himself with watching his friend to discover, if possible, whether the stay outside had affected Ashe as it had him. They returned late in the afternoon, and their greeting was of the warmest.
"Dear old boy," Maurice cried, "you don't know how glad I am to get at you again. Where in the world have you kept yourself?"
"Just at the last," Philip responded, "I've been down to Montfield."
"Down home? Have you really? How is everybody? I hope your mother is well."
"She is very well, and I do not remember anybody that we know who isn't. I went down to see Mr. Wentworth, and found that he is already pledged to Mr. Strathmore."
"It seems that he is a cousin of that Mrs. Gore where we heard that heathen, and she is greatly interested in Mr. Strathmore's election. Mr. Wentworth promised her his vote. How people are carried away by that man. Mr. Wentworth told me that he looked upon him as the greatest man in the church to-day."
"It is strange," Maurice assented absently; "but he is a man of great personal fascination."
"To me," Philip retorted, "he is a whited sepulchre. His doctrine of mental reservation amounts to nothing less than that a priest is at liberty to believe anything he pleases if he will only conform outwardly."
Maurice was secretly much of the same opinion, but they came now to the dinner table, where silence was the rule. Wynne had a feeling of dishonesty from the fact that he concealed from his friend that he had sought an interview with Strathmore, yet he felt that he could not confess the visit. While they sat at table a brother read aloud, and the reading chanced to be to-night from the book of Job. The words of the splendid poem mingled in the mind of Maurice with the most incongruous and unpriestly thoughts. He chafed at the routine into which he had fallen as into a pit from which he had once escaped; the meagre repast seemed to him pitifully poor; and most of all he was angry with himself that he could not feel joy at his return to the house which was the symbol of the consecrated work to which he had given his life. After dinner came an hour and a half of recreation, and in this he was called to the study of the Father Superior.