"You don't allow for circumstances and—and temptations, and——" He broke off impatiently. "It's really not much good trying to explain."
"I'm inclined to be sorry I ever persuaded you to make their acquaintance," sighed Mrs. Lisle.
Anna's hostility and Ronald Slingsby's prim commiseration annoyed Arthur exceedingly. His mother's attitude towards him touched him more deeply, and to a half-amused yet sincere remorse. It grew more marked with every day of his visit. She showed an affectionate but rather reproachful anxiety about him—about his life, his doings, and his ways of thought. She seemed to fear—indeed she hinted—that his association with the Lisles (which meant, of course, with Bernadette, and for which she persisted in shouldering a responsibility not really belonging to her) might have sapped his morals and induced a laxity in his principles and perhaps—if only she knew all—in his conduct. She evinced a gentle yet persistent curiosity about his work, about his companions and his pursuits in London. She abounded in references to the hopes and anxieties entertained about him by his father; she would add that she knew, understood, and allowed for the temptations of young men; there was the more need to seek strength where alone strength could be found.
Arthur tried hard to banish the element of amusement from his remorse. Although his behaviour in London might stand comparison pretty well with that of many young men of his age and class, yet he was really guilty on all counts of the indictment, and had so found himself by his own verdict before now. He had neglected his work, squandered his money, and declared himself the lover of his cousin's wife. He was as great a sinner, then, as the unfortunate woman herself! It was a bad record, thus baldly summarised. But what, in the end, had that bald summary to do with the true facts of the case, with the way in which things had been induced and had come about? In what conceivable relation, in how remote a degree of verisimilitude, did it stand towards the actual history of those London and Hilsey days? Accept condemnation as he might, his mind pleaded at least for understanding. And the dear frail old woman said she understood!
Moreover—and it is an unlucky thing for weak human nature—moral causes and spiritual appeals are apt, by force of accident or circumstances, to get identified with and, as it were, embodied in personalities which are not sympathetic; they pay the penalty. His mother's anxious affection would have fared better, had Anna not stood so uncompromisingly for propriety of conduct, and Ronald Slingsby for the sanctity of the marriage bond. The pair—to Arthur they seemed already one mind, though not yet one flesh, and he secretly charged Ronald with setting his sister against him—were to him, in plain language, prigs; they applied their principles without the modifications demanded by common sense, and their formulas without allowance for facts; they passed the same sentence on all offenders of whatever degree of guilt. And yet, after all, as soon as Ronald wanted to marry, he had "reconciled his conscience" without much apparent difficulty! Lack of charity in them bred the like in him. When they cried "Sinners!" he retorted "Pharisees!" and stiffened his neck even against what was true in their accusation.
But in the end his mother's love, and perhaps still more her weakness, won its way with him. He achieved, in some degree at least, the difficult task of looking through her eyes, of realising all the years of care and devotion, all the burden of hopes and fears, which had gone towards setting his feet upon the path of life; all that had been put into the making of him, and had rendered it possible for him to complete the work himself. He could not be as she, in her fond heart, would have him, a child still and always, unspotted from the world, nay, untouched, unformed by it; but he could be something worth being; he could make a return, albeit not the return she asked for. He renewed to her the promises he had made to himself; he would work, he would be prudent, he would order his ways. He took her small thin hand in his and patted it reassuringly, as he sat on a stool by the side of her arm-chair. "I'll be all I haven't been, mother! Still I believe I've learnt a thing or two."
Hardest thing of all, he opened his heart a little—not all the way—about the sinner, about Bernadette.
"If you had known her, mother! It was cruel bad luck for her! She just had to have just what poor old Godfrey hasn't got. Oh, I know all you say but it is much harder for some people than for others. Now isn't it? And to me I can't tell you what she was. If she wants me, I've always got to be a friend to her."
"You were very fond of her, poor boy?"
"Yes, mother. She was so full of kindness, and life, and gaiety, and so beautiful."