"Well, George," he had said with a smile, "I know you are in ample funds, and I never am. You, moreover, have a milch cow that will not run dry. The government is my cow, and she is apt to be very chary in her supply; she does run dry with uncommon quickness."
George smiled also, and paid the bill readily, protesting that of course he ought to do so, as Sir Lionel had come there only to see him. The colonel plumed himself at once upon having managed well; but he was greatly mistaken. His calculation in this respect had been made on a false basis. "George," he said to himself, "is a young man; he will think nothing of this: a fellow at his age cares nothing for money." George did care but little for the money, but he did care about his father; and he understood the ways of the world well enough to know that his father ought to have paid his own bill. He began for the first time to experience something of that feeling which his uncle so often expressed.
They started, too, with somewhat different ideas as to the purport of their route. Sir Lionel wished to get to Constantinople, and was content, for George's sake, to go by Damascus and Beyrout; but George had to visit Ramah, and Gibeon, and Luz; to see the well of the woman of Samaria at Sichem; to climb Mount Carmel, and to sleep at least for a night within its monastery. Mount Tabor also, and Bethsaida, and Capernaum, he must visit; he must bathe in the Sea of Galilee, as he had already bathed in Jordan and the Dead Sea; Gadara he must see, and Gergesa, and Chorazin; and, above all, he must stand with naked feet in Nazareth, and feel within his heart that he was resting on holy ground.
Sir Lionel did not care a straw for Bethsaida or Chorazin—not a straw even for Nazareth. For many reasons he wished to be well with his son. In the first place, a man whose bill is paid for him always makes some concession to the man who pays it. He should do so, at any rate; and on this point Sir Lionel was willing to be just. And then he had ulterior views, which made it very necessary that George should like him. In this respect he had hitherto played his cards well—well, with the exception of that Jerusalem bill. He had made his society very pleasant to his son, had done much towards gaining the young man's heart, and was well inclined to do more—anything, indeed, short of putting himself to real personal inconvenience. We may perhaps add, without doing too much violence to Sir Lionel's established character, that he himself really liked his son.
All this for some days carried him hither and thither, if not with patience, at any rate with perseverance. He went to spots which he was told had a world-wide celebrity, of the names of which he had but a bare distant remembrance, and which he found to be arid, comfortless, and uninteresting. Gibeon he did endure, and Shiloh, and Sichem; Gilgal, also, and Carmel. But there he broke down: he could not, he said, justify it to himself to be absent longer from his official duties. He found that he was near Beyrout: he could ride thither in two days, avoiding Damascus altogether. The cookery at Mount Carmel did not add to his love of the Holy Land. He found himself to be not very well. He laughingly reminded George that there was a difference between twenty-three and sixty; and ended by declining altogether to go backwards towards the Sea of Galilee. If George could only be induced to think that he had seen enough of these regions, his father would be so delighted to have his company direct from Beyrout to Constantinople!
George, however, was inexorable about Nazareth: and so they parted, agreeing that they would meet again at Constantinople. We need not closely follow either on his journey. Sir Lionel, having had everything paid for him up to the moment of their separation, arrived—let us hope with a full purse—at the Bosphorus. George, when left to himself, travelled more slowly, and thought much of these holy places—much also of his love. He could have found it in his heart to rush back, and catch Miss Baker and Caroline at Jaffa. He would have done so as soon as he quitted Nazareth, only that he was ashamed.
About a fortnight after his father's departure, he found himself at Damascus, and in another week, he was stepping on board the packet at Beyrout. When leaving Palestine, that land of such wondrous associations, his feelings were not altogether consolatory. He had at one moment acknowledged what he believed to be a spiritual influence within him, and yielding himself to it, had spoken of devoting his life to a high and holy purpose. He had, indeed, spoken only to himself, and the wound to his pride was therefore the less. But his high and holy purpose had been blown to the winds by a few words from a pair of ruby lips, by one glance of scorn from a pair of bright eyes. And he had so yielded, even though those lips would acknowledge no love for him; though those eyes would not look on him kindly. He could not be proud of his visit to the Holy Land; and yet he felt a longing to linger there. It might be, that if he would return once more to that mount, look once again on Sion and the temple, the spirit might yet get the better of the flesh. But, alas! he had to own to himself that he had now hardly a wish that the spirit should predominate. The things of the world were too bright to be given up. The charms of the flesh were too strong for him. With a sigh, he looked back for the last time from Mount Hermon, stretched out his arms once more towards Jerusalem, said one farewell in his heart as his eye rested for a moment on the distant glassy waters of Galilee, and then set his horse's head towards Damascus.
When a traveller in these railroad days takes leave of Florence, or Vienna, or Munich, or Lucerne, he does so without much of the bitterness of a farewell. The places are now comparatively so near that he expects to see them again, or, at any rate, hopes that he may do so. But Jerusalem is still distant from us no Sabbath-day's journey. A man who, having seen it once, takes his leave, then sees it probably for the last time. And a man's heart must be very cold who can think of Palestine exactly as of any other land. It is not therefore surprising that Bertram was rather sad as he rode down the further side of Mount Hermon.
At Constantinople, Sir Lionel and George again met, and our hero spent a pleasant month there with his father. It was still spring, the summer heats had hardly commenced, and George was charmed, if not with the city of the Sultan, at any rate with the scenery around it. Here his father appeared in a new light: they were more intimate with each other than they had been at Jerusalem; they were not now living in ladies' society, and Sir Lionel by degrees threw off what little restraint of governorship, what small amount of parental authority he had hitherto assumed. He seemed anxious to live with his son on terms of perfect equality; began to talk to him rather as young men talk to each other than men of ages so very different, and appeared to court a lack of reverence.
In his ordinary habits of life, and, indeed, in his physical vivacity, Sir Lionel was very young for his time of life. He never pleaded his years in bar of any pleasure, and never pleaded them at all except when desirous of an excuse for escaping something that was disagreeable. There are subjects on which young men talk freely with each other, but on which they hesitate to speak to their elders without restraint. Sir Lionel did his best to banish any such feeling on the part of his son. Of wine and women, of cards and horses, of money comforts and money discomforts, he spoke in a manner which Bertram at first did not like, but which after awhile was not distasteful to him. There is always some compliment implied when an old man unbends before a young one, and it is this which makes the viciousness of old men so dangerous. I do not say that Sir Lionel purposely tempted his son to vice; but he plainly showed that he regarded morality in a man to be as thoroughly the peculiar attribute of a clergyman as a black coat; and that there could be no reason for other men even to pretend to it when there were no women by to be respected and deceived.