‘I will refuse nothing in the form of human love.’ And the father blessed him fervently, and he went out. . . .
‘What a man!’ said he to himself, ‘or rather the wreck of what a man! Oh, for such a heart, with the thews and sinews of a truly English brain!’
Next day he met Luke in that room. Their talk was short and sad. Luke was on the point of entering an order devoted especially to the worship of the Blessed Virgin.
‘My father has cast me out . . . I must go to her feet. She will have mercy, though man has none.’
‘But why enter the order? Why take an irrevocable step?’
‘Because it is irrevocable; because I shall enter an utterly new life, in which old things shall pass away, and all things become new, and I shall forget the very names of Parent, Englishman, Citizen,—the very existence of that strange Babel of man’s building, whose roar and moan oppress me every time I walk the street. Oh, for solitude, meditation, penance! Oh, to make up by bitter self-punishment my ingratitude to her who has been leading me unseen, for years, home to her bosom!—The all-prevailing mother, daughter of Gabriel, spouse of Deity, flower of the earth, whom I have so long despised! Oh, to follow the example of the blessed Mary of Oignies, who every day inflicted on her most holy person eleven hundred stripes in honour of that all-perfect maiden!’
‘Such an honour, I could have thought, would have pleased better Kali, the murder-goddess of the Thugs,’ thought Lancelot to himself; but he had not the heart to say it, and he only replied,—
‘So torture propitiates the Virgin? That explains the strange story I read lately, of her having appeared in the Cevennes, and informed the peasantry that she had sent the potato disease on account of their neglecting her shrines; that unless they repented, she would next year destroy their cattle; and the third year, themselves.’
‘Why not?’ asked poor Luke.
‘Why not, indeed? If God is to be capricious, proud, revengeful, why not the Son of God? And if the Son of God, why not His mother?’