“Nay, Peregrine, at years of discretion you should have outgrown old wives’ tales.”
“Better be an elf at once—a soulless creature of the elements—than the sport of an evil spirit doomed to perdition,” he bitterly exclaimed.
“Hush, hush! You know not what you are saying!”
“I know it too well, madam! There are times when I long and wish after goodness—nay, when Heaven seems open to me—and I resolve and strive after a perfect life; but again comes the wild, passionate dragging, as it were, into all that at other moments I most loathe and abhor, and I become no more my own master. Ah!”
There was misery in his voice, and he clutched the long hair on each side of his face with his hands.
“St. Paul felt the same,” said Mrs. Woodford gently.
“‘Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ Ay, ay! how many times have I not groaned that forth! And so, if that Father at Turin were right, I am but as Paul was when he was Saul. Madam, is it not possible that I was never truly baptized?” he cried eagerly.
“Impossible, Peregrine. Was not Mr. Horncastle chaplain when you were born? Yes; and I have heard my brother say that both he and your father held the same views as the Church upon baptism.”
“So I thought; but Father Geronimo says that at the best it was but heretical baptism, and belike hastily and ineffectually performed.”
“Put that aside, Peregrine. It is only a temptation and allurement.”