‘I don’t know, Sir; Mr. Blunt does not give much account of him,’ and her voice grew lower and lower; ‘I’ve seen that look in his father’s and his brother’s face.’
She hid her face in her handkerchief as if overpowered, but looked up with the meek look of resignation, as Mr. Cope said in a broken voice, ‘I had not expected—you had been much tried.’
‘Yes, Sir. The Will of the Lord be done,’ she said, as if willing to turn aside from the dark side of the sorrow that lay in wait for her; ‘but I’m thankful you are come to help my poor boy now—he frets over his trouble, as is natural, and I’m afraid he should offend, and I’m no scholar to know how to help him.’
‘You can help him by what is better than scholarship,’ said Mr. Cope; and he shook her hand warmly, and went away, feeling what a difference there was in the ways of meeting affliction.
CHAPTER V—AN UNWELCOME VISITOR
‘The axe is laid to the root of the tree,’ was said by the Great Messenger, when the new and better Covenant was coming to pierce, try, and search into, the hearts of men.
Something like this always happens, in some measure, whenever closer, clearer, and more stringent views of faith and of practice are brought home to Christians. They do not always take well the finding that more is required of them than they have hitherto fancied needful; and there are many who wince and murmur at the sharp piercing of the weapon which tries their very hearts; they try to escape from it, and to forget the disease that it has touched, and at first, often grow worse rather than better. Well is it for them if they return while yet there is time, before blindness have come over their eyes, and hardness over their heart.
Perhaps this was the true history of much that grieved poor Mrs. King, and distressed Ellen, during the remainder of the summer. Anxious as Mrs. King had been to bring her sons up in the right way, there was something in Mr. Cope’s manner of talking to them that brought things closer home to them, partly from their being put in a new light, and partly from his being a man, and speaking with a different kind of authority.
Alfred did not like his last conversation—it was little more than his mother and Miss Selby had said—but then he had managed to throw it off, and he wanted to do so again. It was pleasanter to him to think himself hardly treated, than to look right in the face at all his faults; he knew it was of no use to say he had none, so he lumped them all up by calling himself a sinful creature, like every one else; and thus never felt the weight of them at all, because he never thought what they were.
And yet, because Mr. Cope’s words had made him uneasy, he could not rest in this state; he was out of temper whenever the Curate’s name was spoken, and accused Ellen of bothering about him as much as Harold did about Paul Blackthorn; and if he came to see him, he made himself sullen, and would not talk, sometimes seeming oppressed and tired, and unable to bear any one’s presence, sometimes leaving Ellen to do all the answering, dreading nothing so much as being left alone with the clergyman. Mr. Cope had offered to read prayers with him, and he could not refuse; but he was more apt to be thinking that it was tiresome, than trying to enter into what, poor foolish boy, would have been his best comfort.