And the Canon had quoted those words yet again, when Adrian, his favourite child, had come back to him. His deepest thankfulness had been for the emotional, unstable promise volunteered by Adrian’s impulsive youth.
Quentillian could see no reliance to be placed upon that promise to which the Canon, with such ardent gratitude and joy, had trusted. Adrian would drift, the type that does little harm, if less good. Strength of intellect, as of character, had been denied him. No interest would hold him long, no aim seem to him to be worth sustained effort.
And yet the Canon had felt Adrian, too—perhaps most of all Adrian, in the flush of reconciliation after their estrangement—to be “safe” and “happy.”
Then optimism was merely a veil, drawn across the nakedness of Truth?
From the depths of a profound and ingrained pessimism, Quentillian sought to view the question dispassionately, and felt himself fundamentally unable to do so.
Hard facts and—at best—resignation, or baseless hopes and undaunted courage, such as had been Canon Morchard’s?
The death of the Canon, bereft of all and yet believing himself to possess all, had epitomized his life.
Overhead, sounds and stirrings had begun, and Quentillian softly let himself out of the house and stepped out into the fresh chill of the morning air. His eyelids were stiff and aching from his vigil, and sudden, most unwonted tears filled them. He glanced at the windows of the old house. A light still burned in Lucilla’s, as though the nurse had been able to spare no thought from her ministrations.
Lucilla, the finest and bravest of the Canon’s children, had been broken on the wheel.
In the passionless sorrow that possessed him, Quentillian grasped at the strand of consolation that he knew to exist somewhere. It had been found for him once before, by Canon Morchard.