"We go to New York this afternoon, and sail for Europe to-morrow. You send us in parting a characteristic souvenir, which I return to you. The scenes and associations indicated in this disgraceful paragraph seem more to your taste than those which your family have hitherto enjoyed as their right for many generations. While this remains true, you, of necessity, cut yourself off from your kindred, and we, who are most closely connected, must remain where our names cannot be associated with yours. I still cherish the hope, however, that you may find the way of the transgressor so hard that you will be brought by your bitter experience to accept of my offer and give the world a chance to forget your folly and wickedness. When you will do this in good faith (and my lawyer will see that it is done in good faith), you may draw on him for the means of a comfortable support. In bitter shame and sorrow, your mother,
"EMILY HALDANE."
This letter was a severe blow to her son, for it contained the last words of the mother that he might not see for years. While he felt it to be cruelly unjust to him and his present aims, he was calm enough now to see that the distorted paragraph which led to it fitted in only too well with the past, and so had the coloring of truth. When inclined to blame his mother for not waiting for his versions of these miserable events and accepting of them alone, he was compelled to remember that she was in part awakened from her blind idolatry of him by the discovery of his efforts to deceive her in regard to his increasing dissipation. Even before he had entered Mr. Arnot's counting-room he had taught her to doubt his word, and now she had evidently lost confidence in him utterly. He foresaw that this confidence could be regained only by years of patient well-doing, and that she might incline to believe in him more slowly even than comparative strangers. But he was not disposed to be very angry and resentful, for he now had but little confidence in himself. He had been led, however, by his bitter experience and by Mrs. Arnot's faithful ministry to adopt that lady's brief but comprehensive creed, He was learning to trust in Christ as an all-powerful and personal friend; he was daily seeking to grasp the principles which Christ taught, but more clearly acted out, and which are essential to the formation of a noble character. He had thus complied with the best conditions of spiritual growth; and the crude elements of his character, which had been rendered more chaotic by evil, slowly began to shape themselves into the symmetry of a true man.
In regard to his mother's letter, all that he could do was to inclose to her, with the request that it be forwarded, Mr. Ivison's defence of him, which appeared in the "Courier" of the following morning.
"You perceive," he wrote, "that a stranger has taken pains to inform himself correctly in regard to the facts of the case, and that he has for me some charity and hope. I do not excuse the wrong of my action on that occasion or on any other, but I do wish, and I am trying, to do better, and I hope to prove the same to you by years of patient effort. I may fail miserably, however, as you evidently believe. The fact that my folly and wickedness have driven you and my sisters into exile, is a very great sorrow to me, but compliance with your request that I should leave Hillaton and go into hiding would bring no remedy at all. I know that I should do worse anywhere else, and my self-respect and conscience both require that I should fight the battle of my life out here where I have suffered such disgraceful defeat."
CHAPTER XLIII
MR. GROWTHER "STUMPED"
About three weeks after the occasion upon which Haldane's human nature had manifested itself in such a disastrous manner as he had supposed, Mrs. Arnot, Dr. Barstow, and Mr. Ivison happened to find themselves together at an evening company.
"I have been wishing to thank you, Mr. Ivison," said the lady, "for your just and manly letter in regard to young Haldane. I think it encouraged him very much, and has given him more hopefulness in his work. How has he been doing of late? The only reply he makes to my questioning is, 'I am plodding on.'"
"Do you know," said Mr. Ivison, "I am beginning to take quite an interest in that young fellow. He has genuine pluck. You cannot understand, Mrs. Arnot, what an ordeal he has passed through. He is naturally as mettlesome as a young colt, and yet day after day he was subjected to words and actions that were to him like the cut of a whip."