“But who was it, Mother?”
“Never mind who it was. No relative of yours—Rudolph.”
“Rudolph!” The young man sprang to his feet. “That was my name! I know it was, but I never could get hold of it. I shall not forget it again.”
“Do not forget it again. But let it be for ourselves only. To the world outside you are still ‘Ralph.’ It is wiser.”
“Very well, Mother.”
This youth had been well trained, and was far more obedient to his adopted mother than most sons at that time were to their real parents. With the Saxons a mother had always been under the control of an adult son; and the Normans who had won possession of England had by no means abolished either the social customs or modes of thought of the vanquished people. In fact, the moral ascendancy soon rested with the subject race. The Norman noble who dried his washed hands in the air, sneered at the Saxon thrall who wiped his on a towel; but the towel was none the less an article of necessary furniture in the house of the Norman’s grandson. It has often been the case in the history of the world, that the real victory has rested with the vanquished: but it has always been brought about by the one race mixing with and absorbing the other. Where that does not take place, the conquerors remain dominant.
“Now, my son, listen and think. I have some questions to ask. What faith have I taught thee?”
“You have taught me,” said Rudolph slowly, “to believe in God Almighty, and in His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered on the cross to expiate the sins of His chosen.”
“Is that the creed of those around us?”
“Mother, I cannot tell. One half of my brain answers, Ay, it is; but the other half says, No, there is a difference. Yet I cannot quite see what the difference is, and you have always so strictly forbidden me to speak to any one except yourself on religious subjects, that I have had no opportunity to learn what it is. Others, when I hear them talking to you, speak of God, of our Lord, and of our Lady, as we ourselves do: and they speak of the holy Apostles and others of whom we always read in the big book. Mother, is that the same big book out of which the grave-eyed man used to read? But they mention a great many people who are not in the book,—Martin, and Benedict, and Margaret, and plenty more—and they call them all ‘Saint,’ but I do not know who they were. You never told me about those people.”