‘Tell me of her,’ interposed Rhoda, softly. ‘I would rather hear about her than the Church.’
‘Oh! Rhoda!’ exclaimed Frederick, with the selfishness of grief, not heeding how his praises of the dead might sting the girl before him, ‘she was so young, so loving, so beautiful. She was the most perfect creature I have ever seen. And we had been married only one day, when she met with a terrible accident that deprived me of her. She fell over the cliffs at Dover and was killed on the spot. It nearly drove me out of my mind.’
‘Poor Frederick!’ said Rhoda, kindly. ‘But are you sure it was an accident?’
‘I am sure of nothing, except that my darling parted from me in health and spirits, and that I never saw her alive again. She was found at the foot of the cliffs, crushed to death. Some thought she might have thrown herself over, but I am sure she did not do that; but whether some villain insulted her, or tried to rob her, and so made her take a false step, in agitation and alarm, I cannot say. No one will ever know the truth now. The only thing certain is, that God has taken her from me, and that I shall never see her again this side Eternity.’
‘Poor Frederick,’ repeated the girl, gently. ‘But why should you become a priest because of that? It will not bring your wife back to you.’
‘Not in this world, Rhoda, but in the next. I need not mind saying to you that I have been a very bad man, and led a sinful life. You know it only too well. My mother intended me for the service of the Church, and educated me, up to the age of twenty, with that end in view. But, as soon as she died and I became my own master, I left college and entered the world, and you know the bad use I made of my time whilst there. I have to ask your pardon, Rhoda, for the way in which I treated you.’
‘Don’t, don’t,’ said Rhoda, quickly. ‘I can’t bear it. I have not reproached you, Frederick. Nor, in my own heart, have I blamed you. I always spoke my mind, you know. We were very happy whilst we knew each other, and thought we cared for each other, and if we have had to “pay for our whistle,” let us do so bravely, and without any cant. I have borne my share without crying out. Do the same by yours. God will accept our secret grief and prayers quite as soon as any public display of regret.’
‘I daresay you are right,’ replied the young man, who, however, did not like being cut short in his protestations of repentance; ‘but to return to what we were talking of. My godfather, Sir Frederick Ascher, who died before I can remember him, left me all his property, coupled with a hope that I should either enter the Church, when it would be confiscated to its use, or, failing that, that I should leave it to the Church at my own death, or endow some ecclesiastical building with it. This behest I laughed at, and had no intention of obeying until my eyes were so mercifully opened to the sins of which I had been guilty, and I saw that the only reparation I could make to Heaven, would be to do as my dear mother and godfather wished me, and become a priest.’
‘But how,’ demanded Rhoda, ‘will that repair the wrong you have done in the world? It seems to me that it benefits really no one.’
‘Oh, Rhoda! you speak in ignorance,’ said Frederick Walcheren. ‘In right of my blessed office, I shall have the privilege of offering the Mass for the repose of the souls of those I have loved and injured, every day. I shall live, as it were, in the sight of Heaven, and weary it with prayers for the pardon of my own sins, and the sins of those I have led, by my example or otherwise, into error; I shall live, I trust, blameless, henceforth, in the eyes of God and men, so that, when my time comes to leave the world, I may be found worthy to join my friends and relatives, and to live in the sight of God and angels for evermore.’