'Yes, the person,' said Cecil,—and there he hesitated,—'I mean,' he said at last, not irreverently, but in a low, earnest tone, 'why are things like this let happen?'
Mr. Yorke could only guess what 'this' was, and did not seek to have it explained, not wishing to make himself a judge of anything that lay between Cecil and his father.
'You mean, why is disgrace allowed to come upon a person which they cannot feel they have deserved? I don't think we can always tell why—I think we must be content to trust and submit; but it may often be to teach them some lesson which they could not have learned without it. For instance, suppose a very proud person were punished for telling an untruth, which he had not really told: the humiliation might be a check to his pride, and in that way might be for his real good.'
'And he deserved it, you mean, for being proud, though he didn't for untruth?'
'Yes; and when he came to see this, he would no longer say it was very hard.'
This reminded Cecil of his father's sermon, which indeed Mr. Yorke had in his mind when he spoke. He was silent a good while, then he began on what seemed at first another subject. 'If something that wasn't your own fault had come to hinder you when you were being educated for a clergyman, shouldn't you have thought you weren't meant to be one?'
'I think it would have depended on what the hindrance was, and a good many other circumstances. It isn't only book-learning that makes people fit to be clergymen; perhaps I might have been hindered in that, only to make me more fit in some other way.'
'What kind of way?'
'Well, I might have needed to learn submission or humility, or a hundred things.'
Cecil clasped both hands round his knees, and went swaying himself backwards and forwards in a queer kind of way that was more reflective than polite.