The major stopped, overcome by his own vehemence; and Charles would have fancied that he saw tears in his eyes, if he had dared to look at him for another moment.
Rosalind, who had more love and liking for Mrs. Richards than is usually the growth of six months' acquaintance, had placed herself close beside her, and taken her hand; but, when Major Dalrymple ceased speaking, she rose up, and with a degree of energy that probably surprised all her hearers, but most especially Charles and Helen, she said: "If, Major Dalrymple, you should be the first in this unfortunate parish of Wrexhill to raise your voice against this invader of the station, rights, and duties of a set of men in whose avocations he has neither part nor lot, you will deserve more honour than even the field of Waterloo could give you! Yes! turn him from your house, dear friend, as you would one who brought poison to you in the guise of wholesome food or healing medicine. Let him never enter your doors again; let him preach (if preach he must) in a church as empty as his own pretensions to holiness; and if proper authority should at length be awaked to chase him from a pulpit that belongs of right to a true and real member of the English church, then let him buy a sixpenny licence, if he can get it, to preach in a tub, the only fitting theatre for his doctrines."
"Bravo!" cried the major in a perfect ecstasy; "do you hear her, Mrs. Richards? Charles Mowbray, do you hear her? and will either of you ever suffer Cartwright to enter your doors again?"
"I believe in my heart that she is quite right," said Charles: "the idiot folly I have witnessed at Mrs. Simpson's this morning; and the much more grievous effects which his ministry, as he calls it, has produced here, have quite convinced me that such ministry is no jesting matter. But I have no doors, Dalrymple, to shut against him; all I can do is to endeavour to open my mother's eyes to the mischief he is doing."
Helen sighed, and shook her head.
"Is, then, your good mother too far gone in this maudlin delirium to listen to him?" said the major in an accent of deep concern.
"Indeed, major, I fear so," replied Helen.
"I told you so, Major Dalrymple," said Mrs. Richards; "I told you that in such a line of conduct as you advise I should be supported by no one of any consequence, and I really do not feel courage to stand alone in it."
"And it is that very want of courage that I deplore more than all the rest," replied the major. "You, that have done and suffered so much, with all the quiet courage of a real heroine—that you should now sink before such an enemy as this, is what I really cannot see with patience."
"And whence comes this new-born cowardice, my dear Mrs. Richards?" said Rosalind.