Charles listened to this rant with earnest and painful attention, and, when she ceased, looked at her through tears that presently overflowed his eyes.
"Have I then lost my only remaining parent?" said he. "And can you thus close your heart against me, and your poor Helen, my mother?"
"By the blessing of providence I am strong," replied the deluded lady, struggling to overcome Heaven's best gift of pure affection in her heart. "By its blessing, and by the earnest prayers of its holiest saint, I am able, wretched boy, to look at thee, and say, Satan avaunt! But I am tried sorely," she continued, turning her eyes from the manly countenance of her son, now wet with tears. "Sorely, sorely, doomed and devoted boy, am I tried? But he, the Lord's vicar upon earth, the chosen shepherd, the anointed saint,—he, even he tells me to be of good cheer, for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth."
"Can you then believe, mother, that the merciful God of heaven and of earth approves your forsaking your children, solely because they worship him as they have been taught to do? Can you believe that he approves your turning your eyes and heart from them to devote yourself to a stranger to your blood, a preacher of strange doctrine, and one who loves them not?"
"I have already told you, impious maligner of the holiest of men, that I know where my duty lies. I know, I tell you, that I not only know it, but will do it.—Torment me no more! Leave me, leave me, unhappy boy! leave me that I may pray for pardon for having listened to thee so long."
She rose from her seat and approached him, as if to thrust him from the chamber; but he suffered her to advance without moving, and when she was close to him, he threw his arms round her, and held her for a moment in a close embrace. She struggled violently to disengage herself, and he relaxed his hold; but, dropping on his knees before her, at the same moment he exclaimed with passionate tenderness, "My dear, dear mother! have I then received your last embrace? Shall I never again feel your beloved lips upon my cheeks, my lips, my forehead? Mother! what can Helen and I do to win back your precious love?"
"Surely I shall be rewarded for this!" said the infatuated woman almost wildly. "Surely I shall be visited with an exceeding great reward! and will he not visit thee too, unnatural son, for art not thou plotting against my soul to destroy it?"
"There is, then, no hope for us from the voice of nature, no hope from the voice of reason and of truth? Then hear me, mother, for I too must act according to the voice of conscience. Helen and I must leave you; we can no longer endure to be so near you in appearance, while in reality we are so fearfully estranged. You have been very generous to me in the sum which you named for my allowance at my father's death; and as soon as my commission is obtained, that allowance will suffice to support me, for my habits have never been extravagant. May I ask you to assign a similar sum to Helen? This will enable her to command such a home with respectable people as may befit your daughter; and you will not doubt, I think, notwithstanding the unhappy difference in our opinions on points of doctrine, that I shall watch over her as carefully as our dear father himself could have done."
"He is a prophet! yea, a prophet!" exclaimed Mrs. Mowbray; "and shall I be blind even as the ungodly, and doubt his word into whose mouth Heaven hath put the gift of prophecy and the words of wisdom? He hath spoken, and very terrible things are come to pass. Can your heart resist such proof as this, Charles?" she continued, raising her eyes and hands to heaven:—"even what you have now spoken, that did he predict and foretell you should speak!"
"He guessed the point, then, at which we could bear no more," replied Charles with bitterness: "and did he predict too what answer our petition should receive?"