The Vicar of Wrexhill

by Frances Milton Trollope

"Let me ask him, Henrietta."

"No!" cried the invalid with sudden energy, as if she had at that moment conceived and decided on her line of conduct. "I will ask him myself! This doubt, this darkness, this fearful mist that seems to hang about me, is terrible. Why should I not feel hopeful and assured as you do? Send to him, Rosalind—send to my father; and send too for his besotted wife, and for the poor, weak, wavering Fanny. Send for them all.—But don't you leave me, Rosalind. I have a strange, anxious fluttering at my heart. It will be better when I have spoken to him."

Rosalind delayed not a moment to do her bidding. There was an inequality in her manner that frightened her. She feared her time was short; and so worded the summons she sent to Mr. Cartwright and his wife, that they came instantly. Fanny entered the room nearly at the same moment; and it was evident from their manner that they all thought they were come to receive her last farewell.

The feeble Henrietta asked Rosalind so to arrange her pillows that she might sit upright. Rosalind did so, and then kneeled down beside the bed.

Mr. Cartwright stood with his back leaning against the bed-post, and his eyes fixed on the ground; his wife entered leaning on his arm, and had not quitted it; but for some reason or other, Henrietta, who rarely took notice of her in any way, now asked her to place herself in a chair beside her bed.

"You had better sit," said she. "You are not very strong in any way."

Fanny stood apart, and alone; and having looked round upon each of them, the dying girl fixed her eyes upon her father, and thus addressed him, "I have heard you say—a thousand times perhaps—that religion was the business of your life; and for that reason, sir, its very name hath become abhorrent to me. Oh, father!—you have much to answer for! I would have given my own right hand to believe in a good, a merciful, a forgiving God!—and I turned my young eyes to you. You told me that few could be saved, and that it was not what I deemed innocence could save me. You told me too, that I was in danger, but that you were safe. You told me that Heaven had set its seal upon you. And then I watched you—oh, how earnestly!—I spied out all your ways!—I found fraud, pride, impurity, and falsehood, mix with your deeds through every day you lived! Yet still you said that Heaven had set its seal upon you,—that your immortal soul was safe,—that happiness eternal was your predestined doom. I listened to you as a child listens to a father; not a word was lost; no, nor an action either. And then it was, father, that I became an unbeliever! an hardened infidel! a daring atheist! If it were true that God had chosen you, then was it true my soul rejected him!—Yet Rosalind, dear Rosalind, do not hate me,—do not shudder at my words. It was because I found no truth in him, that I could not, would not believe his doctrine true. But you—good, kind, and innocent,—I believe you."

The harsh and awful accents of her voice changed into a tone of the deepest tenderness as she continued to address Rosalind. "When did you ever lie? You tell me there is a God, and I may trust you. You do not prate of grace, and then labour to corrupt the innocence that looks into your face to ask the way to Heaven. You do not bid me wear a mask of feigned assurance of salvation; nor will you bind my hands, nor keep me from the light of day, when I refuse to kneel, and sigh, and play the hypocrite. You will not bid me lie, and tell me that so only I can find the way to Heaven. You will not——"

With slow and stealthy pace Mr. Cartwright at this moment began to creep from his station and approach the door. But Henrietta, whose eyes were half closed—for the lashes seemed heavy with tears—instantly opened them, and cried aloud, "Stay! I have a right to bid you.—Father!—This good girl is kind and innocent; but she is young and very ignorant.—What can she know of Heaven? Is there—speak truly, these are the last words you will ever utter to me—is there within our reach some pious, holy, humble man of God,—such as I have read of,—but no saint, no saint? Father! is there such a one?—and may he come and pray with me?"

Every eye in the room was fixed on Mr. Cartwright, as his daughter made the appeal. For some moments he did not answer; but upon Henrietta's repeating loudly, and almost wildly, "May he come?" he answered in a low, husky voice. "This is mere bravado! You have lived a scoffing infidel,—and a scoffing infidel will you die. If, indeed, you wished for prayer and pardon, you would turn to me for it.—My curate may pray with her,—but none else."