“After what you have told me,” he said, “I feel, with gladness and gratitude that it is not without reason that you have so often thus addressed me—as your son. Now, I may indeed claim you as a father.”
“You may indeed,” Monella assented; “I take the place of my lost friend.”
“Then you have no need to ask whether what you think best pleases me. If you will be my father, choose for me and instruct me; for I feel I have need of your help to enable me to take up, and bear worthily, the position I owe to you. I felt this,” continued Leonard, with great earnestness—“I felt this very strongly when I lay in that foul den that the poor demented wretch called ‘the devil-tree’s larder.’ I made then a vow that, if it should please God to deliver me from the peril that threatened me, I would thenceforth devote my life to the good of the people I had come amongst. I repented sorely that I had given my thoughts too much to selfish—albeit innocent—enjoyment; and I vowed I would not be guilty of that selfishness in the future, if the chance and the choice were offered to me. And now that they are, help me—instruct me, my father, I pray you, in all that may enable me to fulfil that vow.”
Monella gazed long and fixedly at the young man; and in his eyes there was a glistening as of a tear. Then he rose and went to the window that looked out over the lake, and stood awhile, with a far-off vacant look that told his thoughts were wandering to distant scenes or persons. It was some time before he looked round.
And, when he again turned to speak to the young men, they were both conscious that some indefinable change had taken place in his manner. His face expressed unmistakably a great and exalted joy; and the eyes, that at all times had had so strange a charm in them, had taken on a new expression. For a little while Templemore strove in vain to ascertain in what the change consisted; but presently it seemed to him that they had lost that half-sad, half-wistful expression he had so constantly remarked; and that they now conveyed, instead, a sense of contentment and repose.
“That which you have now told to me,” said Monella, walking slowly up to Leonard, “is as sweet to me as water to the thirsty in the desert.” With grave deliberation he placed both hands upon the young man’s shoulders and looked into his eyes with fatherly affection.
“Know, my son Leonard—or rather Ranelda, as you rightly should be called—know that in these words you bring to my soul the message it has been awaiting—sometimes in hope, too often, alas! in doubt and in despair—through the long ages. Yours is the hand—the hand of the son of Apalano—that bears to me the key of my fetters; and yours are the lips that announce my coming freedom! My work, then, nears its end, and soon—ay, soon—I—shall—be—free!”
While uttering these last words Monella raised his hand, and with upturned face looked rapturously above him, as if his sight, piercing the marble ceiling overhead, perceived some far-off scene that, while invisible to his companions, filled him with the most intense delight. Presently, he turned away with a regretful sigh, as though the vision he had been gazing at had vanished, and added, with an absent manner,
“Now, when I leave you, I shall feel——”