"It will be immediately reported to those who use it, and in a way they won't like, Cuthbert. Don't you be afraid; I shan't quarrel. Tell me something about yourself, old boy."
"I can tell you but little to interest you, Charles. You are of this world, and rejoice in being so. I, day by day, wean myself more and more from it, knowing its worthlessness. Leave me to my books and my religious exercises, and go on your way. The time will come when your pursuits and pleasures will turn to bitter dust in your mouth, as mine never can. When the world is like a howling wilderness to you, as it will be soon, then come to me, and I will show you where to find happiness. At present you will not listen to me."
"Not I," said Charles. "Youth, health, talent, like yours—are these gifts to despise?"
"They are clogs to keep me from higher things. Study, meditation, life in the past with those good men who have walked the glorious road before us—in these consist happiness. Ambition! I have one earthly ambition—to purge myself from earthly affections, so that, when I hear the cloister-gate close behind me for ever, my heart may leap with joy, and I may feel that I am in the antechamber of heaven."
Charles was deeply affected, and bent down his head. "Youth, love, friends, joy in this beautiful world—all to be buried between four dull white walls, my brother!"
"This beautiful earth, which is beautiful indeed—alas! how I love it still! shall become a burden to us in a few years. Love! the greater the love, the greater the bitterness. Charles, remember that, one day, will you, when your heart is torn to shreds? I shall have ceased to love you then more than any other fellow-creature; but remember my words. You are leading a life which can only end in misery, as even the teachers of the false and corrupt religion which you profess would tell you. If you were systematically to lead the life you do now, it were better almost that there were no future. You are not angry, Charles?"
There was such a spice of truth in what Cuthbert said that it would have made nine men in ten angry. I am pleased to record of my favourite Charles that he was not; he kept his head bent down, and groaned.
"Don't be hard on our boy, Cuthbert," said Densil; "he is a good boy, though he is not like you. It has always been so in our family—one a devotee and the other a sportsman. Let us go in, boys; it gets chill."
Charles rose up, and, throwing his arms round his brother's neck, boisterously gave him a kiss on the cheek; then he began laughing and talking at the top of his voice, making the nooks and angles in the grey old façade echo with his jubilant voice.