But a new courage was awaking in him, which helped him to grapple with his despair. He would bury the dead past, and go on into the future making the best of his life, maimed and marred as it was by his own folly. He was still in the prime of his age, thirty years younger than Mr. Clifford, whose intellect was as keen and clear as ever; there was a long span of time stretching before him, to be used or misused.
"Come unto Me all ye that be weary, and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." He seemed to see the words in the quaint upright characters in which old Marlowe had carved them under the crucifix. He had fancied he knew what coming to Christ meant in those old days of his, when he was reputed a religious man, and was first and foremost in all religious and philanthropic schemes, making his trespass more terrible and pernicious than if it had been the transgression of a worldly man. But it was not so when he came to Christ this morning. He was a broken-hearted man, who had cut himself off from all human ties and affections, and who was longing to feel that he was not forsaken of the universal Brother and Saviour. His cry was, "My soul thirsteth for thee; my flesh longeth for thee, in a dry and weary land, where no water is." It was his own fault that he was in the dry and weary wilderness; but oh! if Christ would not forsake him then, would dwell with him, even in this desert made desolate by himself, then at last he might find peace to his soul.
There was a deep inner consciousness, the forgotten but not obliterated faith of his boyhood and youth, before the world with its pomps and ambitions had laid its iron hand upon him, that Christ was with him, leading him day by day, if he would but follow nearer to God. Was it impossible to follow His guidance now? Could he not, even yet, take up his cross, and be willing to fill any place which he could yet fill worthily and humbly; expiating his sins against his fellow-men by truer devotion to their service, as Jean Merle, the working-man; not as Roland Sefton, the prosperous and fraudulent banker?
This return to his father's house, and all its associations, solemn and sacred with a peculiar sacredness and solemnity, seemed to him a pledge that he could once more be admitted into the great brotherhood and home of Christ's disciples. Every object on which his eye rested smote him, but it was with the stroke of a friend. A clear and sweet light from the past shed its penetrating rays into the darkest corners of his soul. Forgiven! God had forgiven him; and man had forgiven him. Before him lay an obscure and humble path; but the heaviest part of his burden was gone. He must go heavy-laden to the end of his days, treading in rough paths; but despair had fled, and with it the sense of being separated from God and man.
He heard the feeble yet deep old voice of Mr. Clifford outside his door inquiring from Mrs. Nixey if Mr. Merle was gone down-stairs yet. He made haste to go down, treading the old staircase with something of the alacrity of former days. Phebe was in the dining-room, and the servants came in to prayer as they had been used to do forty years ago when he was a child. An old-world tranquillity and peacefulness was in the familiar scene which breathed a deep calm over his tempest-tossed spirit.
"Phebe has been telling me all," said Mr. Clifford, when breakfast was over; "tell me what can be done to save Felicita and the children."
"I am Jean Merle," he answered with a melancholy smile, "Jean Merle, and no one else. I come back with no claims, and they must never know me. Why should I cross their path and blight it? I cannot atone for the past in any way, except by keeping away forever from them. I shall injure no one by continuing to be Jean Merle."
"No," said Phebe, "it is too late now, and it would kill Felicita."
"This morning a thought struck me," he continued, "a project for my future life, which you can help me to put into execution, Phebe. I have an intolerable dread of losing sight of you all again; let me be at least somewhere in England, when you can now and then give me tidings of my children and Felicita."
"I will do anything in the world to help you," cried Phebe eagerly.