Such escape was not easy. He had to think of his father, that indulgent, large-minded father who had given his son a very remunerative share in his practice at an age when most young men are dependent for every suit of clothes or five-pound note upon parental bounty and parental caprice. He knew that his father looked to him for an entire release from work before they were many years older; and that he would then find himself sole master of a business worth at least fifteen hundred a year. All this had come to him and would come to him easily, as the reward of conscientious and intelligent work. It was a prospect which few young men would forego without considerable hesitation; but Theodore hardly thought of the substantial advantages which he was so eager to sacrifice. His sole hesitation was on account of the disappointment which the step he contemplated would inflict upon his father.
He was not without a foreshadowing of a plan by which that disappointment might be in somewise lessened. He had kept an eye upon his brother for some time past, and he had discovered that the young man’s fervour for the Anglican Church had begun to cool. There were all the signs of wavering in that gifted youth. At one time he devoted all his study to the writings of Cardinal Newman, Hurrel Froude, and the Tractarian Party—he lived in the atmosphere of Oxford in the forties; he talked of Cardinal Manning as the head and front of religious thought. He was on the verge of deciding for the Old Faith. Then a sudden change came over the spirit of his dream. He began to have doubts, not of the reformed faith, but of every Western creed.
“Light comes from the East,” he told his sisters with an oracular air. “I doubt if there is any nearer resting-place for the sole of my foot than the Temple of Buddha. I find there the larger creed for which my mind yearns—boundless vistas behind and before me. I begin to entertain painful doubts of my fitness for the Anglican Church. I might be a power, perhaps, but it would be outside those narrow bounds—like Voysey, or Stopford Brooke. The Church, with its present limitations, would not hold me.”
The sisters sympathized, argued, quoted Essays and Reviews, and talked of Darwin and Spencer, Huxley and Comte. Theodore listened and said nothing. He saw which way the tide was turning, and rejoiced in the change of the current.
And now this sultry August afternoon, pacing up and down the green walk, he was expectant of an opportunity of discussing his brother’s future with that gentleman himself, as Harrington was in the habit of taking his afternoon constitutional, book in hand, upon this very path.
He appeared by-and-by, carrying an open volume of Max Müller, and looking at the nursemaids and perambulators.
“What, Theo, taking your meditative cigar? You don’t often give yourself a holiday before dinner.”
“No, but I wanted to talk to you alone, and I knew this was your beat.”
“Nothing gone wrong, I hope.”
“No; it is your future I want to discuss, if you don’t mind.”