“Mamma, we saw nothing. Only the Dark Plain lying quietly under the moonlight. There appeared to be nothing to see; nothing unusual.”
“But that I hear you say this with my own ears, I should not have believed you capable of giving utterance to folly so intense,” sternly exclaimed Mr. Hastings to his daughter. “Are you the child of Christian parents? have you received an enlightened education?”
Maria’s eyelids fell under the reproof, and the soft colour in her cheeks deepened.
“That a daughter of mine should confess to running after a ‘shadow’!” he continued, really with more asperity than the case seemed to need. But the Rector of All Souls’ was one who would have deemed it little less heresy to doubt his Bible, than to countenance a tale of superstition. He repudiated such with the greatest contempt: he never, even though proof positive had been brought before his eyes, could accord to it an iota of credence. “An absurd tale of a ‘shadow,’ worthy only to be told to those who, in their blind credulity, formerly burnt poor creatures as witches; worthy only to amuse the ears of ignorant urchins, whom we put into our fields to frighten away the crows! And my daughter has lent herself to it! Can this be the result of your training, madam?”—turning angrily to his wife. “Or of mine?”
“I did not run after it from my own curiosity; I went because the rest went,” answered poor Maria in her confusion, all too conscious that the stolen moonlight walk with Mr. George Godolphin had been a far more powerful motive to the expedition than the “Shadow.” “Miss Pain saw it on Wednesday night; Margery saw it——”
“Will you cease?” broke forth the Rector. “‘Saw it!’ If they said they saw it they must have been labouring under a delusion; or else were telling a deliberate untruth. And you do not know better than to repeat such ignorance! What would Sir George think of you?”
“I should not mention it in his presence, papa. Or in Lady Godolphin’s.”
“Neither shall you in mine. It is not possible”—Mr. Hastings stood before her and fixed his eyes sternly upon hers—“that you can believe in it?”
“I think not, papa,” she answered in her strict truth. To truth, at any rate, she had been trained, whether by father or by mother; and she would not violate it even to avoid displeasure. “I think that my feeling upon the point is curiosity; not belief.”
“Then that curiosity implies belief,” sternly replied the Rector. “If a man came to me and said, ‘There’s an elephant out there, in the garden,’ and I went forth to see, would not that prove my belief in the assertion?”