“And I am going away,” he said slowly, “going away, Hester—where?”
Where? the word struck me with a strange superstitious terror. For the first tune I was roused to look eagerly and inquiringly in his face.
“Not to the family grave, Hester!” he said with a smile of awful amusement—yes, amusement, there is no other word, “that is only a stage in the journey—where am I going beyond that? Have you nothing to say?”
“Father—father!” I said wildly, with a breathless horror.
“Ay, but you cannot pilot me!” said my father; “and by-and-bye my ears will be deaf, should all the voices in the world echo my name.”
I bent over him, holding him with terror unspeakable. Little training in religion had fallen to my share; but I had the natural sentiment—the natural dread; and I forgot everything else in the deadly fear which made me cling to my father now.
“Why do you not tell me to be resigned?” said my father. “Do you know what I am setting out upon, Hester? Distance, distance, distance—vaster than anything in our moorland—a dark, solitary journey, where no one knows the way. Death! who believes in that? it is but an arbitrary word—one of the names we use for things we cannot comprehend; and no one tells me where is the end.”
“Oh, father, father, it is in the Bible!” cried I.
“Yes, it is in the Bible. Are you afraid I do not believe it, child? I believe it—but I see no clearer for my faith,” said my father. “I believe it as I believe that Columbus discovered a new world. But what is Columbus and his new world to me?”
“But, papa, the Saviour—” I said, timidly, and in an agony of terror.