‘Most emphatically. More than that, I shall require some assurance that the lady did not share your heresies, before I will suffer the interment to take place in the precincts of my church.’
‘Is not my assurance sufficient?’
‘No, sir, it is not!’ exclaimed the clergyman with scornful dignity. ‘I do not wish to say anything offensive, but, speaking as a Christian and a pastor of the English Church, I can attach no weight whatever to the assurances of one who is, in the public estimation, nothing better than an avowed infidel. Good morning!’
So saying, with a last withering look, the clergyman turned on his heel and walked away.
Seeing that remonstrance was useless, and might even cause public scandal, Bradley forthwith abandoned his design; but at his suggestion his wife’s sister saw the incumbent, and succeeded in convincing him that Mrs. Montmorency had died in the true faith. The result of Mr. Robertson’s pious indignation was soon apparent. The sister and her husband, who had hitherto treated Bradley with marked respect, now regarded him with sullen dislike and suspicion. They could not prevent him, however, from following as chief mourner, when the day of the funeral came.
That funeral was a dismal enough experience for Ambrose Bradley. Never before had he felt so keenly the vanity of his own creed and the isolation of his own opinions, as when he stood by the graveside and listened to the last solemn words of the English burial service. He seemed like a black shadow in the sacred place. The words of promise and resurrection had little meaning for one who had come to regard the promise as only beautiful ‘poetry,’ and the resurrection as only a poet’s dream. And though the sense of his own sin lay on his heart like lead, he saw no benign Presence blessing the miserable woman who had departed, upraising her on wings of gladness; all he perceived was Death’s infinite desolation, and the blackness of that open grave.
CHAPTER XXVII—THE SIREN.
Weave a circle round him thrice....