“True, I had forgotten,” returned Hutchinson, with a sigh, “but your mother you remember?”
“Oh yes,” said the young man, with a tear starting in his eye, “I can never forget her sad, pensive countenance. I have been a wild, bad man, Mr. Hutchinson, but often in my darkest hours, the memory of my mother would come over me, as though her spirit, like a dove, was descending from her place in heaven to watch over her boy. Alas! I feel that if I had followed the precepts which she taught me, I would now be a better and a happier man.”
No heart is formed entirely hard; there are moments and memories which melt the most obdurate heart, as the wand of the prophet smote water from the rock. And Alfred Bernard, with all his cold scepticism and selfish nature, was for a moment sincerely repentant.
“I have often thought, Mr. Hutchinson,” he continued, “that if it had pleased heaven to give me some near relative on earth, around whom my heart could delight to cling, I would have been a better man. Some kind brother who could aid and sympathize with me in my struggle with the world, or some gentle sister, in whose love I could confide, and to whose sweet society I might repair from the bitter trials of this rugged life; if these had been vouchsafed me, my heart would have expanded into more sympathy with my race than it can ever now feel.”
Hutchinson smiled sadly, and replied—
“It has been my object in life, Alfred Bernard, to supply the place of those nearer and dearer objects of affection which have been denied you. I hope in this I have not been unsuccessful.”
“I am aware, Mr. Hutchinson,” said Bernard, bitterly, “that to you I am indebted for my education and support. I hope I have ever manifested a becoming sense of gratitude, and I only regret that in this alone am I able to repay you.”
“And do you think that I wished to remind you of your dependence, Alfred? Oh, no—you owe me nothing. I have discharged towards you a solemn, a sacred duty, which you had a right to claim. I took you, a little homeless orphan, and sought to cultivate your mind and train your heart. In the first you have done more than justice to my tuition and my care. I am proud of the plant that I have reared. But how have you repaid me? You have imbibed sentiments and opinions abhorrent to all just and moral men. You have slighted my advice, and at times have even threatened the adviser.”
“If you refer to the difference in our faith,” said Bernard, “you must remember that it was from your teachings that I derived the warrant to follow the dictates of my conscience and my reason. If they have led me into error, you must charge it upon these monitors which God has given me. You cannot censure me.”
“I confess I am to blame,” said the good old man, with a sigh. “But who could have thought, that when, with my hard earnings, I had saved enough to send you to France, in order to give you a more extensive acquaintance with the world you were about to enter—who would have thought that it would result in your imbibing such errors as these! Oh, my son, what freedom of conscience is there in a faith like papacy, which binds your reason to the will of another? And what purity can there be in a religion which you dare not avow?”