“Claire! then it is of her you wish to speak? I supposed your secret concerned yourself. She has told me of her own life.”
“She has told you what she knew,” said Father Angelo, with the same abruptness as before. Indeed, through the whole of our interview, there was an earnestness which dispensed with the usual forms almost of civility.
“I have been waiting, watching for such an event as your coming, ever since last year, when I first became fully acquainted with Claire, and saw how unsuited she was to a conventual life. She has warm feelings and superior intellect, and she is fretted continually by the discrepancy between her inward and outward life. She would be a companion to you, and—she has some means—” he stopped, and a slight flush passed over his pale face. “I should not wish her to be a dependent on the bounty of any person.”
“I understand, however, from Claire herself,” said I, “that her mother died poor, and that she has been indebted to charity for her support. This father of hers—if he be living—”
“You think he must be a wretch,” said Father Angelo, calmly, “so to desert those who have every claim on his care. Be it so. He is a wretch. And most wretched is he, that, seeing before him the form of his child, and listening to the outpourings of her angelic soul, he should be barred from acknowledging kindred with it, and forced, for the very love he bears her, to tear her from him forever.
“If you will accede to my earnest request, take Claire with you to America—care for her—watch over her—be to her all that, alas! her father must not be—and I shall feel that all, and a thousand times more than all I deserve, and all I live for, is granted, and shall at once enter a convent of La Trappe. I long for it—I long for eternal silence; and have only retained my present position, that I might find Claire, read her character, and do what I could to unfold and strengthen it. That mission is accomplished. Her native strength of wing has already carried her mind beyond what my feeble flights can follow. She soars to regions of purity and peace, where my soul cannot revel, unless after long years of penance and suffering. She loves the ideal parent, who is to her the personification of all virtue; and it is impossible, and ought to be so, for me to sully her thoughts with the reality which to her must always be a source of disappointment and mortification, and to me inexpressible shame.”
This revelation was not unexpected to me, so far as regarded the relationship of the two parties; but it filled me with much matter for meditation. I had no curiosity to know the events of Father Angelo’s past life. The lines of suffering, and the traces of strong passions, were marked deeply on his marble brow, and composed even to severity as his manner now was, I could read under the habitual restraint of his expressive face, that no slight agony had wrought on a naturally proud and sensitive spirit, before it could compel itself to forego its sweetest pleasures rather than breathe on the purity of the beloved object.
After some time passed on my side in revolving what I had heard, and what I was expected to do, and on his, in a distressful silence that watched painfully for my first word, I asked,
“But about Claire’s religious influences. She will have few of the kind she has been accustomed to; and all her indirect influences, you must be aware, will not be very favorable to her religious constancy.”
“I think she will become a Protestant. You are surprised that I should be willing to trust her in such an atmosphere. But there are some minds that are cast, so to speak, in a Protestant mould; and hers is one. She has not a great deal of faith, and her mind naturally tends so much to inquiry, perhaps I should say skepticism, that I found it difficult to lead her. I may as well say at once, that my own reasons for adopting the profession and character of a priest, were first to discover her, and know her mind more intimately than I could do in any other position; and secondly, because the Catholic faith promises more to me than any other religion. I feel the need of what it has to give; but to Claire, I can see its spirit and forms are not so necessary. I am not bigoted nor intolerant, as you see. Perhaps I am not a good Catholic. But I wish you to understand that I am not acting against my conscience.”