They glanced at each other as he went away, and Honora Pembroke smiled. “He looks as though he were gazing at heaven through the gate of martyrdom,” she said.
But the next morning, after seeing Gerald, he stopped a few minutes to talk with the family, and still they found that indefinable air of loftiness lingering about him, imposing a certain distance, at the same time that it increased their reverence and affection for him. The familiar, frequently jesting, sometimes peremptory F. Chevreuse seemed to have gone away for ever; but how beautiful was the substitute he had left, and how like him in all that was loftiest!
Lawrence was better that morning, and gained steadily day by day. Nothing could exceed the care and tenderness with which F. Chevreuse watched over his recovery. He came every morning and evening, he treated him with the affection of a father, and seemed to have charged himself with the young man's future.
“I think you should let him and Annette go to Europe for a year,” he said to Mrs. Ferrier. “It would be better for him to break off entirely from old associations, and have an entire change for a while. His health has not been good for some time, and his nerves are worn. The journey would restore him, and afterward we will see what can be done. I am not sure that it is well for him to live here. When a person is going to change his life very much, it is often wiser to change his place of abode also. The obstacles to improvement are fewer among strangers.”
The young man received this proposal to go abroad rather doubtfully. He would not go away till spring, and was not sure that he would go then. As he grew better in health, indeed, he withdrew himself more and more from the priest, and showed an uneasiness in his society which not all F. Chevreuse's kindness could overcome.
“You must not shun me, Lawrence,” the priest said to him one day when they were alone. “You have done that too long, and it is not well. Try to look on me as [pg 091] very firmly your friend. Let me advise you sometimes, and be sure that I shall always have your good in view.”
Lawrence had been very nervous and irritable that day, and was in no mood to bear expostulation. “You can't be my friend,” he replied with suppressed vehemence. “You can only be my master. You can only own me body and soul.”
“That is a mistake,” was the quiet answer. “I do not own you any more than I do others.”
But he patiently forbore to press the question then.
“Encourage him to come to me whenever you think I can benefit him,” he said to Annette. “You can tell best. He has not quite recovered his spirits yet, and it will do no good for me to urge him. Make everything as cheerful as you can for him. It sometimes happens that people get up from sickness in this depressed state of mind.”