“But, father, what are we to believe, or do we believe anything? Up to a certain period the Herberts were what their present head—whom heaven long preserve!—would call rank Papists. Old Sir Roger, whose epitaph I found Mr. Goodal endeavoring to decipher this afternoon, was a Crusader, a soldier of the cross which, in our enlightenment and hatred of idolatry, we have torn down from the altar where he worshipped, and overturned that altar itself. Was it for love of church and things established, as we understand them, that he sailed away to the Holy Land, and in his pious zeal knocked the life out of many an innocent painim? Was good Abbot Herbert, whose monumental brass in the chancel of S. Wilfrid’s presents him kneeling and adoring before the chalice that he verily believed to hold the blood of Christ, a worshipper of the same God and a holder of the same faith as my uncle, Archdeacon Herbert, who denies and abhors the doctrine of Transubstantiation, although his two daughters, who are of the highest High-Church Anglicans, devoutly believe in something approaching it, and, to prove their faith, have enrolled themselves both in the Confraternity of the Cope, whose recent discovery has set Parliament and all the bench of bishops abuzz? Is it all a humbug all the way down, or were the stout, Crusading, Catholic Herberts real and right, while we are wrong and a religious sham? Does the Reformation mark us off into white sheep and black sheep, consigning them to hell and us to heaven? If not, why were they not Protestants, and why are we not Catholics, or why are we all not unbelievers? Can the same heaven hold all alike—those who adored and adore the Sacrament as God, and those who pronounce adoration of the Sacrament idolatry and an abomination?”
My father’s only reply to this lengthy and irresistible burst of eloquent reasoning was to ask Nellie, who had sat stone-still, and whose eyes were distended in mingled horror and wonder, for a cup of coffee. My long harangue seemed to have a soothing effect upon my nerves. I looked at Goodal, who was looking at his spoon. I felt so sorry that I could have wished all my words unsaid.
“My dear father, and my dear Kenneth, and you too, Nellie, pardon me. I have been unmannerly, grossly so. I brought you here, Kenneth, to spend a pleasant evening, and help us to spend one, and some evil genius—a daimon that I carry about with me, and cannot always whip into good behavior—has had possession of me for the last half-hour. It was he that spoke in me, and not my father’s son, who, were he true to the lessons and example of his parent, would as soon think of committing suicide as a breach of hospitality or good manners. Now, as you are antiquarians, I leave you a little to compare notes, while I take Fairy out to trip upon the green, and console her for my passing heresy with orthodoxy and Tupper, who, I need not assure you, is her favorite poet, as he is of all true English country damsels. There is the moon beginning to rise; and there is a certain melting, a certain watery, quality about Tupper admirably adapted to moonlight.”
The rest of the evening passed more pleasantly. After a little we all went out on the lawn, and sat there together. The moonlight nights of the English summer are very lovely. That night was as a thousand such, yet it seemed to me that I had never felt the solemn beauty of nature so deeply or so sensibly before. S. Wilfrid’s shone out high and gray and solemn in the moon. Through the yew-trees of the priory down below gleamed the white tombstones of the churchyard. A streak of silver quivering through the land marked the wandering course of the Leigh. And high up among the beeches and the elms sat we, the odors of the afternoon still lingering on the air, the melody of a nightingale near by wooing the heart of the night with its mystic notes, and the moonlight shimmering on drowsy trees and slumbering foliage that not a breath in all the wide air stirred.
“There is a soft quiet in our English nights, a kind of home feeling about them, that makes them very lovable, and that I have experienced nowhere else,” said Kenneth.
“Oh! I am so glad to hear you say that, Mr. Goodal.”
“May I ask why, Miss Herbert?”
“Well, I hardly know. Because, I suppose, I am so very English.”
“So is Tupper, and Fairy swears by Tupper. At least she would, if she swore at all,” remarked her brother, whose hair was pulled for his pains.
“Were you ever abroad, Miss Herbert?”