“You wasted them because you liked it; because it was pleasanter to you to go mooning about the world than to come back to your post at home, and do your duty to God and yourself and your fellow-men,” retorted the admiral gruffly. “If we swallow poison, are its gripings to be reckoned merit to us? You spent eight years eating the fruit of your own act, and you expect the bitterness to count as an atonement. My boy, I have no right to preach to you, or to any one; I have too many holes in my own coat; but I have this advantage over you—that I see where the holes are and what made them. We need never expect things to go right with us unless we do the right thing; and if we do right and things seem to go wrong, they are sure to be right all the same, though we can’t see it. It is not all over here; the real reckoning is on the other side. But we have not come to that yet,” he added, in an encouraging tone; “this threat may turn out to be a vain one, and if so you will be none the worse for it—probably all the better. We want to be reminded every now and then that we don’t command either waves or wind; that when we are brought through smooth seas safe into port, a Hand mightier than ours has been guiding the helm for us. We are not quite such independent, fine fellows as we like to think. But come what may, fine weather or foul, you will meet it like a Christian, you will bow your head and submit.”
The admiral tapped his snuff-box again at this climax, took another pinch, and then fell back on the cushions and opened his paper.
Clide was glad to be left to himself, although his thoughts were not cheerful.
Sir Simon had said truly, he was or ought to have been a Catholic. At almost the very outset of his acquaintance with Franceline, he had intimated this fact to her, and though she did not inform her father of it, the knowledge undoubtedly went far in attracting her towards the young man and inspiring the confidence that she yielded to him so quickly and unquestioningly.
Mrs. de Winton, Clide’s mother, had been a sincere Catholic, although her heart had beguiled her into the treacherous error of marrying a man who was not of her faith. She had stipulated unconditionally that her children should be brought up Catholics; and on her death-bed demanded a renewal of the promise—then, as formerly, freely given—that Clide, their only child, should be carefully educated in his mother’s religion. But these things can never safely be entrusted to the good-will of any human being. The mother compromised—if she did not betray—her solemn trust, and her child paid the penalty. Mr. de Winton kept his promise as far as he could. He had no prejudices against the old religion—he was too indifferent to religion in the main for that—the antiquity and noble traditions of the Catholic Church claimed his intellectual sympathies, while its spirit and teaching, as exemplified in the life of her whom he revered as the model of all the virtues, inclined him to look on the doctrines of Catholicity with an indulgence leaning to reverence, even where he felt them most antagonistic.
Clide had a Catholic nurse to wash and scold him in his infantine days, and when, too soon after his father’s second marriage, the boy became an orphan and was left to the care of a stepmother, that cold but conscientious lady carried out her husband’s dying injunctions by engaging a Catholic governess to teach him his letters. Conscience, however, gave other promptings which Mrs. de Winton found it hard to reconcile with the faithful discharge of her late husband’s wishes. She maintained the Catholic influence at home, but she would not prolong the evil day an hour more than was absolutely necessary. She felt justified, therefore, in precipitating Clide’s entrance at Eton at an age when many children were still in the nursery. The Catholic catechism was not on the list of Etonian school-books, and he would be otherwise safe from the corroding influence which as yet could scarcely have penetrated below the surface of his mind. It was reasonably to be hoped that in course of time the false tenets he had imbibed would fade out of his mind altogether, and that when he was of an age to choose for himself the boy would elect the more respectable and rational creed of the De Wintons. His stepmother carried her conscientious scruples so far in this respect, however, as to inform the dame who was charged with the care of Clide’s linen, and the tutor who was to train his mind, that the boy was a Catholic and that his religion was to be respected. This injunction was, after a certain fashion, strictly obeyed. The subject of religion was carefully avoided, never mentioned to Clide directly or indirectly; and he was left to grow up with about as much spiritual culture as the laborer bestows on the flowers of the field. The seeds sown by his mother’s hand were quickly carried away by the winds that blow from the four points of the compass in those early, youthful days. If some sunk deeper and remained, they had not sun or dew enough to blossom forth and fructify. Perhaps, nevertheless, they did their work, and acted as an antidote in the virgin, untilled soil, and preserved the young infidel from the vicious vapors that tainted the air around him. It is certain that Clide left the immoral atmosphere of the great public school quite uncorrupted, guileless and upright, and still calling himself a Catholic, although he had practically broken off from all communion with the church of his childhood. He was more to be pitied than blamed. He was thinking so now as he lay back in the railway carriage, while the admiral sat beside him grunting complacently over the leading article, and mentally prognosticating that the country was going to the dogs, thanks to those blundering, unpatriotic Whigs. Yes, Clide pitied himself as he surveyed the past, and saw how his young life had been wasted and shipwrecked. If he felt that he had been too severely punished for follies that he had never been warned against, you must make allowance for him. His face wore a very sad, subdued look as he gazed out vacantly at the quiet fields and villages and steeples flying past. Why does he suddenly make that almost imperceptible movement, starting as if a voice had sounded close to his side? Was it fancy, or did he really hear a voice, low and soft, like faint, distant music that stirred his soul, making it vibrate to some dimly remembered melody? Could it be his mother’s voice echoing through the far-off years when he was a little child and knelt with his small hands clasped upon her knee, and lisped out some forgotten words that she dictated? Was it a trick of his imagination, or did some one stand at his side, gently touching his right hand and constraining him to lift it to his forehead, while his tongue mechanically accompanied the movement with some once familiar, long disused formula? There was in truth a presence near him, and a voice sounding from afar, murmuring those notes of memory which are the mother-tongue of the soul, subtle, persuasive, irresistible; accents that live when we have forgotten languages acquired with mature choice and arduous study; a presence that clings to us through life, and reveals itself when we have the will and the gift to see and to recognize it. That power is mostly the purchase of a great pain; the answer to our soul’s cry in the hour of its deepest need.
It flashed suddenly upon Clide, as that sweet and solemn influence pervaded and uplifted him, that here lay the unexpected solution of the problem—the missing key of life. He had fancied for a moment that he had found it in M. de la Bourbonais’ serene theories and practical philosophy. These had done much for him, it is true; but they had fallen away; they failed like a broken sword in the hour of trial; they did well enough for peaceful times, but they could not help and rescue him when all the forces of the enemy were let loose. Yet they seemed to have sufficed for Raymond.
Clide did not know that the calm philosophy was grafted on a root of faith in the French gentleman’s mind; his faith was not dead; far from it, and its vital heat had fed the strength which philosophy alone could never have supplied. Poor Clide! If any one had been at hand to interpret to him the message of that voice from his childhood, the whole aspect of life might there and then have changed for him. But no spiritual guide, no gentle monitor was there to tell him what it meant. The music died away; the presence was clouded over and ceased to be felt. When the train entered the station the passing emotion had disappeared, drowned without by the roar of the great city; within, by the agitation of the present which other thoughts had for a moment lulled to sleep.
The travellers drove straight from the railway station to Wimpole Street. Mr. Peckett, the dentist, was at home. They were admitted at once, and a few minutes’ conversation sufficed to confirm their worst forebodings. There could be no doubt but that the person whom Cromer had recognized in that transitory glimpse the day before was the beautiful and mysterious creature, Clide’s wife.