I abstained from asking how he had suddenly discovered the Church of England suited his religious convictions and abilities better than the sect of the ‘Saints indeed,’ and contented myself, not without a beating heart, by enquiring after Lord Longmoor and all at Hover.
I got answers; but none that I wanted. The Earl was perfection; the Countess perfection; even for Colonel Esdaile he had three or four superlatives. The Countess, he trusted, had been lately brought to the knowledge of the truth. The Colonel only needed to be brought to it—and he was showing many hopeful signs—to be more than mortal man.—It was evidently his cue to approve highly of Hover and all dwellers therein. And when, with almost a faltering voice, I asked news of my dear boy, he broke out into fresh superlatives; from amid the rank growth of which I could only discover that Lord Hartover was a very dashing and popular young man about town, and that it served Mr. Halidane’s purpose to approve—or seem to approve—of his being such.
‘The pomps and vanities of this wicked world, you know, my dear Brownlow,’—the fellow began to drop the ‘Mr.’ now—‘the pomps and vanities—but we must make allowances for youth—and those to whom little is given, you know, of them will little be required.’
‘Little given!’ thought I with a shudder, as I contrasted Halidane’s words with my own old lessons.—God grant that this fellow may not have had the opportunity of undoing all the good which I had done! I made the boy believe once that very much had been given him.—But I said nothing. Why waste words where the conversation will never go deeper than words?
So we went in to hall together; and, what was more, came out together, for it was plainly Mr. Halidane’s plan to quarter himself upon me, physically and morally—physically, in that he came up into my rooms and sat down therein, his countenance falling when he perceived that I brought out no wine.
‘You are a Nazarite still?’ he said at last, after looking uneasily several times towards door and cupboard.
‘I am, indeed,’ I replied, amused at his inability to keep his own counsel.
‘Ah—well. All the more freedom, then, for the wine of the Spirit. I trust that we shall have gracious converse together often, my dear Brownlow, and edify one another with talk of that which belongs to our souls’ health as we wander through this wilderness of tears.’
I replied by asking, I fear a little slyly, after Lord Longmoor’s book on prophecy.
‘As was to be expected—a success,’ he replied—‘a magnificent success, though I say so. Not perhaps in the number of copies sold. But what is worldly fame, and how can we expect the carnal man to favour spiritual things? Not, again, from a pecuniary point of view. But what is filthy lucre? His lordship’s philanthropy has enabled him, so to speak, to make the book a present, a free gift to the elect. No, not in such material gains as Christians will leave to the unsanctified, to a Scott or a Byron, does success lie; but in the cause of the Gospel. And, if humble I have been instrumental to that success, either in assisting his lordship’s deeper intellect, as the mouse might the lion, or in having the book properly pushed in certain Gospel quarters where I have a little unworthy influence—’ (Unworthy indeed, I doubt not, thought I!)—‘why, then—have I not my reward—I say, have I not my reward?’