More Pages from a Journal

by William Hale White

Mr. Radcliffe was much disturbed. To him Roman Catholicism was superstition, and he wondered how any rational person could submit to it. To be sure he assented every week to supernatural history and doctrines presented to him in his own parish church, but to these he was accustomed, and his reason, acute as it was, made no objection. There was another cause for his distress. His only sister, whom he tenderly loved, had become a foreign nun and was lost to him for ever. His life was bound up with his child, and he dreaded intervention. It is all very well to say that religious differences need not be a bar to friendship. This is one of the commonplaces of people who understand neither friendship nor religion. When Kate and he went for their long walks together, they would no longer see the same hills; and there would always be something behind her affection for him and above it. He was moodily jealous, and it was unendurable that he should be supplanted by an intruder who would hear secrets which were not entrusted to a parent. There was still some hope. He did not know how far she had gone; and he resolved to speak to her. One morning, as soon as breakfast was over, he proposed an excursion; he could talk more freely in the open air. After a few minutes’ indifferent conversation he asked her abruptly if she was a Roman Catholic.

‘I cannot say.’

‘Cannot say! Do you still belong to our church?’

‘Father, do not question me.’

‘Ah! I see what has happened; it is lawful to hide from me, to prevaricate and perhaps’—he checked himself. ‘You know that ever since you have grown up I have hidden nothing from you. I have told you everything about my own affairs: I have asked your counsel, for I am old, and the wisdom of an old man is often folly. You have also told me everything: you have opened your heart to me. Think of what you have said to me: I have been mother and father to you. The trouble to me is not merely that you believe in transubstantiation and I do not, but that there is something in you which you reserve for a stranger. What has come to you?—for God’s sake keep close to me for the few remaining years or months of my life. Have you reflected on the absurdities of Romanism? Is it possible that my Kate should kneel at the feet of an ignorant priest!’

She was silent. She knew as little as her father of Roman Catholic history and creeds.

He went on:

‘Your aunt, my dear sister—a more beautiful creature never walked this earth—I do not know if she is alive or dead. Can that be true which kills love?’

‘Father, father,’ she cried, sobbing, ‘nothing can separate us!’

He said no more on that subject, and seemed to recover his peace of mind, although he was not really at rest. He was getting into years and he saw that words were useless and that he must wait the issue of forces which were beyond his control. ‘If she is to go, she must go: resistance will make it worse for me: I must thank God if anything of her is left for me. Thus spoke the weary submission of age, but it was not final, and the half-savage desire for his child’s undivided love awoke in him again, and he prayed that if he could not have it his end might soon come.