It has been stated that Sir Andrew Featherstone had met this Father Martini, and had informed him of the dangerous state in which Mr. Martindale was, at Brigland. This information the priest of course conveyed to Signora Rivolta. But before he had well finished speaking, a letter came from Brigland, addressed to Colonel Rivolta, and by him it was immediately handed over to the Signora.
The suddenness of the information, and the unexpectedness of the event, gave a painful shock to her feelings. At the first meeting of father and daughter, as mentioned in an early part of our narrative, there was comparatively little emotion. They had not been acquainted with or accustomed to each other, and therefore all the emotion which was excited was merely by force of imagination, in which faculty neither of them much abounded. But when Signora Rivolta had resided for a year or two with her lately-discovered father, and had experienced from him so much more kindness, attention, and even homage, than the circumstances of her birth could have led her to anticipate; when she had observed in his mind those traits and features, which are really and substantially good; and when she had seemed to be essential to his happiness and comfort: then indeed it was painful to her that he had been thus suddenly snatched away from her, and that he had breathed his last at a distance from every relative; and that the only farewell had been the parting for a short journey.
When Signora Rivolta had read the letter, she gave it to her daughter, and covered her face, and wept bitterly, but not loudly. The contents of the letter were thus made known to Clara before she read it. There is sometimes a consolation springing from the suddenness of an afflictive announcement; for if the first shock is well sustained, the details and particulars frequently act as alleviations. But Clara’s nerves were not strong, and her susceptibility was acute; and as her mother was not ordinarily passionate in grief or profuse of tears, the deep sobbings which the poor girl now witnessed overcame her self-possession, and she uttered a slight scream and fainted. The usual restoratives were promptly applied, and the stern-looking Father Martini was deeply moved at the scene of distress before him.
Clara was presently removed to her own apartment; and when she was sufficiently recovered to be left alone, Signora Rivolta returned to the priest. Now though this man had a stern and forbidding aspect, and though he was most zealously and exclusively devoted to that form of Christianity which he professed, yet he had the kindly feelings of humanity about him; and even the sternness of his bigotry had mercy for its motive.
“Lady,” said the priest to Signora Rivolta, “I can pity you. I can make allowance for the frailty and weakness of human feeling; but you must, in the midst of your grief, remember and adore the hand which sends affliction. And you should consider whether there be not some peculiar spiritual good to be derived and drawn from temporal and worldly sorrow. You have lost a parent. Pray for his soul. His errors might have shaken the stability of your faith; and if he endeavoured, while living, to poison your soul with heresy, now return good for evil, and pray for him. Who can tell how much the prayers of the faithful may avail!”
Signora Rivolta listened calmly, and replied, “But, father, will my prayers be successful for a heretic?”
“Daughter,” replied the priest, “there are no heretics in the grave.”
There was a pause in the conversation; and Father Martini anxiously watched the countenance of Signora Rivolta to see when there might be an opportunity of speaking concerning the daughter, of the steadiness of whose faith there was some ground of doubt. As there appeared some symptoms of composure, the priest, after a short interval, said, “Daughter, when afflictions come upon us, it is for our own good, or for the good of the church, most frequently for both. You have a child who was brought up in the bosom of the holy church; the faith of that child has been endangered. It is now more than ever in your power to secure and establish it. Whereinsoever you doubt your own influence in this land of heresy, that defect may be supplied and that evil remedied by removal of your child into a country where heresy is unknown.”
There followed this address a much longer and more embarrassing interval of silence, which at length was slowly broken by Signora Rivolta in a subdued and almost whispering tone. “Father Martini, I reverence the faith in which I have been reared from my infancy, and I feel it to be a faith of holy and sustaining power; but I fear that it has no influence where it does not rule the will; and I cannot, dare not, use an importunity of persuasion to urge my child to the steps which you suggest. If the church receives her wholly, it shall receive her freely.”
At this speech there was a slight frown upon the brow of the holy man; but Signora Rivolta saw it not, nor was she aware of any unpleasant feeling in the mind of Father Martini, when in reply he said, “Lady, you, as a mother, have power to influence; and the influence which you can use is more than authority and weightier than command. A child cannot long resist a parent.”