The Vicar of Wrexhill Part 38

"I am sorry you should think so, dearest mother; but I a.s.sure you that neither physic nor divinity have been neglected in my education."

"And by whom have you been taught? Blind guides have been your teachers, who have led you, I fear, to the very brink of destruction. When light is turned into darkness, how great is that darkness!"

"My teachers have been those that my dear father appointed me, and I have never seen any cause to mistrust either their wisdom or their virtue, mother."

"And know you not that your poor unhappy father was benighted, led astray, and lost by having himself listened to such teaching as he caused to be given to you? But you, Charles, if you did not harden your heart, even as the nether millstone, might even yet be saved among the remnant. Put yourself into the hands and under the training of the pious, blessed minister whom the Lord hath sent us. Open your sinful heart to Mr. Cartwright, Charles, and you may save your soul alive!"

"Mother!" said Charles with solemn earnestness, "Mr. Cartwright's doctrines are dreadful and sinful in my eyes. My excellent and most beloved father was a Protestant Christian, born, educated, and abiding to his last hour in the faith and hope taught by the established church of his country. In that faith and hope, mother, I also have been reared by him and by you; and rather than change it for the impious and frightful doctrines of the sectarian minister you name, who most dishonestly has crept within the pale of an establishment whose dogmas and discipline he profanes,--rather, mother, than adopt this Mr.

Cartwright's unholy belief, and obey his unauthorised and unscriptural decrees, I would kneel down and implore that my bones might be at once laid beside my father's."

"Leave the room, Charles Mowbray!" exclaimed his mother almost in a scream; "let not the walls that shelter me be witness to such fearful blasphemy!"

"I cannot, and I will not leave you, mother, till I have told you how very wretched you are making me and my poor sister Helen by thus forsaking that form of religion in which from our earliest childhood we have been accustomed to see you wors.h.i.+p. Why,--why, dearest mother, should you bring this dreadful schism upon your family? Can you believe this to be your duty?"

"By what right, human or divine, do you thus question me, lost, unhappy boy? But I will answer you; and I trust that I shall be forgiven for intercommuning with one who lives in open rebellion to the saints! Yes, sir; I do believe it is my duty to hold fast the conviction which Heaven in its goodness has sent me. I do believe it is my duty to testify by my voice, and by every act of my life during the remaining time for which the Lord shall spare me for the showing forth of his glory, that I consider the years that are past as an abomination in his sight; that my living in peace and happiness with your unawakened and unregenerate father was an abomination in the sight of the Lord; and that now, at the eleventh hour, my only hope of being received rests in my hating and abhorring, and forsaking and turning away from, all that is, and has been, nearest and dearest to my sinful heart!"

Charles listened to this rant with earnest and painful attention, and, when she ceased, looked at her through tears that presently overflowed his eyes.

"Have I then lost my only remaining parent?" said he. "And can you thus close your heart against me, and your poor Helen, my mother?"

"By the blessing of providence I am strong," replied the deluded lady, struggling to overcome Heaven's best gift of pure affection in her heart. "By its blessing, and by the earnest prayers of its holiest saint, I am able, wretched boy, to look at thee, and say, Satan avaunt!

But I am tried sorely," she continued, turning her eyes from the manly countenance of her son, now wet with tears. "Sorely, sorely, doomed and devoted boy, am I tried? But he, the Lord's vicar upon earth, the chosen shepherd, the anointed saint,--he, even he tells me to be of good cheer, for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth."

"Can you then believe, mother, that the merciful G.o.d of heaven and of earth approves your forsaking your children, solely because they wors.h.i.+p him as they have been taught to do? Can you believe that he approves your turning your eyes and heart from them to devote yourself to a stranger to your blood, a preacher of strange doctrine, and one who loves them not?"

"I have already told you, impious maligner of the holiest of men, that I know where my duty lies. I know, I tell you, that I not only know it, but will do it.--Torment me no more! Leave me, leave me, unhappy boy!

leave me that I may pray for pardon for having listened to thee so long."

She rose from her seat and approached him, as if to thrust him from the chamber; but he suffered her to advance without moving, and when she was close to him, he threw his arms round her, and held her for a moment in a close embrace. She struggled violently to disengage herself, and he relaxed his hold; but, dropping on his knees before her, at the same moment he exclaimed with pa.s.sionate tenderness, "My dear, dear mother!

have I then received your last embrace? Shall I never again feel your beloved lips upon my cheeks, my lips, my forehead? Mother! what can Helen and I do to win back your precious love?"

"Surely I shall be rewarded for this!" said the infatuated woman almost wildly. "Surely I shall be visited with an exceeding great reward! and will he not visit thee too, unnatural son, for art not thou plotting against my soul to destroy it?"

"There is, then, no hope for us from the voice of nature, no hope from the voice of reason and of truth? Then hear me, mother, for I too must act according to the voice of conscience. Helen and I must leave you; we can no longer endure to be so near you in appearance, while in reality we are so fearfully estranged. You have been very generous to me in the sum which you named for my allowance at my father's death; and as soon as my commission is obtained, that allowance will suffice to support me, for my habits have never been extravagant. May I ask you to a.s.sign a similar sum to Helen? This will enable her to command such a home with respectable people as may befit your daughter; and you will not doubt, I think, notwithstanding the unhappy difference in our opinions on points of doctrine, that I shall watch over her as carefully as our dear father himself could have done."

"He is a prophet! yea, a prophet!" exclaimed Mrs. Mowbray; "and shall I be blind even as the unG.o.dly, and doubt his word into whose mouth Heaven hath put the gift of prophecy and the words of wisdom? He hath spoken, and very terrible things are come to pa.s.s. Can your heart resist such proof as this, Charles?" she continued, raising her eyes and hands to heaven:--"even what you have now spoken, that did he predict and foretell you should speak!"

"He guessed the point, then, at which we could bear no more," replied Charles with bitterness: "and did he predict too what answer our pet.i.tion should receive?"

"He did," returned Mrs. Mowbray either with real or with feigned simplicity; "and even that too shall be verified. Now, then, hear his blessed voice through my lips; and as I say, so must thou do. Go to your benighted sister, and tell her that for her sake I will wrestle in prayer. With great and exceeding anguish of spirit have I already wrestled for her; but she is strong and wilful, and resisteth alway.--Nevertheless, I will not give her over to her own heart's desire; nor will I turn mine eyes from her. For a while longer I will endure; and for you, unhappy son, I must take counsel from the same holy well-spring of righteousness, and what he shall speak, look that it come to pa.s.s."

"You have denounced a terrible sentence against Helen, mother! for nearly two years, then, she must look forward to a very wretched life; but, without your consent, I cannot till she is of age remove her. Dear girl! she has a sweet and gentle spirit, and will, I trust, be enabled to bear patiently her most painful situation. But as for myself it may be as well to inform Mr. Cartwright at once, through you, that any interference with me or my concerns will not be endured; and that I advise him, for his own sake, to let me hear and see as little of him as possible."

Mrs. Mowbray seemed to listen to these words in perfect terror, as if she feared a thunderbolt must fall and crush at once the speaker and the hearer of such daring impiety. But the spirit of Charles was chafed; and conscious perhaps that he was in danger of saying what he might wish to recall on the influence which his mother avowed that the vicar had obtained over her, he hastened to conclude the interview, and added: "I will beg you ma'am, immediately to give me a draft for my quarter's allowance, due on the first of this month. I want immediately to send money to Oxford."

"Did I not tell you, Charles, to inform my man of business,--that serious and exemplary man, Mr. Corbold,--what money you owed in Oxford, and to whom? And did I not inform you at the same time that he should have instructions to acquit the same forthwith?"

"Yes, mother, you certainly did send me a letter to that effect; but as my father permitted me before I came of age to pay my own bills, and to dispose of my allowance as I thought fit, I did not choose to change my usual manner of proceeding, and therefore left what I owed unpaid, preferring to remit the money myself. Will you please to give me the means of doing this now?"

"May Heaven be gracious to me and mine, as I steadily now, and for ever, refuse to do so great iniquity! Think you, Charles, that I, guided and governed, as I glory to say I am, by one sent near me by providence to watch over me now in my time of need,--think you that I will hire and pay your wicked will to defy it."

"Do you mean, then, mother, to withdraw my allowance?" said Charles.

"I thank Heaven that I do!" she replied, uplifting her eyes: "and humbly on my knees will I thank it for giving me that strength, even in the midst of weakness!"

As she spoke, she dropped upon her knees on the floor, with her back towards her unhappy son. He remained standing for a few moments, intending to utter some nearly hopeless words of remonstrance upon the cruel resolution she had just announced; but as she did not rise, he left the room, and with a heavy heart proceeded to look for Helen and her friend; though he would gladly have prepared himself by an hour of solitude for communicating tidings which had very nearly overthrown his philosophy. But he had promised to see them and to tell them all that pa.s.sed; and he prepared to perform this promise with a heavier heart than had ever before troubled his bosom. He shrank from the idea of appearing before Rosalind in a situation so miserably humiliating, for at this moment fears that the report mentioned by Lady Harrington might be true pressed upon him; and though his better judgment told him that such feelings were contemptible, when about to meet the eye of a friend he could not subdue them, and as he opened the drawing-room door, the youthful fire of his eye was quenched and his pale lip trembled.

"Oh! Charles, how dreadfully ill you look!" exclaimed Helen.

"What can have pa.s.sed?" said Miss Torrington, looking almost as pale himself.

"Much that has been very painful," he replied; "but I am ashamed at being thus overpowered by it. Tell me, both of you, without any reserve, have you ever thought--has the idea ever entered your heads, that my unfortunate mother was likely to marry Cartwright?"

"No,--never," replied Helen firmly.

"Yes," said Rosalind falteringly;--but less with the hesitation of doubt, than from fear of giving pain.

"Lady Harrington told me it was spoken of," said Mowbray with a deep sigh.

"It is impossible!" said Helen, "I cannot:--I will not believe it.

Rosalind! if you have had such an idea, how comes it that you have kept it secret from me?"

"If instead of darkly fearing it," replied Rosalind, "I had positively known it to be true, I doubt if I should have named it, Helen;--I could not have borne that words so hateful should have first reached the family from me."

"Has she told you it is so?" inquired Helen, her lips so parched with agitation that she p.r.o.nounced the words with difficulty.

"No, dearest, she has not; and perhaps I am wrong both in conceiving such an idea, and in naming it. But her mind is so violently, so strangely wrought upon by this detestable man, that I can only account for it by believing that he is----"

There was much filial piety in the feeling that prevented his finis.h.i.+ng the sentence.

"It is so that I have reasoned," said Rosalind. "Heaven grant that we be both mistaken!--But will you not tell us, Charles, what it is that has suggested the idea to you? For Heaven's sake relate, if you can, what has pa.s.sed between you?"

"If I can!--Indeed I doubt my power. She spoke of me as of one condemned of Heaven."

Rosalind started from her seat.--"Do not go on, Mr. Mowbray!" she exclaimed with great agitation; "I cannot bear this, and meet her with such external observance and civility as my situation demands. It can do us no good to discuss this wicked folly,--this most sinful madness. I, at least, for one, feel a degree of indignation--a vehemence of irritation on the subject, that will not, I am sure, produce good to any of us. She must go on in the dreadful path in which she has lost herself, till she meet something that shall shock and turn her back again. But all that can be done or said by others will but drive her on the faster, adding the fervour of a martyr to that of a convert."

"You speak like an oracle, dear Rosalind," said poor Mowbray, endeavouring to smile, and more relieved than he would have avowed to himself at being spared the task of narrating his downfall from supposed wealth to actual penury before her.

"She speaks like an oracle, but a very sad one," said Helen.

"Nevertheless, we will listen and obey.--You have spoken to my mother, and what you have said has produced no good effect: to me, therefore, it is quite evident that nothing can. Were it not that the fearful use which we hear made of the sacred name makes me tremble lest I too should use it irreverently, I would express the confidence I feel, that if we bear this heavy sorrow well, his care will be with us: and whether we say it or not, let us feel it. And now, Rosalind, we must redeem our lost time, and read for an hour or so upstairs. See! we have positively let the fire go out;--a proof how extremely injurious it is to permit our thoughts to fix themselves too intensely on any thing:--it renders one incapable of attending to the necessary affairs of life.--There, Charles, is a sermon for you. But don't look so miserable, my dear brother; or my courage will melt into thin air."

"I will do my best to master it, Helen," he replied; "but I shall not be able to make a display of my stoicism before you this evening, for I must return to Oakley."

"Are you going to dine there? Why did you not tell me so?"

"If my conversation with my mother had ended differently, Helen, I should have postponed my visit till to-morrow; but as it is, it will be better for me to go now. I will drive myself over in the cab. I suppose I can have Joseph?" He rang the bell as he spoke.

"Let the cab be got ready for me in half an hour: and tell Joseph I shall want him to go out with me to dinner."