CHAPTER VII.
The girl was almost as taken aback as he was.
‘Is this you, Fred?’ she said, in a tone of the utmost astonishment. ‘What have you done to yourself? I hardly knew you.’
But he only asked again,—
‘Why have you come? What do you want with me? I thought our acquaintanceship was at an end.’
‘I have not come to ask anything of you, Fred,’ said Rhoda, in a reproachful voice. ‘I think you might know that without my telling you. I am here as your friend only. I heard that you were in trouble, and I wanted to see if I could be of any use to you.’
‘Thank you, thank you,’ he repliednervously. ‘It is kind of you to have thought of it. Won’t you sit down?’
Rhoda seated herself on one of the rush-bottomed chairs, whilst Frederick took another as far as possible from her.
‘What is it that I can do for you?’ he commenced, in a stiff voice.
‘Nothing,’ replied the girl, ‘only tell me about yourself. Is it true that you are a widower? I am so sorry for you! And why are you living in this place? What have you to do with a training college?’
‘I am here as a probationer, or novice, Rhoda. It is evident you know nothing about me. I am about to enter the Church and become a priest.’
‘A priest! Oh, Fred, never!Youa priest? You’ll never stick to it. You will be tired to death of it in three months.’
This prophecy seemed to offend the young man exceedingly, the more so as he had occasional doubts whether it might not be true.
‘You do not know what you are talking of,’ he returned, grandiloquently. ‘A priest once is a priest for ever. There will be no going back. Once ordained, my fate is fixed for life.’
‘Will there benogetting out of it; not even if you thought it right?’ exclaimed Rhoda, with open eyes.
‘Certainly not. Once admitted to the Church, there can be no leaving her without everlasting disgrace and loss of one’s salvation.’
‘Oh, Fred!’ cried the girl, ‘think twice before you take such an irrevocable step. You will repent it; I am sure you will. But what made you think of it? What put such an idea into your head?’
‘The Almighty, in His infinite goodness,’ replied Frederick. ‘You have heard, you say, of my great loss. It was that which first brought me to my senses. It was so sudden—so terrible! I could see God’s finger of wrath so plainly in it, that it mercifully opened my eyes to my true condition.’
‘Do you think, then,’ said the girl, timidly, ‘that God revenges Himself on us for our petty, thoughtless sins, by torturing or cutting off the life of some one we love? Ifyouwere the sinner, why shouldshehave died to bring you to a sense of your wickedness? Why should an innocent girl be used as a burnt-offering for your sins? And how can you better matters by becoming a priest? Are there not plenty of priests? Is it impossible to show God that you are sorry for the past in some other way?’
‘Rhoda, as you truly say, you do not understand. You have not been brought up in our blessed faith. I wish you had. Then you would know there is no expiation for sin without blood shedding. When my beloved wife was taken from me I was nearly mad—’
‘Tell me of her,’ interposed Rhoda, softly. ‘I would rather hear about her than the Church.’
‘Oh! Rhoda!’ exclaimed Frederick,with the selfishness of grief, not heeding how his praises of the dead might sting the girl before him, ‘she was so young, so loving, so beautiful. She was the most perfect creature I have ever seen. And we had been married only one day, when she met with a terrible accident that deprived me of her. She fell over the cliffs at Dover and was killed on the spot. It nearly drove me out of my mind.’
‘Poor Frederick!’ said Rhoda, kindly. ‘But are you sure it was an accident?’
‘I am sure of nothing, except that my darling parted from me in health and spirits, and that I never saw her alive again. She was found at the foot of the cliffs, crushed to death. Some thought she might have thrown herself over, but I am sure she did not do that; but whether some villain insulted her, or tried to rob her, and so made her take a false step, in agitation and alarm, I cannot say. No one will ever know the truth now. The onlything certain is, that God has taken her from me, and that I shall never see her again this side Eternity.’
‘Poor Frederick,’ repeated the girl, gently. ‘But why should you become a priest because of that? It will not bring your wife back to you.’
‘Not in this world, Rhoda, but in the next. I need not mind saying to you that I have been a very bad man, and led a sinful life. You know it only too well. My mother intended me for the service of the Church, and educated me, up to the age of twenty, with that end in view. But, as soon as she died and I became my own master, I left college and entered the world, and you know the bad use I made of my time whilst there. I have to ask your pardon, Rhoda, for the way in which I treated you.’
‘Don’t, don’t,’ said Rhoda, quickly. ‘I can’t bear it. I have not reproached you, Frederick. Nor, in my own heart, have I blamed you. I always spoke my mind, you know. We were very happy whilstwe knew each other, and thought we cared for each other, and if we have had to “pay for our whistle,” let us do so bravely, and without any cant. I have borne my share without crying out. Do the same by yours. God will accept our secret grief and prayers quite as soon as any public display of regret.’
‘I daresay you are right,’ replied the young man, who, however, did not like being cut short in his protestations of repentance; ‘but to return to what we were talking of. My godfather, Sir Frederick Ascher, who died before I can remember him, left me all his property, coupled with a hope that I should either enter the Church, when it would be confiscated to its use, or, failing that, that I should leave it to the Church at my own death, or endow some ecclesiastical building with it. This behest I laughed at, and had no intention of obeying until my eyes were so mercifully opened to the sins of which I had been guilty, and I saw that the only reparationI could make to Heaven, would be to do as my dear mother and godfather wished me, and become a priest.’
‘But how,’ demanded Rhoda, ‘will that repair the wrong you have done in the world? It seems to me that it benefits really no one.’
‘Oh, Rhoda! you speak in ignorance,’ said Frederick Walcheren. ‘In right of my blessed office, I shall have the privilege of offering the Mass for the repose of the souls of those I have loved and injured, every day. I shall live, as it were, in the sight of Heaven, and weary it with prayers for the pardon of my own sins, and the sins of those I have led, by my example or otherwise, into error; I shall live, I trust, blameless, henceforth, in the eyes of God and men, so that, when my time comes to leave the world, I may be found worthy to join my friends and relatives, and to live in the sight of God and angels for evermore.’
‘And could you not effect these objectsjust as well by living in the world, instead of burying yourself alive?’ asked Rhoda drily.
‘I could not trust myself to do it, Rhoda. My aspirations are good, but my flesh is frail, and the temptations of this life might prove too strong for me.’
‘Then I don’t see much good in your repentance, Fred,’ said the girl. ‘If you are obliged to shut yourself up to prevent your sinning, your abstinence cannot be of much value in God’s eyes. Your virtue will lie in the four walls of your clergy house, not in yourself.’
The young man sat silent. He did not like the tone adopted by his former friend. It was too much an echo of something which he could not drive out of his mind, nor his heart.
‘Is this all you have to say to me, Rhoda?’ he asked after a pause.
‘No, Fred. I came up from Luton this morning expressly to see you. I heard, through my mother—you knowhow—that you were in trouble and danger, and I see now that both reports were true. I couldn’t think what the danger might be! I was told that you were being entangled in a net that would close round you, and deliver over your soul and body into the keeping of others. I understand what they meant now! When you have become a priest, you will no longer be a man. You will be a slave, obliged to go here, or there, or do this or give up the other, as your superiors choose.’
‘But it will be all for my good, Rhoda. I am not fit to look after, or take care of, myself.’
‘Perhaps so, but I entreat of you, Fred, not to do this thing in too great a hurry! You are not in a fit state to judge for yourself at this moment! You are so grieved by the loss of your wife, that you have but one wish—to give up the world and everything in it, and be left to yourself and your own thoughts for ever. I know what the feeling is! Doyou suppose that I have not felt it also? Do you suppose that I do not know what it is to despair of God’s existence, and to believe that He neither sees nor hears what His unfortunate creatures are doing or suffering?’
‘You, Rhoda, you? But what trouble have you had to make you despair like this?’
The girl turned and looked him full in the face. Was it possible that he could be so selfish and absorbed in his own sorrows, as entirely to have forgotten hers?
‘You don’t mean to tell me that you cared for me as much as all that?’ demanded Frederick, with a touch of the old vanity.
‘No!’ she answered, ‘no! I did not care for you as much as all that, and if I had done so, the time is past for telling you of it! Let me finish what I was going to say to you! Be warned by me! If you become a priest, you will regret it. You are not fitted bynature or constitution, for such an artificial life, neither is your present feeling a permanent one. I feel it! Something tells me so! Your mind has been upset, and you are not capable of judging for yourself! Don’t take the final step without further consideration. And tell me one thing! Do you know a man, not very tall but rather stout—with blue eyes and fair hair, parted down the middle—a man with a pleasant smile and manner, and who is especially natty about his hands and nails?’
‘Yes, yes!’ cried the young man; ‘what of him? I recognise your description perfectly.’
‘He is an enemy of yours, Fred!’ replied Rhoda. ‘I was told to tell you that he—’
‘Stop!’ cried Frederick, suddenly. ‘Whotold you?’
‘Mother did, last night, or some of her controls. I told you, ages ago, you may remember, that she has the gift of second sight.’
‘A soothsayer—a woman with a familiar spirit—condemned alike of God and our holy Church!’ exclaimed her companion excitedly, ‘and you bring me warnings and admonitions from such a source! Away—silence! I will hear no more of it. I sin each moment that I listen. My poor friend, do you know the danger you run by giving heed to anything you may hear from such a source? You are playing with the devil—listening to his advice, delivering your soul into his hands. You must promise me never to have any dealings with such people again, or you will imperil your immortal soul.’
But Rhoda, though deeply attached to the man before her, was too sensible a woman not to have opinions of her own, and the courage to stick up for them, into the bargain.
‘Not have dealings with my own mother!’ she retorted; ‘what will you tell me next, I wonder! If you don’t choose to heed what I say to you, it’s no faultof mine, Fred, but I’ve done my duty in telling you what was told to me. And as for its being wrong, I don’t believe it. If my mother’s controls were evil spirits, why did they warn me against you before ever I came to London, and say that nothing but trouble would come of our intimacy? Why didn’t they tell me that life was short in this world, and I had better make the most of it whilst it lasted, instead? No! that wasyourteaching, not theirs; but you’d like to make out your principles the better of the two! You may not take my advice. I can’t help that, but don’t set up your own against it, for you’ll only anger me, and I came to see you from a pure wish to do you good.’
And with that, and a suspicious sound in her voice as if she could not trust herself to speak any more, Rhoda gathered up a little shawl she had carried over her arm, and her umbrella, and prepared to quit the room.
‘Rhoda, don’t be vexed with what Isaid,’ replied Frederick. ‘You did it in good faith, I am sure, but I must obey the teachings of our most holy Church on the subject. She strictly forbids all tampering with such knowledge—with any communications from spirits of the dead. We are taught to regard them with horror, as temptations from the Evil One, and sent in order to lure us to our own damnation.’
‘Yes,’ said Rhoda, incredulously. ‘But I thought that saints in the Roman Catholic Church were often made so, because they had seen or talked with spirits of the dead, and that the Pope called a convocation to decide if such reports were true, and, if they were, the saintship was confirmed.’
‘That may be correct, Rhoda, but it is very different!’
‘How?’
Frederick began to fidget.
‘Well, you see, the reports, as you say, are confirmed by a court of inquiry, and established by the approval of the Church,so that there remains no doubt of their honesty and—’
‘You need say no more, Fred! My mother is as much to me as your Church is to you—perhaps a little more—and I have the same faith in her honesty, and impossibility of dealing with the devil, so that we may cry quits.’
‘I hope I have not offended you,’ said Frederick, ‘but I dare not listen to communications from such a source! If not actually ordained, I am pledged to become a minister of the Church, and am bound to follow her commands in everything.’
‘Poor Fred!’ said the girl, compassionately, ‘I can do nothing more for you, so I had better go. Good-bye! Believe how I sympathise in your great trouble—that I would have saved you from it, if I could. I don’t suppose that I shall ever see you again, but I shall never forget you—never!’
She held out her hand to him as she spoke, and the warm human touch seemedto Frederick Walcheren like a last farewell of the world he had loved so much.
‘One moment, Rhoda,’ he said tremblingly; ‘you said, just now, that you had had sorrow enough to make you despair. What was it? Was it connected with me?’
‘You know how you left me,’ she answered, colouring; ‘surely I needn’t remind you of that.’
‘No, no; but I thought, perhaps—I hoped, as you had said nothing of it, that—that—’
‘That God had mercifully buried the proof of your treatment of me, with your other sins, I suppose, Fred,’ replied the girl, scornfully.
‘Your mother wrote me a letter some time ago now, I remember (but later events have put it out of my head), and I sent her a cheque for one hundred pounds, for expenses, but she returned it to me, and said she did not want it. And not having heard since—’
‘You flattered yourself you would neverhear again,’ retorted Rhoda. ‘Well, you were right! You never will! Good-bye!’
But he would not let her go.
‘Tell me,’ he urged, ‘tell me everything! Don’t think, because I’m going to be a priest, that I have lost all trace of human feeling. Is the child alive and well? Is it a boy or a girl?’
‘What is the good of my telling you?’ asked Rhoda, dashing away the tears that had risen to her eyes. ‘You’ll never see him, nor will he call you “father.” But since you ask me, he is a boy, and strong and healthy, and I love him dearly. Is that sufficient?’
‘My little son,’ said Frederick, musingly. ‘The only child I shall ever have, and him I have disgraced, God forgive me! Rhoda, you must let me settle some money on this boy before my fortune passes out of my hands. He is mine; you have no right to refuse me.’
‘No, no, I will not have it; he shall not take it!’ exclaimed Rhoda, passionately.‘Mother and I have enough for him, and he shall never know who his father is. Don’t be afraid but that he will be well looked after. He is all—all—’ with a sudden break in her voice—‘that I have left.’
In a moment the injury he had done this girl, whose existence he had almost forgotten, flashed across Frederick Walcheren’s mind.
‘Oh! let me make you some amends,’ he cried. ‘Don’t leave me with this remorse tearing at my heart. If you do, the child and you will come between me and my prayers. The money is my own still, to do as I will with. Let me put a thousand pounds in the bank—only a thousand pounds, Rhoda—in your name, that you may have something to fit the boy out with when he is of an age to enter the world.’
But she shook her head.
‘I will not take your money,’ she said. ‘I will not be paid for my love.’
‘Then what can I do for you?’ hecried, in a voice of despair. ‘How can I show you how sorry I am for the past—how much I would do to repair it?’
‘If you wish to make me happier,’ she answered, turning so as to face him, ‘don’t become a priest. Give up this mad idea. You will regret it bitterly if you do not. Ah, Fred,’ she continued, drawing closer to him, ‘I don’t ask—I don’t wish to be anything to you ever again, but come back to the world and live in it a little longer before you take a step you can never recall. I do not expect, nor ask to receive, your love. I know that has gone from me to the girl you made your wife, but if I can comfort you by my friendship and my devotion, it will be yours to your life’s end. Come back and let me try and comfort you for all you have lost. I will be your servant and your friend, and nothing more, so long as I can smooth your path in life. Dear, dear Fred, you know I loved you! Let us go away to some distant land together till your grief is assuaged and your mindis more fit to decide upon your future plans.’
She laid her hand affectionately upon his arm as she spoke, but he flung it from him as if it had been a serpent.
‘Woman!’ he cried, ‘have you been sent from the devil to torture me and tempt me to forsake my duty? Leave this hallowed spot. Go back and wallow in the Slough of Despond from which I have been lifted. Are you mad to speak to me like this? What hellish design have you in your brain regarding me? Do you want to drag me down to the abyss with yourself? Go, and never come near me more! You have planted a sword in my breast that it will take weeks, perhaps months, to draw forth again. Go, go! Don’t let me curse you! Oh, God! have I not suffered enough without this? Is it Thy will to crucify me afresh?Sancta Maria! Ora pro nobis!’
And, with a look of agonised entreaty at the pictured face that hung above themantelpiece, Frederick Walcheren crossed himself and fled from the college parlour, and Rhoda saw him no more.
She was a little offended and very much hurt to have her overtures received in so ungracious a manner. She cried bitterly as she took her way back to Luton, but she told her mother nothing beyond the bare facts of the case. Fred was no longer the gay,debonnairyoung man she had given her heart to. So much the easier, she told herself, to forget all about him. Still, as she dreamt over the past, she could not but believe that, some day, she and the father of her child would meet again.