Chapter 13

“Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom“Lead thou me on“The night is dark, and I am far from home“Lead thou me on ....... “Till, the night is gone“And with the morn those Angel faces smile“Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.”

“Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom“Lead thou me on“The night is dark, and I am far from home“Lead thou me on ....... “Till, the night is gone“And with the morn those Angel faces smile“Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.”

“Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom

“Lead thou me on

“The night is dark, and I am far from home

“Lead thou me on ...

.... “Till, the night is gone

“And with the morn those Angel faces smile

“Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.”

Flora’s voice was rapt and unfaltering.

Lucilla did not move, nor raise her eyes.

It was Owen Quentillian, poignantly and unwillingly conscious of pathos, who set his teeth in a profound and intense resentment at the obvious emotional appeal that he found himself unable to ignore.

He unspeakably dreaded the breakdown of the Canon’s composure that he foresaw, when Flora’s last note had died away into silence.

He could not look up.

“Flora!”

The Canon’s voice was steady and gentle.

“Thank you, my child. Bid me good-night, and go, now. You must have some rest, before your journey tomorrow.”

She came to him and he blessed and kissed her as usual, only letting his hand linger for a moment on her head as he repeated as though speaking to himself:

“And with the morn those Angel faces smile“Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.”

“And with the morn those Angel faces smile“Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.”

“And with the morn those Angel faces smile

“Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.”

“Good-night, Owen. Goodbye,” said Flora.

She left the room, and the Canon raised himself with difficulty from his low chair and said:

“I have some preparations to make for tomorrow. I will leave you for a little while.”

When he had gone, Owen felt the relaxation of his own mental tension.

For the first time, and with a sincerity that left him amazed, he found himself making use of the phrase that from others had so often aroused rebellion in himself:

“He is wonderful!”

Lucilla raised her eyes now, and looked full and gravely at Quentillian.

“Yes. I’m glad you see it at last, Owen.”

“At last?” he stammered, replying to her voice rather than to her words.

“He is very fond of you. He has always been very fond of you, ever since you were a little boy. And it has—vexed me—very often, to see that you gave him nothing in return, that, because he belongs to another school, and another generation, you have almost despised him, I think.”

Owen was conscious of colouring deeply in his sudden surprise and humiliation.

“Although you are so clever, Owen,” she said in the same grave, un-ironical tone, “it has seemed as though you are not able, at all, to see beyond the surface. I know that my father’s religious sentiment, sentimentality even, his constant outward expression of emotional piety, his guileless optimism, have all jarred upon you. But you have had no eyes for his pathetic courage, his constant striving for what he sees as the highest.”

“Lucilla—in justice to myself—although what you say may be true, if I have judged your father it has been far more on account of his children—of what I have seen of their lives.”

“You were not called upon to constitute yourself the champion of his children. Valeria, even, had no claim on your championship. It was not you whom she loved, and you, too, tried to make Val what she was never meant to be. When Val threw you over,if my father tried to force upon you what you could only see as the conventionalbeau gesteof renunciation, it was because he was incapable of believing that you could have asked a woman to marry you without loving her, body and soul. His forgiveness of Val, whether you thought him entitled to forgive or not, lay between him and her. And when you speak of our lives, Owen, can’t you see that Val and Adrian and I, and perhaps in a way even Flora, too, have come to what we were meant for? No one can stand between another soul, and life, really.”

He was oddly struck by the echo of words that he had himself once used to Flora.

“You admit that he tried, to stand between you and life?”

“I do,” she said instantly. “But if he had succeeded, the fault would have been ours.”

She suddenly smiled.

“Isn’t it true that to face facts means freedom? That’s why I’m not an optimist, Owen. I am willing to face all the facts you like. But you, I think, in judging my father, have only faced half of them.”

“You find me intolerant!” he exclaimed, half-ironically. Never before had such an adjective been presented to his strong sense of his own impartiality, his detached rationalism.

“Not exactly. Only, I’m afraid—a little bit of a prig.”

She uttered the strange, unimposing accusation, not rudely, not unkindly, but almost mournfully.

“Christianity has been accused of intolerance very often, and with only too much reason, but those outsidethe Churches, who frankly claim to be agnostic, often seem to me to be the most intolerant of all, of what they look upon as superstition. Why should you despise my father for beliefs that have led him to lead an honourable life, and that have given him courage to bear his many sorrows?”

“You have said, yourself, that the facing of facts means freedom. I can see no freedom, and therefore no beauty, in living in illusion.”

“Not for yourself, perhaps. Illusions could never be anything but conscious, for you.”

“Nor for yourself, Lucilla,” he retorted swiftly.

“But how does that entitle us to despise another for holding them?” she demanded, quite as swiftly. Nevertheless Owen detected a lessening of severity, in so far as she had coupled them together in her speech.

“Tonight,” he said gravely, “I admired your father with all my heart.”

“I’m glad.”

On the words, the same as those with which Lucilla had begun their brief and rather amazing conversation, the Canon returned into the room.

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