“Now, then,” said the old gentleman with the most cordial and happy good-humour, “be off, my dear boy; follow my dame’s advice to the letter, and come back as soon as you conveniently can, to let us know what comes of it.”
Cheered in spirit by this warm renewal of the friendship he so truly valued, young Mowbray set off on his homeward walk, pondering, as he went, on the best mode of opening such a conversation with his mother as Lady Harrington recommended; a task both difficult and disagreeable, but one which he believed it his duty not to shrink from.
CHAPTER XI.
CHARLES’S CONFERENCE WITH MRS. MOWBRAY.
Strolling in the shrubbery near the house, where for some time they had been anxiously awaiting his return, he met his eldest sister and Miss Torrington. Helen’s first words were “Are they angry with me?” and the reply, and subsequent history of the visit, filled her heart with gladness. “And now, my privy counsellors,” continued Charles, “tell me at what hour you should deem it most prudent for me to ask my mother for an audience.”
“Instantly!” said Rosalind.
“Had he not better wait till to-morrow?” said Helen, turning very pale.
“If my advisers disagree among themselves, I am lost,” said Charles; “for I give you my word that I never in my whole life entered upon an undertaking which made me feel so anxious and undecided. Let me hear your reasons for thus differing in opinion? Why, Rosalind, do you recommend such prodigious promptitude?”
“Because I hate suspense, — and because I know the scene will be disagreeable to you, — wherefore I opine that the sooner you get over it the better.”
“And you, Helen, why do you wish me to delay it till to-morrow?”
“Because, — oh! Charles, — because I dread the result. You have no idea as yet how completely her temper is changed. She is very stern, Charles, when she is contradicted; and if you should make her angry, depend upon it that it would be Mr. Cartwright who would dictate your punishment.”
“My punishment! Nonsense, Helen! I shall make Miss Torrington both my Chancellor and Archbishop, for her advice has infinitely more wisdom in it than yours. Where is she? in her own dressing-room?”
“I believe so,” faltered Helen.
“Well, then, — adieu for half an hour, — perhaps for a whole one. Where shall I find you when it is over?”
“In my dressing-room,” said Helen.
“No, no,” cried Rosalind; “I would not have to sit with you there for an hour, watching you quiver and quake every time a door opened, for my heiresship. Let us walk to the great lime-tree, and stay there till you come.”
“And so envelop yourselves in a November woodland fog, wherein to sit waiting till about four o’clock! The wisdom lies with Helen this time, Miss Torrington; I think you have both of you been pelted long enough with falling leaves for to-day, and therefore I strongly recommend that you come in and wait for my communication beside a blazing fire. Have you no new book, no lively novel or fancy-stirring romance, wherewith to beguile the time?”
“Novels and romances! Oh! Mr. Mowbray, — what a desperate sinner you must be! The subscription at Hookham’s has been out these three months; and the same dear box that used to be brought in amidst the eager rejoicings of the whole family, is now become the monthly vehicle of Evangelical Magazines, Christian Observers, Missionary Reports, and Religious Tracts, of all imaginable sorts and sizes. We have no other modern literature allowed us.”
“Poor girls!” said Charles, laughing; “what do you do for books?”
“Why, the old library supplies us indifferently well, I must confess; and as Fanny has changed her morning quarters from thence to the print-room, which is now converted into a chapel of ease for the vicar, we contrive to abduct from thence such volumes as we wish for without difficulty. But we were once very near getting a book, which, I have been told, is of the most exquisite interest and pathos of any in the language, by a pleasant blunder of Mrs. Mowbray’s. I chanced to be in the room with her one day when she read aloud an old advertisement which she happened to glance her eye upon, stitched up in a Review of some dozen years standing I believe, ‘Some passages in the life of Mr. Adam Blair, Minister of the Gospel.’ ‘That’s a book we ought to have,’ said she very solemnly; ‘Rosalind, give me that list for Hatchard’s, I will add this.’ I took up the advertisement as she laid it down and, not having it before her eyes, I suspect that she made some blunder about the title; for, when the box came down, I took care to be present at the opening of it, and to my great amusement, instead of the little volume that I was hoping to see, I beheld all Blair’s works, with a scrap of paper from one of the shopmen, on which was written, ‘Mrs. Mowbray is respectfully informed that the whole of Blair’s works are herewith forwarded, but that J. P. is not aware of any other life of Adam than that written by Moses.’ This was a terrible disappointment to me, I assure you.”
They had now reached the house; the two girls withdrew their arms, and, having watched Charles mount the stairs, they turned into the drawing room, — and from thence to the conservatory, — and then back again, — and then up stairs to lay aside their bonnets and cloaks, — and then down again; first one and then the other looking at their watches, till they began to suspect that they must both of them stand still, or something very like it, so creepingly did the time pass during which they waited for his return.
On reaching the dressing-room door, Charles knocked, and it was opened to him by Fanny.
The fair brow of his mother contracted at his approach; and he immediately suspected, what was indeed the fact, that Fanny had been relating to her the conversation which had passed between them in the morning.
He rather rejoiced at this than the contrary, as he thought the conversation could not be better opened than by his expressing his opinions and feelings upon what had fallen from her during this interview. He did not however, wish that she should be present, and therefore said,
“Will you let me, dear mother, say a few words to you tête-à-tête. Come, Fanny; run away, will you, for a little while?”
Fanny instantly left the room, and Mrs. Mowbray, without answering his request, sat silently waiting for what he was about to say.
“I want to speak, to you, mother, about our dear Fanny. I assure you I am very uneasy about her; I do not think she is in good health, either of body or mind.”
“Your ignorance of medicine is, I believe, total, Charles,” she replied dryly, “and therefore your opinion concerning her bodily health does not greatly alarm me; and you must pardon me if I say that I conceive your ignorance respecting all things relating to a human soul, is more profound still.”
“I am sorry you should think so, dearest mother; but I assure 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 impi
ous 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 worship. 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 God of heaven and of earth approves your forsaking your children, solely because they worship 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 passionate 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 assign 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 ungodly, 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 pass. 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 petition 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 pass.”
“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 i
t.”
“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 passed; 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 passed?” 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.
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 80
