Volume Iii Part 11 (2/2)

'I am sure the family are much obliged to you; but look here, Mr.

Wentworth, I am not a lawyer, but I am, I trust, a humble Christian. My wife and I have made this subject a matter of prayer. I have taken it in my closet to the Lord. My conscience approves of the course I take. I am in the path of duty. I have the interests of my family to think of.

I don't talk to you as a man of the world. There was a time, I own, when I did belong to that cla.s.s, but then I knew no better. But I ask you, as a Christian man, how can I act otherwise?'

'Why, you might come and hear what the poor woman has got to say for herself,' said the Presbyterian parson. 'You might follow the clue she might give you. You might save yourself from what seems to me the commission of a cruel wrong. You might act fairly to a lad who I believe has a better t.i.tle to the estate than you have. In short, you might do to others as you would have others do to you.'

'You can quote Scripture, then.'

'Yes, I can; but it seems to be of little use.'

'You are right, sir. We are told the devil can quote Scripture. To the carnal heart the Scripture is a sealed book. It is only as the Spirit opens the eyes of the believer that he can read aught.'

'I thought, on the contrary,' said Wentworth, 'Scripture was so plain that a wayfaring man, though a fool, could not err therein. But I did not come to discuss such questions. I have to ask you, sir, to pause before you take possession of the estate.'

'Well, sir,' said the new heir, 'you have come and you have asked me.'

'Yes, and you will pause?'

'Not for an instant. Why should I? By these distressing visitations of Providence, I have come into the possession of property and a t.i.tle. It is the Lord's doing and it is marvellous in my eyes. I never sought this nor expected this.'

Wentworth looked at the speaker. There seemed no particular reason why the Lord should have interfered in this matter on his behalf, he thought; but then Wentworth was not of the elect, and knew little as to what the Lord was about.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE COLONEL.

Society was startled in the autumn of the year to which these events relate by the announcement that Colonel, otherwise Sir Robert Strahan had been shot in a duel on the Belgian frontier. The world wondered why he had to fight a duel. He had the reputation of being an austere and strait-laced man, a great stickler for the proprieties, a strict observer of conventional forms, regular in his attendances on Church ordinances, and very ready to judge harshly of the failings of others. In all the land there was none so proud and priggish, and his wife rejoiced greatly at the work of her hands in transforming a man of the world into a Christian of the regulation pattern.

There were, it is true, many of his fellow-officers and former companions who wondered at rather than admired the change, who questioned its genuineness, and believed, in heart, the Colonel was still the same as when, in his younger days, he played somewhat notoriously the part of a man about town; but then the world is always uncharitable, and its men and women are of a sceptical turn of mind, and ready to doubt people who affect to be superior to their neighbours; and now their hour of triumph had arrived.

This saintly Colonel was no better than other people. In Brussels, unknown to his wife, he had gambled heavily and incurred great losses.

In the public dining-hall of the ancient Spartans there was a notice to the effect that no one was to repeat outside the conversation that took place within. In the club of which the Colonel was a member a similar law of honour prevailed, and as the place was outwardly respectable, and was situated in the most respectable _quartier_, and as its members were men who moved in the first circles on the Continent, it was a.s.sumed, of course, that nothing took place but what was respectable. And it was presumed that if its members kept late hours the fact was due to the interesting conversations of the men on the political and other stirring questions of the times. In reality the place was a gambling den of the worst description, where the losers were far greater in numbers than the winners; and amongst the former was our pious Colonel, who had immense faith in his own play, as in everything else that he did, and whose occasional gains, only by confirming his own good opinion of himself, helped him further into the mire.

Then all at once it became known that the worthy Colonel had other children than his legitimate ones. In certain quarters he pa.s.sed under a feigned name-as Captain Smith-and children learned to know him under that alias. It was a pleasant retreat for the good man when the old Adam was rather strong and seemed ready to crush the renewed man; and thus he led, as many do, a double life.

Most men have their weak moments, their time of temptation, and too often they succ.u.mb, but then the falling off is only for a time. But in the Colonel's case it had unfortunately grown into a settled habit.

My lady little dreamt of what was pa.s.sing. She had other things to think of than her husband or his doings. She was active-perhaps, rather too active-in her sphere, in good works. The bluest Evangelical blood was in her veins, and when in London no one was a more frequent visitor to the country houses of pious bankers and brewers than herself. In them she was a diamond of the purest water, s.h.i.+ning with every Christian grace and virtue. She had addressed drawing-room meetings, she had aided in many a crusade against Popery and Ritualism and other evil things. If any Liberal and devoted clergyman was to be persecuted for trying to elevate the people by Christian ideas not in accordance with her own, she was the first to raise the cry of heresy, to rouse up sleepy bishops, to raise the cry of 'Treason in the sanctuary!' to alarm the warders at the gate, to flood the land with cheap tracts and pious newspapers. At Exeter Hall, during the May meetings, there was no more ardent attendant; and her life in Brussels was much the same, though on a smaller scale.

Once, at Louvain, I saw a statue in the cathedral to the memory of Dr.

Stapleton. I could not make out who Dr. Stapleton was, or why he was thus honoured. Baedeker and Murray knew him not. Accidentally one day turning over the pages of Froude-certainly one of the most graceful of historians-I discovered that Dr. Stapleton, living at Louvain, was the means of communication, in the 's.p.a.cious times of Queen Elizabeth,'

between the Pope on the one side and the Roman Catholics in England on the other. At Brussels her ladys.h.i.+p acted in a similar way, though on a smaller scale. It was she who kept alive the communication between the Belgian and the English Evangelicals, and helped to circulate among the former the goody-goody literature in which the latter greatly rejoiced.

Her activity in the matter was intense. She was always writing to England for supplies-which were sent her without any cost to herself-and in her continental drawing-room, and at her receptions, sleek divines and elect ladies were not few, ever ready to bewail the degeneracy of the times, the growth of Popery and Republicanism and Atheism.

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