Part 25 (2/2)

Hilary bent her head, and sat watching the pen scratch, and the clock tick on the mantle-piece; thinking if this really was to be the last of his G.o.dfather's allowance, what on earth would become of Ascott?

For Ascott himself, he said not a word. Not even when, the letters dispatched, Mr. Ascott rose, and administering a short, sharp homily, tacitly dismissed his visitors: Whether this silence was sullenness, cowardice, or shame, Hilary could not guess.

She quitted the house with a sense of grinding humiliation almost intolerable. But still the worst was over; the money had been begged and given--there was no fear of a prison. And spite of every thing, Hilary felt a certain relief that this was the last time Ascott would be indebted to his G.o.dfather. Perhaps this total cessation of extraneous help might force the young man upon his own resources, compel his easy temperament into active energy, and bring out in him those dormant qualities that his aunts still fondly hoped existed in him.

”Don't be down-hearted, Ascott,” she said: ”we will manage to get on somehow till you bear of a practice, and then you must work--work like a 'brick,' as you call it. You will, I know.”

He answered nothing.

”I won't let you give in, my boy,” she went on, kindly. ”Who would ever dream of giving in at your age, with health and strength, a good education, and no enc.u.mbrances whatever--not even aunts! for we will not stand in your way, be sure of that. If you can not settle here, you shall try to get out abroad, as you have sometimes wished, as an army surgeon or a s.h.i.+p's doctor; you say these appointments are easy enough to be had. Why not try? Any thing; we will consent to any thing, if only we can see your life busy and useful and happy.”

Thus she talked, feeling far more tenderly to him in his forlorn despondency than when they had quitted the house two hours before.

But Ascott took not the slightest notice. A strange fit of sullenness or depression seemed to have come over him, which, when they reached home and met Aunt Johanna's silently-questioning face, changed into devil-may-care indifference.

”Oh yes, aunt, we've done it; we've got the money, and now I may go to the dogs as soon as I like.”

”No,” said Aunt Hilary, ”it is nothing of the sort: it is only that Ascott must now depend upon himself, and not upon his G.o.dfather. Take courage,” she added, and went up to him and kissed him on the forehead; ”we'll never let our boy go to the dogs! and as for this disappointment, or any disappointment, why it's just like a cold bath, it takes away your breath for the time, and then you rise up out of it brisker and fresher than ever.”

But Ascott shook his head with a fierce denial. ”Why should that old fellow be as rich as Croesus and I as poor as a rat? Why should I be put into the world to enjoy myself, and can't? Why was I made like what I am, and then punished for it? Whose fault is it?”

Ay, whose? The eternal, unsolvable problem rose up before Hilary's imagination. The ghastly spectre of that everlasting doubt, which haunts even the firmest faith sometimes--and which all the nonsense written about that mystery which,

”Binding nature fate to fate, Leaves free the human will,”

only makes darker than before--oppressed her for the time being with an inexpressible dread.

Ay, why was it that the boy was what he was? From his inherited nature, his temperament, or his circ.u.mstances? What, or more awful question still, who was to blame?

But as Hilary's thoughts went deeper down the question answered itself--at least as far as it ever can be answered in this narrow, finite stage of being. Whose will--we dare not say whose blame--is it that evil must inevitably generate evil? that the smallest wrong-doing in any human being rouses a chain of results which may fatally involve other human beings in an almost incalculable circle of misery? The wages of sin is death. Were it not so sin would cease to be sin, and holiness, holiness. If He, the All-holy, who for some inscrutable purpose saw fit to allow the existence of evil, allowed any other law than this, in either the spiritual or material world, would He not be denying Himself, counteracting the necessities of His own righteous essence, to which evil is so antagonistic, that we can not doubt it must be in the end cast into total annihilation--into the allegorical lake of fire and brimstone, which is the ”second death?” Nay, do they not in reality deny Him and His holiness almost as much as Atheists do, who preach that the one great salvation which He has sent into the world is a salvation from punishment--a keeping out of h.e.l.l and getting into heaven--instead of a salvation from sin, from the power and love of sin, through the love of G.o.d in Christ?

I tell these thoughts, because like lighting they pa.s.sed through Hilary's mind, as sometimes a whole chain of thoughts do, link after link, and because they helped her to answer her nephew quietly and briefly, for she saw he was in no state of mind to be argued with.

”I can not explain, Ascott, why it is that any of us are what we are, and why things happen to us as they do; it is a question we none of us understand, and in this world never shall. But if we know what we ought to be, and how we may make the best of every thing, good or bad, that happens to us, surely that is enough without perplexing ourselves about any thing more.”

Ascott smiled, half contemptuously, half carelessly: he was not a young fellow likely to perplex himself long or deeply about these sort of things.

”Any how, I've got 20 in my pocket, so I can't starve for a day or two. Let's see; where is it to be cashed? Hillo! who would have thought the old fellow would have been so stupid? Look there, Aunt Hilary!”

She was so unfamiliar with checks for 20, poor little woman! that she did not at first recognize the omission of the figures ”20” at the left-hand corner. Otherwise the check was correct.

”Ho, ho!” laughed Ascott, exceedingly amused, so easily was the current of his mind changed. ”It must have been the 5000 pending that muddled the 'cute old fellow's brains. I wonder whether he will remember it afterward, and come posting up to see that I've taken no ill-advantage of his blunder; changed this 'Twenty' into 'Seventy.' I easily could, and put the figures 70 here. What a good joke!”

”Had ye not better go to him at once, and have the matter put right?”

”Rubbis.h.!.+ I can put it right myself. It makes no difference who fills up a check, so that it is signed all correct. A deal you women know of business!”

But still Hilary, with a certain womanish uneasiness about money matters, and an anxiety to have the thing settled beyond doubt, urged him to go.

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