Loss and Gain Part 45

"Oh no; tolerate it!" answered Dr. Kitchens; "it is Antichrist."

"You can't bear the sight of it, I suspect, Dr. Kitchens?"

"I can't endure it, sir; what true Protestant can?"

"Then look here," said Charles, taking a small crucifix out of his writing-desk; and he held it before Dr. Kitchens' face.

Dr. Kitchens at once started on his feet, and retreated. "What's that?"

he said, and his face flushed up and then turned pale; "what's that?

it's the thing itself!" and he made a s.n.a.t.c.h at it. "Take it away, Mr.

Reding; it's an idol; I cannot endure it; take away the thing!"

"I declare," said Reding to himself, "it really has power over him;" and he still confronted Dr. Kitchens with it, while he kept it out of Dr.

Kitchens' reach.

"Take it away, Mr. Reding, I beseech you," cried Kitchens, still retreating, while Charles still pressed on him; "take it away, it's too much. Oh, oh! Spare me, spare me, Mr. Reding!--nehushtan--an idol!--oh, you young antichrist, you devil!--'tis He, 'tis He--torment!--spare me, Mr. Reding." And the miserable man began to dance about, still eyeing the sacred sign, and motioning it from him.

Charles now had victory in his hands: there was, indeed, some difficulty in steering Kitchens to the door from the place where he had been sitting, but, that once effected, he opened it with violence, and, throwing himself on the staircase, he began to jump down two or three steps at a time, with such forgetfulness of everything but his own terror, that he came plump upon two persons who, in rivalry of each other, were in the act of rushing up: and, while he drove one against the rail, he fairly rolled the other to the bottom.

CHAPTER IX.

Charles threw himself on his chair, burying the Crucifix in his bosom, quite worn out with his long trial and the sudden exertion in which it had just now been issuing. When a noise was heard at his door, and knocks succeeded, he took no farther notice than to plant his feet on the fender and bury his face in his hands. The summons at first was apparently from one person only, but his delay in answering it gave time for the arrival of another; and there was a brisk succession of alternate knocks from the two, which Charles let take its course. At length one of the rival candidates for admission, bolder than the other, slowly opened the door; when the other, who had impetuously scrambled upstairs after his fall, rushed in before him, crying out, "One word for the New Jerusalem!" "In charity," said Reding, without changing his att.i.tude, "in charity, leave me alone. You mean it well, but I don't want you, sir; I don't indeed. I've had Old Jerusalem here already, and Jewish Apostles, and Gentile Apostles, and free inquiry, and fancy religion, and Exeter Hall. What _have_ I done? why can't I die out in peace? My dear sir, do go! I can't see you; I'm worn out." And he rose up and advanced towards him. "Call again, dear sir, if you are bent on talking with me; but, excuse me, I really have had enough of it for one day. No fault of yours, my dear sir, that you have come the sixth or seventh." And he opened the door for him.

"A madman nearly threw me down as I was coming up," said the person addressed, in some agitation.

"Ten thousand pardons for his rudeness, my dear sir--ten thousand pardons, but allow me;" and he bowed him out of the room. He then turned round to the other stranger, who had stood by in silence: "And you too, sir ... is it possible!" His countenance changed to extreme surprise; it was Mr. Malcolm. Charles's thoughts flowed in a new current, and his tormentors were suddenly forgotten.

The history of Mr. Malcolm's calling was simple. He had always been a collector of old books, and had often taken advantage of the stores of Charles's landlord in adding to his library. Pa.s.sing through London to the Eastern Counties Rail, he happened to call in; and, as his friend the bookseller was not behind his own reading-room in the diffusion of gossip, he learned that Mr. Reding, who was on the point of seceding from the Establishment, was at that moment above stairs. He waited with impatience through Dr. Kitchens' visit, and even then found himself, to his no small annoyance, in danger of being outstripped by the good Swedenborgian.

"How d'ye do, Charles?" he said, at length, with not a little stiffness in his manner, while Charles had no less awkwardness in receiving him; "you have been holding a levee this morning; I thought I should never get to see you. Sit you down; let us both sit down, and let me at last have a word or two with you."

In spite of the diversified trial Charles had sustained from strangers that morning, there was no one perhaps whom he would have less desired to see than Mr. Malcolm. He could not help a.s.sociating him with his father, yet he felt no opening of heart towards him, nor respect for his judgment. His feeling was a mixture of prescriptive fear and friendliness, attachment from old a.s.sociations, and desire of standing well with him, but neither confidence nor real love. He coloured up and felt guilty, yet without a clear understanding why.

"Well, Charles Reding," he said, "I think we know each other well enough for you to have given me a hint of what was going on as regards you."

Charles said he had written to him only the evening before.

"Ah, when there was not time to answer your letter," said Mr. Malcolm.

Charles said he wished to spare so kind a friend ... he bungled, and could not finish his sentence.

"A friend, who, of course, could give no advice," said Mr. Malcolm drily. Presently he said, "Were those people some of your new friends who were calling on you? they have kept me in the shop this three-quarters of an hour; and the fellow who has just come down nearly threw me over the bal.u.s.ter."

"Oh no, sir, I know nothing of them; they were the most unwelcome of intruders."

"As some one else seems to be," said Mr. Malcolm.

Charles was very much hurt; the more so, because he had nothing to say; he kept silence.

"Well, Charles," said Mr. Malcolm, not looking at him, "I have known you from this high; more, from a child in arms. A frank, open boy you were; I don't know what has spoiled you. These Jesuits, perhaps.... It was not so in your father's lifetime."

"My dear sir," said Charles, "it pierces me to the heart to hear you talk so. You have indeed always been most kind to me. If I have erred, it has been an error of judgment; and I am very sorry for it, and hope you will forgive it. I acted for the best; but I have been, as you must feel, in a most trying situation. My mother has known what I was contemplating this year past."

"Trying situation! fudge! What have you to do with situations? I could have told you a great deal about these Catholics; I know all about them.

Error of judgment! don't tell me. I know how these things happen quite well. I have seen such things before; only I thought you a more sensible fellow. There was young Dalton of St. Cross; he goes abroad, and falls in with a smooth priest, who persuades the silly fellow that the Catholic Church is the ancient and true Church of England, the only religion for a gentleman; he is introduced to a Count this, and a Marchioness that, and returns a Catholic. There was another; what was his name? I forget it, of a Berkshire family. He is smitten with a pretty face; nothing will serve but he must marry her; but she's a Catholic, and can't marry a heretic; so he, forsooth, gives up the favour of his uncle and his prospects in the county, for his fair Juliet. There was another,--but it's useless going on. And, now I wonder what has taken you."

All this was the best justification for Charles's not having spoken to Mr. Malcolm on the subject. That gentleman had had his own experience of thirty or forty years, and, like some great philosophers, he made that personal experience of his the decisive test of the possible and the true. "I know them," he continued--"I know them; a set of hypocrites and sharpers. I could tell you such stories of what I fell in with abroad.

Those priests are not to be trusted. Did you ever know a priest?"

"No," answered Charles.

"Did you ever see a Popish chapel?"

"No."

"Do you know anything of Catholic books, Catholic doctrine, Catholic morality? I warrant it, not much."

Charles looked very uncomfortable.

"Then what makes you go to them?"

Charles did not know what to say.

"Silly boy," he went on, "you have not a word to say for yourself; it's all idle fancy. You are going as a bird to the fowler."

Reding began to rouse himself; he felt he ought to say something; he felt that silence would tell against him. "Dear sir," he answered, "there's nothing but may be turned against one if a person is so minded.

Now, do think; had I known this or that priest, you would have said at once, 'Ah, he came over you.' If I had been familiar with Catholic chapels, 'I was allured by the singing or the incense.' What can I have done better than keep myself to myself, go by my best reason, consult the friends whom I happened to find around me, as I have done, and wait in patience till I was sure of my convictions?"

"Ah, that's the way with you youngsters," said Mr. Malcolm; "you all think you are so right; you do think so admirably that older heads are worth nothing to the like of you. Well," he went on, putting on his gloves, "I see I am not in the way to persuade you. Poor dear Charlie, I grieve for you; what would your poor father have said, had he lived to see it? Poor Reding, he has been spared this. But perhaps it would not have happened. I know what the upshot will be; you will come back--come back you will, to a dead certainty. We shall see you back, foolish boy, after you have had your gallop over your ploughed field. Well, well; better than running wild. You must have your hobby; it might have been a worse; you might have run through your money. But perhaps you'll be giving it away, as it is, to some artful priest. It's grievous, grievous; your education thrown away, your prospects ruined, your poor mother and sisters left to take care of themselves. And you don't say a word to me." And he began musing. "A troublesome world: good-bye, Charles; you are high and mighty now, and are in full sail: you may come to your father's friend some day in a different temper. Good-bye."

There was no help for it; Charles's heart was full, but his head was wearied and confused, and his spirit sank; for all these reasons he had not a word to say, and seemed to Mr. Malcolm either stupid or close. He could but wring warmly Mr. Malcolm's reluctant hand, and accompany him down to the street-door.

CHAPTER X.

"This will never do," said Charles, as he closed the door, and ran upstairs; "here is a day wasted, worse than wasted, wasted partly on strangers, partly on friends; and it's hard to say in which case a more thorough waste. I ought to have gone to the Convent at once." The thought flashed into his mind, and he stood over the fire dwelling on it. "Yes," he said, "I will delay no longer. How does time go? I declare it's past four o'clock." He then thought again: "I'll get over my dinner, and then at once betake myself to my good Pa.s.sionists."

To the coffee-house then he went, and, as it was some way off, it is not wonderful that it was near six before he arrived at the Convent. It was a plain brick building; money had not been so abundant as to overflow upon the exterior, after the expense of the interior had been provided for. And it was incomplete; a large church had been enclosed, but it was scarcely more than a sh.e.l.l,--altars, indeed, had been set up, but, for the rest, it had little more than good proportions, a broad sanctuary, a serviceable organ, and an effective choir. There was a range of buildings adjacent, capable of holding about half-a-dozen fathers; but the size of the church required a larger establishment. By this time, doubtless, things are different, but we are looking back at the first efforts of the English Congregation, when it had scarcely ceased to struggle for life, and when friends and members were but beginning to flow in.

It was indeed but ten years, at that time, since the severest of modern rules had been introduced into England. Two centuries after the memorable era when St. Philip and St. Ignatius, making light of those bodily austerities of which they were personally so great masters, preached mortification of will and reason as more necessary for a civilized age,--in the lukewarm and self-indulgent eighteenth century, Father Paul of the Cross was divinely moved to found a Congregation in some respects more ascetic than the primitive hermits and the orders of the middle age. It was not fast, or silence, or poverty which distinguished it, though here too it is not wanting in strictness; but in the cell of its venerable founder, on the Celian Hill, hangs an iron discipline or scourge, studded with nails, which is a memorial, not only of his own self-inflicted sufferings, but of those of his Italian family. The object of those sufferings was as remarkable as their intensity; penance, indeed, is in one respect the end of all self-chastis.e.m.e.nt, but in the instance of the Pa.s.sionists the use of the scourge was specially directed to the benefit of their neighbour. They applied the pain to the benefit of the holy souls in Purgatory, or they underwent it to rouse a careless audience. On their missions, when their words seemed uttered in vain, they have been known suddenly to undo their habit, and to scourge themselves with sharp knives or razors, crying out to the horrified people, that they would not show mercy to their flesh till they whom they were addressing took pity on their own perishing souls. Nor was it to their own countrymen alone that this self-consuming charity extended; how it so happened does not appear; perhaps a certain memento close to their house was the earthly cause; but so it was, that for many years the heart of Father Paul was expanded towards a northern nation, with which, humanly speaking, he had nothing to do. Over against St. John and St. Paul, the home of the Pa.s.sionists on the Celian, rises the old church and monastery of San Gregorio, the womb, as it may be called, of English Christianity. There had lived that great Saint, who is named our Apostle, who was afterwards called to the chair of St. Peter; and thence went forth, in and after his pontificate, Augustine, Paulinus, Justus, and the other Saints by whom our barbarous ancestors were converted. Their names, which are now written up upon the pillars of the portico, would almost seem to have issued forth, and crossed over, and confronted the venerable Paul; for, strange to say, the thought of England came into his ordinary prayers; and in his last years, after a vision during Ma.s.s, as if he had been Augustine or Mellitus, he talked of his "sons" in England.

It was strange enough that even one Italian in the heart of Rome should at that time have ambitious thoughts of making novices or converts in this country; but, after the venerable Founder's death, his special interest in our distant isle showed itself in another member of his inst.i.tute. On the Apennines, near Viterbo, there dwelt a shepherd-boy, in the first years of this century, whose mind had early been drawn heavenward; and, one day, as he prayed before an image of the Madonna, he felt a vivid intimation that he was destined to preach the Gospel under the northern sky. There appeared no means by which a Roman peasant should be turned into a missionary; nor did the prospect open, when this youth found himself, first a lay-brother, then a Father, in the Congregation of the Pa.s.sion. Yet, though no external means appeared, the inward impression did not fade; on the contrary, it became more definite, and, in process of time, instead of the dim north, England was engraven on his heart. And, strange to say, as years went on, without his seeking, for he was simply under obedience, our peasant found himself at length upon the very sh.o.r.e of the stormy northern sea, whence Caesar of old looked out for a new world to conquer; yet that he should cross the strait was still as little likely as before. However, it was as likely as that he should ever have got so near it; and he used to eye the restless, G.o.dless waves, and wonder with himself whether the day would ever come when he should be carried over them. And come it did, not however by any determination of his own, but by the same Providence which thirty years before had given him the antic.i.p.ation of it.