The Vicar of Wrexhill Part 52

And then, the dependence of so many on him for their daily bread!--the curate, the clerk, the s.e.xton, the beadle,--and the schoolmaster, and the schoolmaster's a.s.sistant, and the apothecary, and the attorney, and the undertaker, and--dozens of poor dependent simpletons besides, who, if, like poor Seymour's organ-grinder, they "knew the walley of peace and quiet," would run away to batten on the first moor they came to, rather than endure the slavery of living dependent upon the favour of a fanatical divine. Whatever it may be to them, however, depend upon it, that to him, and the like of him, this petty power, this minute tyranny of interference, is dearer than the breath of life; and that, much as Mr. Cartwright loves his fair lady and all that belongs to her, he would think that all still dearly purchased, were he thereby to lose the right of entering every house in the parish, and unblus.h.i.+ngly to ask them what they have done, are doing, and are about to do."

The conversation then rambled on to all things connected with the fancy-fair and its object, till they had talked themselves tired; and then they sat silently watching the beautiful checker-work of light and shade which fell on the gra.s.s-carpet before them, till the languid Henrietta, resting her head against a tree, fell fast asleep. Rosalind sat beside her for some minutes; but, growing weary of the extreme stillness necessary to guard her slumbers, she quietly withdrew herself, and wandered on under the trees.

Having left the sleeper for about half an hour, she turned to walk gently back again; but fancying as she approached the spot that she heard the sound of a man's voice, she slanted off by another path, which took her close behind the seat occupied by Miss Cartwright, though a thick trimly-cut laurel hedge rendered it impossible for any one to see or be seen from the other.

The hedge, though a good one, had not however the same effect on sound as on sight, and Rosalind was not a little startled, as her soft footfall silently drew near the seat, to hear a very pa.s.sionate declaration of love in the drawling voice of Mr. Hetherington.

She stopped, by no means from any wish to hear more, but greatly embarra.s.sed lest, her step being heard, she might appear to have stolen to this obscure spot for the express purpose of being a listener.

"Make me the happiest of men, adored Miss Cartwright!" reiterated the young man. "Your father has permitted my addresses; then do not you, most charming Henrietta, refuse to listen to them!"

"It would not be for your happiness, sir," replied the deep low voice of Henrietta, "that I should do so."

"Let me be the judge of that! Oh! if such a fear be all that parts us, we shall not, lovely Miss Cartwright! be long asunder," replied the ardent Mr. Hetherington.

"I know myself, sir," said Henrietta, "far better than you can know me; and though we have not been long acquainted, your situation as curate of the parish enables me to know your sentiments and opinions better than you can know mine. I hear you preach twice every Sunday, Mr.

Hetherington, and I do a.s.sure you there is not a single question of importance on which we think alike."

"Name them, sweet Henrietta! generously tell me wherein we differ, and trust me that it shall be the study of my life to bring my opinions into conformity with yours."

"I heard you, in the middle of your sermon last Sunday, stop short to scold a little boy who had accidentally made a noise by letting his hat fall on the ground. You said to him, 'Before next Sunday you may be brought into this church in your coffin.' I saw the little fellow turn pale, yet you repeated the words. I really should not like to marry any one who could so terrify little boys, for he might perhaps think it right to terrify me also."

"Never--oh, never again will I so offend you: and for yourself, beloved Miss Cartwright, what could I say to you but words of hope and joy?"

"Neither your joy nor your hope, Mr. Hetherington, would do me much good, I am afraid. In one word, much as it will surprise you to hear it from my father's daughter, I am not evangelical, sir."

"It is but a reason the more for my wis.h.i.+ng to call you mine! If my opinions are unsound, you shall correct them."

"I wish you would be persuaded, Mr. Hetherington, to desist from this suit. I know that if my father has permitted it, I may find it become very troublesome to me, unless you have yourself the generosity to withdraw it; for my father does not brook contradiction."

"Ask any proof of my obedience but this, and you shall find me a slave, having no will but that of my charming mistress; but to resign you while I enjoy the inestimable privilege of your ill.u.s.trious father's sanction, it is impossible."

"Then, sir," said Henrietta, in an altered voice that betokened strong emotion, "if nothing less will save me from this persecution, I will disclose to you the great secret of my life; make of it what use you will. I am an Atheist."

"Surely you cannot suppose, my beloved Miss Cartwright, that this confession can produce any effect upon my love, unless indeed it be to augment it. What n.o.ble frankness! what confiding trust! Believe me, there can be no difference of opinion between us on any subject sufficiently strong to conquer the tender and powerful pa.s.sion you have inspired. Yield then to the soft violence which I know will be sanctioned by your respected father--let me thus----"

"Leave me, wretch!" exclaimed Henrietta in a voice that made Rosalind tremble. "He may lock me up and half-starve me, for he has done it before to make me obey his will, and I have obeyed it, and hated myself for my cowardice; but I will not marry you, Mr. Hetherington, even should he treat me worse than he has yet done--which would not be easy.

Go, sir, go--I am an Atheist; but horrible as that sounds even to my own ears, it is better than to be what you have proved yourself."

Rosalind, hardly less agitated than Henrietta appeared to be, stood trembling from head to foot in her retreat, till aware that the unscrupulous Mr. Hetherington had retreated in one direction, and the unhappy Henrietta returned to the house by another.

CHAPTER VI.

A SECOND VISIT TO THE LIME-TREE.

Rosalind, as she walked slowly back towards the house, repeated to herself in shuddering the fearful words of Henrietta Cartwright--I AM AN ATHEIST,--and her very soul seemed sick and faint within her. She had sought in some degree the friends.h.i.+p of this unhappy girl, chiefly because it was evident that not even the connexion of father and daughter had sufficed to blind her to the hateful hypocrisy and unholy fanaticism of the vicar. Did, then, hatred and contempt for him lead to the hideous abyss of Atheism? She trembled as she asked herself the question; but the weakness lasted not a moment: the simple and true piety of her spirit awoke within her, and with kindly warmth cheered and revived her heart. That the unhappy Henrietta, when revolted by watching the false religion of her father, should have fled from it with such pa.s.sionate vehemence as to plunge her into the extreme of scepticism, offered no precedent for what would be likely to befall a person who, like her, loathed the dark sin of hypocrisy, but who, unlike her, had learned the benignant truths of religion with no false and frightful commentaries to disfigure them.

As she remembered this--as she remembered that, probably, the only religious lessons ever given to this most unhappy girl were such as her judgment must revolt from, and the sincerity of her nature detest as false and feigned, pity and compa.s.sion took place of terror and repugnance, and a timid, but most earnest wish, that she might herself be the means of sending a ray of divine light to cheer the fearful gloom of poor Henrietta's mind, took possession of her heart.

The delightful glow of feeling that seemed to pervade every nerve of Rosalind as this thought took possession of her cannot be described.

Tears again filled her beautiful eyes, but they were no longer the tears of disappointment and despondency; yet a dread of incurring the guilt of presumption, by a.s.suming the office of teacher on a theme so awfully important, so sublimely exalted, mixed fear with her hope, and she determined to restrict her efforts wholly to the selection of such books as might tend to enlighten the dark night of that perverted mind, without producing in it the painful confusion of thought which must ever result from a loose and unlogical arrangement of proofs and arguments, however sound or however unquestionable they may individually be.

When she met Henrietta in the drawing-room, where all the family were a.s.sembled before dinner, she was conscious of being so full of thoughts concerning her, that she almost feared to encounter her eyes, lest her own might prematurely disclose her being acquainted with the scene she had gone through.

But the moment she heard Henrietta speak, the sound of her voice, so quiet, so cold, so perfectly composed, convinced her that the conversation which she had supposed must have agitated her so dreadfully, had in truth produced no effect on her whatever; and when, taking courage from this, she ventured to speak to and look at her, the civil smile, the unaltered eye, the easy allusion to their walk and their separation, led her almost to doubt her senses as to the ident.i.ty of the being now before her, and the one to whom she had listened in horror a short half-hour ago. This perplexity was, however, in a great measure relieved by an interpretation suggested by her fancy, and immediately and eagerly received by her as truth.

"It was in bitter irony, and shrewdly to test the sincerity of that man's a.s.sumed sanct.i.ty, that she uttered those terrible words," thought Rosalind; and inexpressibly relieved by the supposition, she determined to take an early opportunity of confessing to Miss Cartwright her involuntary partic.i.p.ation of Mr. Hetherington's tender avowal, and of her own temporary credulity in believing for a moment that what was uttered, either to get rid of him or to prove the little worth of his pretended righteousness, was a serious avowal of her secret sentiments.

This opportunity was not long wanting; for, perfectly unconscious that Miss Torrington's motive for hovering near her was to seek a confidential conversation,--a species of communication from which she always shrunk,--Henrietta, who really liked and admired her more than any person she had ever met with, readily seconded her wish, by again wandering into the garden-walks, on which the sun had just poured his parting beams, and where the full moon, rising at the same moment to take her turn of rule, shone with a splendour increasing every moment, and rendering the night more than a rival in beauty to the day.

"Let us go to the same seat we occupied this morning," said Rosalind.

"No, no; go anywhere else, and I shall like it better. Let us go where we can see the moon rise, and watch her till she reaches her highest noon;--of all the toys of creation it is the prettiest."

"Shall you be afraid to go as far as the lime-tree?" asked Rosalind.

"What! The tree of trees? the bower of paradise?--in short, the tree that you and I have once before visited together?"

"The same. There is no point from whence the rising moon is seen to such advantage."

"Come along, then; let us each put on the armour of a good shawl, and steal away from this superlatively dull party by the hall-door."

The two girls walked on together arm-in-arm, both clad in white, both raising a fair young face to the clear heavens, both rejoicing in the sweet breath of evening, heavy with dew-distilling odours. Yet, thus alike, the wide earth is not ample enough to serve as a type whereby to measure the distance that severed them. The adoration, the joy, the hope of Rosalind, as her thoughts rose "from Nature up to Nature's G.o.d,"

beamed from her full eye; thankfulness and love swelled her young heart, and every thought and every feeling was a hymn of praise.

Henrietta, as she walked beside her, though sharing Nature's banquet so lavishly prepared for every sense, like a thankless guest, bestowed no thought upon the hand that gave it. Cold, dark, and comfortless was the spirit within her; she saw that all was beautiful, but remembered not that all was good,--and the thankless heart heaved with no throb of wors.h.i.+p to the eternal Creator who made the lovely world, and then made her to use it.

Notwithstanding the interpretation which Rosalind had put upon the works spoken by Henrietta in the morning, and the consolation she had drawn from it, it was not without considerable agitation that she antic.i.p.ated the conversation she was meditating. "If she were mistaken?--if beneath that pure sky, from whence the eye of Heaven seemed to look down upon them, she were again to hear the same terrific words--how should she answer them? How should she find breath, and strength, and thought, and language, to speak on such a theme?"

She trembled at her own temerity as this fear pressed upon her, and inwardly prayed, in most true and sweet humility, for forgiveness for her presumptuous sin. A prayer so offered never fails of leaving in the breast it springs from a cheering glow, that seems like an a.s.surance of its being heard. Like that science-taught air, which blazes as it exhales itself, prayer--simple, sincere, unostentatious prayer, sheds light and warmth upon the soul that breathes it, even by the act of breathing.

They had, however, reached the seat beneath the lime-tree before Rosalind found courage to begin: and then she said, as they seated themselves beneath the spreading canopy, "Miss Cartwright,--I have a confession to make to you."

"To me?--Pray, what is it? To judge by the place you have chosen for your confessional, it should be something rather solemn and majestical."

"Do you remember that I left you on the shrubbery-seat this morning fast asleep?"

"Oh! perfectly.--You mean, then, to confess that the doing so was unwatchful and unfriendly: and, indeed, I think it was. How did you know but I might be awakened by some venomous reptile that should come to sting me?"

"Believe me, I thought the place secure from interruption of every kind.

But I had reason to think afterwards that it did not prove so."

"What do you mean, Miss Torrington?" replied Henrietta, in an accent of some asperity. "I presume you did not creep away for the purpose of spying at me from a distance?"

"Oh no!--You cannot, I am sure, suspect me of wis.h.i.+ng to spy at you at all. And yet things have so fallen out, that when I tell you all, you must suspect me of it--unless you believe me, as I trust you do, incapable of such an action."