TAKING ORDERS.
The darkness that had dwelt so long in the heart of Felicita began now
to cast its gloom over the whole household. A sharp attack of illness,
which followed immediately upon her great and inexplicable agitation,
caused great consternation to her friends, and above all to Felix. The
eminent physician who was called in said her brain had been over-worked,
and she must be kept absolutely free of all worry and anxiety. How
easily is this direction given, and how difficult, how impossible, in
many cases, is it to follow! That any soul, except that of a child, can
be freed from all anxiety, is possible only to the soul that knows and
trusts God.
All further mention of his love for Alice was out of the question now
for Felix. Bitter as silence was, it was imperative; for while his
mother's objections and prejudices were not overcome, Canon Pascal
would not hear of any closer tie than that which already existed being
formed between the young people. He had, however, the comfort of
believing that Alice had heard so much of what had passed from her
mother, as that she knew he loved her, and had owned his love to her
father. There was a subtle change in her manner toward him; she was more
silent in his presence, and there was a tremulous tone in her voice at
times when she spoke to him, yet she lingered beside him, and listened
more closely to all he had to say; and when they left Westminster to
return to their country rectory the tears glistened in her eyes as they
had never done before when he bade her good-by.
"Come and see us as soon as it will not vex your mother, my boy," said
Canon Pascal; "you may always think of our home as your own."
The only person who was not perplexed by Felicita's inexplicable conduct
and her illness, was Phebe Marlowe, who believed that she knew the
cause, and was drawn closer to her in the deepest sympathy and pity. It
seemed to Phebe that Felicita was creating the obstacle, which existed
chiefly in her fancy; and with her usual frankness and directness she
went to Canon Pascal's abode in the Cloisters at Westminster, to tell
him simply what she thought.
"I want to ask you," she said, with her clear, honest gaze fastened on
his face, "if you know why Mrs. Sefton left Riversborough thirteen years
ago?"
"Partly," he answered; "my wife is a Riversdale, you know, Felicita's
second or third cousin. There was some painful suspicion attaching to
Roland Sefton."
"Yes," answered Phebe sadly.
"Was it not quite cleared up?" asked Canon Pascal.
Phebe shook her head.
"We heard," he went on, "that it was believed Roland Sefton's
confidential clerk was the actual culprit; and Sefton himself was only
guilty of negligence. Mr. Clifford himself told Lord Riversdale that
Sefton was gone away on a long holiday, and might not be back for
months; and something of the same kind was put forth in a circular
issued from the Old Bank. I had one sent to me; for some little business
of my wife's was in the hands of the firm. I recollect thinking it was
an odd affair, but it passed out of my mind; and the poor fellow's death
quite obliterated all accusing thoughts against him."
"That is the scruple in Felicita's mind," said Phebe in a sorrowful
tone; "she feels that you ought to know everything before you consent to
Alice marrying Felix, and she cannot bring herself to speak of it."
"But how morbid that is!" he answered; "as if I did not know Felix,
every thought of him, and every motion of his soul! His father was a
careless, negligent man. He was nothing worse, was he, Phebe?"
"He was the best friend I ever had," she answered earnestly, though her
face grew pale, and her eyelids drooped, "I owe all I am to him. But it
was not Acton who was guilty. It was Felix and Hilda's father."
"And Felicita knew it?" he exclaimed.
"She knew nothing about it until I told her," answered Phebe. "Roland
Sefton came to me when he was trying to escape out of the country, and
my father and I helped him to get away. He told me all; and oh! he was
not so much to blame as you might think. But he was guilty of the crime;
and if he had been taken he would have been sent to jail. I would have
died then sooner than let him be taken to jail."
"If I had only known this from the beginning!" said Canon Pascal.
"What would you have done?" asked Phebe eagerly. "Would you have refused
to take Felix into your home? He has done no wrong. Hilda has done no
wrong. There would have been disgrace and shame for them if their father
had been sent to jail; but his death saved them from all danger of that.
Nobody would ever speak a word against Roland Sefton now. Yet this is
what is preying on Felicita's mind. If she was sure you knew all, and
still consented to Felix marrying Alice, she would be at peace again.
And I too think you ought to know all. But you-will not visit the sins
of the father upon the son----"
"Divine providence does so," he interrupted; "if the fathers eat sour
grapes the teeth of the sons are set on edge. Phebe, Phebe, that is only
too true."
"But Roland's death set the children free from the curse," answered
Phebe, weeping. "If he had been taken, they would have gone away to some
foreign land where they were not known; or even if he had not died, we
must have done differently from what we have done. But there is no one
now to bring this condemnation against them. Even old Mr. Clifford has
more than forgiven Roland; and if possible would have the time back
again, that he might act so as to reinstate him in his position. No one
in the world bears a grudge against Roland."
"I'm not hard-hearted, God knows," he answered, "but no man likes to
give his child to the son of a felon, convicted or unconvicted."
"Then I have done harm by telling you."
"No, no; you have done rightly," he replied, "it was good for me to know
the truth. We will let things be for awhile. And yet," he added, his
grave, stern face softening a little, "if it would be good for Felicita,
tell her that I know all, and that after a battle or two with myself, I
am sure to yield. I could not see Alice unhappy; and that lad holds her
heart in his hands. After all, she too must bear her part in the sins of
the world."
But though Phebe watched for an opportunity for telling Felicita what
she had done, no chance came. If Felicita had been reserved before, she
inclosed herself in almost unbroken silence now. During her illness she
had been on the verge of delirium; and then she had shut her lips with a
stern determination, which even her weak and fevered brain could not
break. She had once begged Phebe, if she grew really delirious, to
dismiss all other attendants, so that no ear but hers might hear her
wanderings; but this emergency had not arisen. And since then she had
sunk more and more into a stern silence.
Felix had left home, and entered into his lodgings, taking his father's
portrait with him. He was not so far from home but that he either
visited it, or received visitors from it almost every day. His mother's
illness troubled him; or otherwise the change in his life, his first
step in independent manhood, would have been one of great happiness to
him. He did not feel any deep misgivings as to Alice, and the
blessedness of the future with her; and in the mean-time, while he was
waiting, there was his work to do.
He had taken orders, not from ambition or any hope of worldly gain,
those lay quite apart from the path he had chosen, but from the simple
desire of fighting as best he might against the growing vices and
miseries of civilization. Step for step with the ever-increasing luxury
of the rich he saw marching beside it the gaunt degradation of the poor.
The life of refined self-indulgence in the one class was caricatured by
loathsome self-indulgence in the other. On the one hand he saw, young as
he was, something of the languor and weariness of life of those who have
nothing to do, and from satiety have little to hope or to fear; and on
the other the ignorance and want which deprived both mind and body of
all healthful activity, and in the pressure of utter need left but
little scope for hope or fear. He fancied that such civilization sank
its victims into deeper depths of misery than those of barbarism.
Before him seemed to lie a huge, weltering mass of slime, a very
quagmire of foulness and miasma, in the depths and darkness of which he
could dimly discern the innumerable coils of a deadly dragon, breathing
forth poison and death into the air, which those beloved of God and
himself must breathe, and crushing in its pestilential folds the bodies
and souls of immortal men. He was one of the young St. Michaels called
by God to give combat to that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan,
which was deceiving the old world.