HIS FATHER'S SIN.
When Felix returned from his brief and clouded holiday to his work in
that corner of the great vineyard, so overcrowded with busy husbandmen
that they were always plucking up each others' plants, and pruning and
repruning each others' vines, till they made a wilderness where there
should have been a harvest, he found that his special plot there had
suffered much damage. John Nixey, following up the impression he had so
successfully made, had spread his story abroad, and found ears willing
to listen to it, and hearts willing to believe it. The small Provident
Club, instituted by Felix to check the waste and thriftlessness of the
people, had already, in his short absence, elected another treasurer of
its scanty funds; and the members who formed it, working men and women
who had been gathered together by his personal influence, treated him
with but scant civility. His evening lectures in the church
mission-house were sometimes scarcely attended, whilst on other days
there was an influx of hearers, among whom John Nixey was prominent,
with half-a-dozen rough and turbulent fellows like himself, hangers-on
at the nearest spirit-vaults, who were ready for any turn that might
lead to a row. The women and children who had been accustomed to come
stayed away, or went to some other of the numerous preaching-places, as
though afraid of this boisterous element in his little congregation.
Now and then, too, he heard his name called out aloud in the streets by
some of Nixey's friends, as he passed the prospering gin-palaces with
their groups of loungers about the doors; but though he could catch the
sound of the laugh and the sneer that followed him, he could take no
notice. He could not turn round in righteous indignation and tell the
fellows, and the listening bystanders, that what they said of his father
was a lie. The poor young curate, with his high hopes and his
enthusiastic love of the work he had chosen for the sake of his
fellow-men, was compelled to pass on with bowed head, and silent lips,
and a heart burdened with the conviction that his influence was
altogether blighted and uprooted.
"It isn't true, sir, is it, what folks are tellin' about your father?"
was a question put to him more than once, when he entered some squalid
home, in the hope of giving counsel, or help, or comfort. There was
something highly welcome and agreeable to these people, themselves
thieves or bordering on thievedom, in the idea that this fine, handsome,
gentlemanly young clergyman, who had set to work among them with so much
energy and zeal, was the son of a dishonest rogue, who ought to have
been sent to jail as many of them had been. Felix had not failed to make
enemies in the Brickfields by his youthful intolerance of idleness,
beggary, and drunkenness. The owners of the gin-palaces hated him, and
not a few of the rival religious sects were, to say the least,
uncharitably disposed towards one who had drawn so many of their
followers to himself. There was very little common social interest in
the population of the district, for the tramping classes of the lowest
London poor, such as were drawn to the Brickfields by its overflowing
charities, have as little cohesion as a rope of sand; but Felix was so
conspicuous a figure in its narrow and dirty streets, that even
strangers would nudge one another's elbows, and almost before he was
gone by narrate Nixey's story, with curious additions and alterations.
It was gall and wormwood to Felix that he was unable to contradict the
story in full. He could say that his father had never been a convict;
but no inducement on earth could have wrung from him the declaration
that his father had never been guilty of fraud. Sometimes he wondered
whether it would not be well to own the simple truth, and endure the
shame: if he had been the sole survivor of his father's sin this he
would have done, and gone on toilsomely regaining the influence he had
lost. But the secret touched his mother even more closely than himself,
and Hilda was equally concerned in it. It had been sacredly kept by
those older than he was, and it was not for him to betray it. "My poor
mother!" he called her. Never, before he learned the secret burden she
had borne, had he called her by that tender and pitiful epithet; but as
often as he thought of her now his heart said, "My poor mother!"
As soon as Canon Pascal returned to England Felix took a day's holiday,
and ran down by train to the quiet rectory in Essex, where he had spent
the greater portion of his boyhood. Only a few years separated him from
that careless and happiest period of his life; yet the last three months
had driven it into the far background. He almost smiled at the
recollection of how young he was half-a-year ago, when he had declared
his love for Alice. How far dearer to him she was now than then! The one
letter he had received from her, written in Switzerland, and telling him
in loving detail of her visit to his father's grave, would be forever
one of his most precious treasures. But he was not going to share his
blemished name with her. He had had nothing worthy of her, or of his
father, to lay at her feet, whilst he was yet in utter ignorance of the
shame he had inherited; and now? He must never more think of her as his
wife.
She was at home, he knew; but he sternly forbade himself to seek for
her. It was Canon Pascal he had come down to see, and he went straight
on to his well-known study. He was busy in the preparation of next
Sunday's sermons, but at the sight of Felix's dejected, unsmiling face,
he swept away his books and papers with one hand, whilst he stretched
out his hand to give him such a warm, strong, hearty grip as he might
have given to a drowning man.
"What is it, my son?" he asked.
There was such a full sympathetic tone in the friendly voice speaking to
him, that Felix felt his burden already shared, and pressing less
heavily on his bruised spirit. He stood a little behind Canon Pascal,
with his hand upon his shoulder, as he had often placed himself before
when he was pleading for some boyish indulgence, or begging pardon for
some boyish fault.
"You have been like a true father to me, and I come to tell you a great
trouble," he began in a tremulous voice.
"I know it, my boy," replied Canon Pascal; "you have found out how true
it is, 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are
set on edge.' Ah! Felix, life teaches us so, as well as this wise old
Book."
"You know it?" stammered Felix.
"Phebe told me," he interrupted, "six months since. And now you and I
can understand Felicita. There was no prejudice against our Alice in her
mind; no unkindness to either of you. But she could not bring herself to
say the truth against the husband whom she has wept and mourned over so
long. And your mother is the soul of truth and honor; she could not let
you marry whilst we were ignorant of this matter. It has been a terrible
cross to bear, and she has borne it in silence. I love and revere your
mother more than ever."
"Yes!" said Felix with a sob. He had not yet seen her since coming to
this fateful knowledge; for Phebe and Hilda had joined her at the
sea-side where they were still staying. But if his father had gone down
into depths of darkness, his mother had risen so much the higher in his
reverence and love. She had become a saint and a martyr in his eyes; and
to save her from a moment's grief seemed to be a cause worth dying for.
"I came to tell you all," he went on, "and to say I cannot any more hope
that you will give Alice to me. God alone knows what it costs me to give
her up: and she will suffer too for a while, a long while, I fear; for
we have grown together so. But it must be. Alice cannot marry a man who
has not even an unblemished name to offer to her."
"You should ask Alice herself about that," said Canon Pascal quietly.
A thrill of rapture ran through Felix, and he grasped the shoulder, on
which his hand still rested, more firmly. What! was it possible that
this second father of his knew all his disgrace and dishonor, how his
teeth were set on edge by the sour grapes which he had not eaten, and
yet was willing that Alice should share his name and his lot? There was
no fear as to what Alice would say. He recollected how Phebe spoke, as
if her thoughts dwelt more on his father's sorrow and sad death, than on
his sin; and Alice would be the same. She would cover it with a woman's
sweet charity. He could not command his voice to speak; and after a
minute's pause Canon Pascal continued--
"Yes! Alice, too, knows all about it. I told her beside your father's
grave. And do you suppose she said, 'Here is cause enough for me to
break with Felix'? Nay, I believe if the sin had been your own, Alice
would have said it was her duty to share it, and your repentance. Shall
our Lord come to save sinners, and we turn away from their blameless
children? Yet I thought it must be so at first, I own it, Felix; at
first, while my eyes were blinded and my heart hardened; and I looked at
it in the light of the world. But then I be-thought me of your mother.
Shall not she make good to you the evil your father has wrought? If he
dishonored your name in the eyes of a few, she has brought honor to it,
and made it known far beyond the limits it could have been known through
him. The world will regard you as her son, not as his."
"But I came also to tell you that I wish to leave the country," said
Felix. "There is a difficulty in getting young men for our colonial
work; and I am young and strong, stronger than most young men in the
Church. I could endure hardships, and go in for work that feebler men
must leave untried; you have taken care of that for me. Such a life
would be more like old Felix Merle's than a London curacy. You let your
own sons emigrate, believing that the old country is getting
over-populated; and I thought I would go too."
"Why?" asked Canon Pascal, turning round in his chair, and looking up
searchingly into his face.
In a few words, and in short broken sentences, Felix told him of Nixey's
charge, and the change it had wrought in the London curacy, upon which
he had entered with so much enthusiasm and delight.
"It will be the same wherever I go in England," he said in conclusion;
"and I cannot face them boldly and say it is all a falsehood."
"You must live it down," answered Canon Pascal; "go on, and take no
notice of it."
"But it hinders my work sadly," said Felix, "and I cannot go on in the
Brickfields. There might be a row any evening, and then the story would
come out in the police-courts; and what could I say? At least, I must
give up that."
For a few minutes Canon Pascal was lost in thought. If Felix was right
in his apprehension, and the whole story came out in the police-court,
there were journals pandering to public curiosity that would gladly lay
hold of any gossip or scandal connected with Mrs. Roland Sefton. Her
name would ensure its publicity. And how could Felicita endure that,
especially now that her health was affected? If the dread of disclosing
her secret to him had wrought so powerfully upon her physical and mental
constitution, what would she suffer if it became a nine days' talk for
the world?
"I will get your rector to exchange curates with me till we can see our
way clear," he said. "He is Alice's godfather, you know, and will do it
willingly. I am going up to Westminster in November, and you will be
here in my place, where everybody knows your face and you know theirs.
There will be no question here about your father, for you are looked
upon as my son. Now go away, and find Alice."
When Felix turned out of Liverpool Street station that evening, a tall,
gaunt-looking workman man offered to carry his bag for him. It was
filled with choice fruit from the rectory garden, grown on trees grafted
and pruned by Canon Pascal's own hands; and Felix had helped Alice to
gather it for some of his sick parishioners in the unwholesome
dwelling-places he visited.
"I am going no farther than the Mansion House," he answered, "and I can
carry it myself."
"You'd do me a kindness if you'd let me carry it," said the man.
It was not the tone of a common loafer, hanging about the station for
any chance job, and Felix turned to look at him in the light of the
street-lamp. It was the old story, he thought to himself, a decent
mechanic from the country, out of work, and lost in this great labyrinth
of a city. He handed his bag to him and walked on along the crowded
thoroughfare, soon forgetting that he was treading the flagged streets
of a city; he was back again, strolling through dewy fields in the cool
twilight, with Alice beside him, accompanying him to the quiet little
station. He thought no more of the stranger behind him, or of the bag he
carried, until he hailed an omnibus travelling westward.
"Here is your bag, sir," said the man.
"Ah! I'd forgotten it," exclaimed Felix. "Good night, and thank you."
He had just time to drop a shilling into his hand before the omnibus was
off. But the man stood there in front of the Mansion House, motionless,
with all the busy sea of life roaring around him, hearing nothing and
seeing nothing. This coin that lay in his hand had been given to him by
his son; his son's voice was still sounding in his ears. He had walked
behind him taking note of his firm strong step, his upright carriage and
manly bearing. It had been too swift a march for him, full of exquisite
pain and pleasure, which chance might never offer to him again.
"Move on, will you?" said a policeman authoritatively; and Jean Merle,
rousing himself from his reverie, went back to his lonely garret.