And experience of mankind did not give any decided hope that even the last day's agony of repentance would be the turning over of a new leaf, when convalescence should bring the same surroundings and temptations, and perhaps the like disproportionate indignation and impatience in dealing with errors and constitutional weakness. "And the example of my brother's poor son is not encouraging," he added. "He who seems to have owed everything to your brother and sister."
"Yet poor Fulbert and I were to our homes, perhaps not the black sheep, but at any rate the vagrant ones."
"And what made a difference to you, may I ask?"
"Strong infusion by character and example of principle," said Bernard thoughtfully; "then, real life, and having to be one's own safeguard, with nothing to fall back on. As my brother told me at his last, I should swim when my plank was gone."
"Yes, but, plainly, you were never weak," and as Bernard did not answer at once, "Old-fashioned severity used to be the rule with lads, but it seems only to alienate them now and make them think themselves unjustly treated. What is one to do with these boys?"
A question which Bernard could not answer, though it carried him back with a strange yearning, yet resignation, to the little figure that had curled round on his knee, and the hopes connected with the hands that had caressed his cheek.
He thought over it the more the next week, when he was called to sit by Wilfred, who was getting better and anxious to talk.
"My father is very kind," he said. "Oh, yes, very kind now; but it will be all the same when I get well. You see, Bear, how can a man be always dawdling about with a lot of girls? There's Dolores bothering with her science, and Fergus every bit as bad; and Mysie after her disgusting schoolchildren; and Val and Prim horrid little empty chatterboxes; and if one does turn to a jolly girl for a bit of fun, their tongues all go to work, so that you would think the skies were going to fall; and if one goes in for a bit of a spree, down comes the General like a sledge-hammer! I wish you would take me out with you, Bear."
The same idea had already been undeveloped in Bernard's mind, and ever on his tongue when alone with his wife; but he kept it to himself, and only committed himself to, "You would not find an office in Colombo much more enlivening."
"There would be something to see-something to do. It would not be all as dull as ditch-water-just driving one to do something to get away from the girls and their fads."
This was nearly a fortnight from the night of crisis, when Wilfred, very weak, was still in bed; when Primrose and Lily were up and about, but threatened with whooping cough. Thekla much in the same case, and very cross; and little Lena weak, caressing and dependant, but angelically good and patient, so much so that Magdalen and Angela were quite anxious about her.
CHAPTER XXVI-NEW PATHS
"I'll put a girdle round the earth
In forty minutes."
- SHAKESPEARE.
The visitation had not been confined to the High School. The little cheaply-built rows for workmen and fishermen had suffered much more severely, owing chiefly to the parents' callous indifference to infection. "Kismet," as they think it, said Jane Mohun, and still more to their want of care. Chills were caught, fevers and diphtheria ensued, and there was an actual mortality among the children at the works and at Arnscombe. Mr. Flight begged for help from the Nursing Sisterhood at Dearport, and, to her great joy, Sister Beata was sent down to him, with another who was of the same standing as Angela, and delighted to have a glimpse of her; though Angela thought it due to her delicate charge, and the Merrifields, not to plunge into actual nursing while Lena needed her hourly attention, and was not yet in a state for the training to do without it to continue. Paulina, however, being regarded as infection proof, was permitted to be an attendant and messenger of her dear Sister Beata, to her own great joy. She was now nineteen, and her desire to devote herself to a Sisterhood had never wavered, and intercourse with Sister Angela had only strengthened it.
"Oh, Maidie!" she said, "I do not think there can be any life so good or so happy as being really given up to our Lord and His work among the sick and poor."
"My dear, He can be served if you are in the world, provided you are not of the world, and if you keep yourself from the evil."
"Yes; but why should I run into the world? It is not evil, I know, so far as you and all your friends can manage; but it stirs up the evil in one's self."
"And so would a Sisterhood. That is a world, too."
"I suppose it is, and that there would be temptation; but there is a great deal to help one to keep right. And, oh! to have one's work in real good to Christ's poor, or in missions, instead of in all these outside silly nonsensical diversions that one doubts about all the time. If you would only let me go back with dear Sister Beata and Sister Elfleda as a probationer!"
"You could not be any more yet," said Magdalen; "but I will think about it, and talk it over with Sister Angela. You know your friend Sister Mena, as she called herself, does not mean to be a Sister, but a governess."
"Yes; she wrote to me. She has never seen or known anything outside the Convent, and it is all new and turns her head," said Paulina, wisely. "I know she helped me to be all the more silly about Vera and poor Hubert Delrio."
Magdalen promised to talk the matter over with Sister Angela.
"I should call it a vocation," said Angela. "I have watched her ever since I have been here, and I am sure her soul is set on these best things, in a steady, earnest way."
"She has always been an exceedingly good girl ever since I have had to do with her," said Magdalen. "I have hardly had a fault to find with her, except a little exaggeration in the direction of St. Kenelm's."
"A steady, not a fitful flame," said Angela.
"But she is so young."
"If you will believe me, Magdalen, such a home as that Dearport Sisterhood is a precious thing-I have not been worthy of it. I have been a wild colt, carried about by all manner of passing excitements. Oh, dear! love of sheer fun and daring enterprise, and amusement, in shocking every one, even my very dearest, whom I loved best. I have done things too dreadful to think of, and been utterly unreasonable and unmanageable, and proud of it; but always that Sisterhood has been like a cord drawing me! I never quite got free of it, even when I sent back my medal, and fancied it had been playing at superstition. I was there for a month as almost a baby, and the atmosphere has brought peace ever since. That, and my brother, and Sister Constance, and Bishop Fulmort, have been the saving of me, if anything has. I mean, if they will have me, to spend a little time at Dearport after all this perplexity is over, and I know how it is with Lena, and I could see how it is with Paula if you liked."
Magdalen accepted the suggestion, perhaps the more readily because of a fleeting visit from Hubert Delrio, who had finished his frescoes at the American Vale Leston, and came for a day or two to Mr. Flight's. She had sometimes doubted whether the supposed love of Vera had not been a good deal diffused among the young ladies, and might not so far awaken in Paulina as to render her vocation doubtful; but there were no such symptoms. Paula was quiet and cheerful, with a friendly welcome, but no excitement; but it was Thekla, now fifteen, who was all blushes whenever Hubert looked or spoke to her, all her forwardness gone; and shyness, or decidedly awkwardness, set in, resulting chiefly in giggle.
Hubert looked more manly and substantial, and he had just had an order for an important London church, which pleased him much, and involved another journey to Italy to study some of the designs in the Lombardic churches.
Not that there was any chance of meeting Vera. Mr. and Mrs. White had spent the last summer at Baden; and Vera, who had many pretty little drawing-room talents, and was always obliging, had been very acceptable there. This winter an attack of rheumatism had made them decide on trying Algiers, with a view to the Atlas marbles, and then German baths again might claim them for the summer.