"Well, I beg your pardon," said Charles; "I recollect now: it"s the exhibition room. However, _once_ it _was_ a chapel: that"s my mistake.
Isn"t it what is called "the Old Methodist Chapel?" I never was there; they showed there the _Dio-astro-doxon_, so I think they called it."
Charles talked on, to cover his own mistake, for he was ashamed of the charge he had made.
Willis did not know whether he was in jest or earnest. "Reding," he said, "don"t go on; you offend me."
"Well, what is it?" said Charles.
"You know well enough," answered Willis, "though you wish to annoy me."
"I don"t indeed."
"It"s the Catholic church," said Willis.
Reding was silent a moment; then he said, "Well, I don"t think you have mended the matter; it _is_ a dissenting meeting, call it what you will, though not the kind of one I meant."
"What can you mean?" asked Willis.
"Rather, what mean _you_ by going to such places?" retorted Charles; "why, it is against your oath."
"My oath! what oath?"
"There"s not an oath now; but there was an oath till lately," said Reding; "and we still make a very solemn engagement. Don"t you recollect your matriculation at the Vice-Chancellor"s, and what oaths and declarations you made?"
"I don"t know what I made: my tutor told me nothing about it. I signed a book or two."
"You did more," said Reding. "I was told most carefully. You solemnly engaged to keep the statutes; and one statute is, not to go into any dissenting chapel or meeting whatever."
"Catholics are not Dissenters," said Willis.
"Oh, don"t speak so," said Charles; "you know it"s meant to include them. The statute wishes us to keep from all places of worship whatever but our own."
"But it is an illegal declaration or vow," said Willis, "and so not binding."
"Where did you find that get-off?" said Charles; "the priest put that into your head."
"I don"t know the priest; I never spoke a word to him," answered Willis.
"Well, any how, it"s not your own answer," said Reding; "and does not help you. I am no casuist; but if it is an illegal engagement you should not continue to enjoy the benefit of it."
"What benefit?"
"Your cap and gown; a university education; the chance of a scholarship or fellowship. Give up these, and then plead, if you will, and lawfully, that you are quit of your engagement; but don"t sail under false colours: don"t take the benefit and break the stipulation."
"You take it too seriously; there are half a hundred statutes _you_ don"t keep, any more than I. You are most inconsistent."
"Well, if we don"t keep them," said Charles, "I suppose it is in points where the authorities don"t enforce them; for instance, they don"t mean us to dress in brown, though the statutes order it."
"But they _do_ mean to keep you from walking down High Street in beaver," answered Willis; "for the Proctors march up and down, and send you back, if they catch you."
"But _this_ is a different matter," said Reding, changing his ground; "this is a matter of religion. It can"t be right to go to strange places of worship or meetings."
"Why," said Willis, "if we are one Church with the Roman Catholics, I can"t make out for the life of me how it"s wrong for us to go to them or them to us."
"I"m no divine, I don"t understand what is meant by one Church," said Charles; "but I know well that there"s not a bishop, not a clergyman, not a sober churchman in the land but would give it against you. It"s a sheer absurdity."
"Don"t talk in that way," answered Willis, "please don"t. I feel all my heart drawn to the Catholic worship; our own service is so cold."
"That"s just what every stiff Dissenter says," answered Charles; "every poor cottager, too, who knows no better, and goes after the Methodists--after her dear Mr. Spoutaway or the preaching cobbler. _She_ says (I have heard them), "Oh, sir, I suppose we ought to go where we get most good. Mr. So-and-so goes to my heart--he goes through me.""
Willis laughed; "Well, not a bad reason, as times go, _I_ think," said he: "poor souls, what better means of judging have they? how can you hope they will like "the Scripture moveth us"? Really you are making too much of it. This is only the second time I have been there, and, I tell you in earnest, I find my mind filled with awe and devotion there; as I think you would too. I really am better for it; I cannot pray in church; there"s a bad smell there, and the pews hide everything; I can"t see through a deal board. But here, when I went in, I found all still, and calm, the s.p.a.ce open, and, in the twilight, the Tabernacle just visible, pointed out by the lamp."
Charles looked very uncomfortable. "Really, Willis," he said, "I don"t know what to say to you. Heaven forbid that I should speak against the Roman Catholics; I know nothing about them. But _this_ I know, that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no business there. If they have such sacred things among them as those you allude to, still these are not yours; you are an intruder. I know nothing about it; I don"t like to give a judgment, I am sure. But it"s a tampering with sacred things; running here and there, touching and tasting, taking up, putting down. I don"t like it," he added, with vehemence; "it"s taking liberties with G.o.d."
"Oh, my dear Reding, please don"t speak so very severely," said poor Willis; "now what have I done more than you would do yourself, were you in France or Italy? Do you mean to say you wouldn"t enter the churches abroad?"
"I will only decide about what is before me," answered Reding; "when I go abroad, then will be the time to think about your question. It is quite enough to know what we ought to do at the moment, and I am clear you have been doing wrong. How did you find your way there?"
"White took me."
"Then there is one man in the world more thoughtless than you: do many of the gownsmen go there?"
"Not that I know of; one or two have gone from curiosity; there is no practice of going, at least this is what I am told."
"Well," said Charles, "you must promise me you will not go again. Come, we won"t part till you do."
"That is too much," said Willis, gently; then, disengaging his arm from Reding"s, he suddenly darted away from him, saying, "Good-bye, good-bye; to our next merry meeting--_au revoir_."
There was no help for it. Charles walked slowly home, saying to himself: "What if, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church? I wish I knew what to believe; no one will tell me what to believe; I am so left to myself." Then he thought: "I suppose I know quite enough for practice--more than I _do_ practise; and I ought surely to be contented and thankful."
CHAPTER XII.
Charles was an affectionate son, and the Long Vacation pa.s.sed very happily at home. He was up early, and read steadily till luncheon, and then he was at the service of his father, mother, and sisters for the rest of the day. He loved the calm, quiet country; he loved the monotonous flow of time, when each day is like the other; and, after the excitement of Oxford, the secluded parsonage was like a haven beyond the tossing of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean--they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses--even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had the poetry of many recollections. Nor was the dilapidated, deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell, without its pleasant a.s.sociations to the inner man; for there it was that for many a year, Sunday after Sunday, he had heard his dear father read and preach; there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place--which had arrested his imagination, and awed him when a child. And then there was his home itself; its well-known rooms, its pleasant routine, its order, and its comfort--an old and true friend, the dearer to him because he had made new ones. "Where I shall be in time to come I know not," he said to himself; "I am but a boy; many things which I have not a dream of, which my imagination cannot compa.s.s, may come on me before I die--if I live; but here at least, and now, I am happy, and I will enjoy my happiness. Some say that school is the pleasantest time of one"s life; this does not exclude college. I suppose care is what makes life so wearing. At present I have no care, no responsibility; I suppose I shall feel a little when I go up for my degree. Care is a terrible thing; I have had a little of it at times at school. What a strange thing to fancy, I shall be one day twenty-five or thirty! How the weeks are flying by! the Vacation will soon be over. Oh, I am so happy, it quite makes me afraid. Yet I shall have strength for my day."
Sometimes, however, his thoughts took a sadder turn, and he antic.i.p.ated the future more vividly than he enjoyed the present. Mr. Malcolm had come to see them, after an absence from the parsonage for several years: his visit was a great pleasure to Mr. Reding, and not much less to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived in their minds princ.i.p.ally by prescription. He neither knew this, nor would have thought much about it if he had; for, like many persons of advancing years, he made himself very much his own centre, did not care to enter into the minds of others, did not consult for them, or find his happiness in them. He was kind and friendly to the young people, as he would be kind to a canary-bird or a lap-dog; it was a sort of external love; and, though they got on capitally with him, they did not miss him when gone, nor would have been much troubled to know that he was never to come again.
Charles drove him about the country, stamped his letters, secured him his newspapers from the neighbouring town, and listened to his stories about Oxford and Oxford men. He really liked him, and wished to please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday ba.s.soon.
"How have your peaches been this year, Malcolm?" said Mr. Reding one day after dinner to his guest.
"You ought to know that we have no peaches in Oxford," answered Mr.
Malcolm.
"My memory plays me false, then: I had a vision of, at least, October peaches on one occasion, and fine ones too."
"Ah, you mean at old Tom Spindle"s, the jockey"s," answered Mr. Malcolm; "it"s true, he had a bit of a brick wall, and was proud of it. But peaches come when there is no one in Oxford to eat them; so either the tree, or at least the fruit, is a great rarity there. Oxford wasn"t so empty once; you have old mulberry-trees there in record of better days."