It was a remarkable proof of my Father's temporary lapse into indulgence that he made no effort to thwart my intimacy with these my new companions. He was in an unusually humane mood himself. His marriage was one proof of it; another was the composition at this time of the most picturesque, easy and graceful of all his writings, The Romance of Natural History, even now a sort of classic. Everything combined to make him believe that the blessing of the Lord was upon him, and to clothe the darkness of the world with at least a mist of rose-colour. Ido not recollect that ever at this time he bethought him, when Istarted in the morning for a long day with my friends on the edge of the sea, to remind me that I must speak to them, in season and out of season, of the Blood of Jesus. And I, young coward that Iwas, let sleeping dogmas lie.
My companions were not all of them the sons of saints in our communion; their parents belonged to that professional class which we were only now beginning to attract to our services. They were brought up in religious, but not in fanatical, families, and I was the only 'converted' one among them. Mrs. Paget, of whom Ishall have presently to speak,characteristically said that it grieved her to see 'one lamb among so many kids'. But 'kid' is a word of varied significance and the symbol did not seem to us effectively applied. As a matter of fact, we made what I still feel was an excellent tacit compromise. My young companions never jeered at me for being 'in communion with the saints', and I, on my part, never urged the Atonement upon them. I began, in fact, more and more to keep my own religion for use on Sundays.
It will, I hope, have been observed that among the very curious grown-up people into whose company I was thrown, although many were frail and some were foolish, none, so far as I can discern, were hypocritical. I am not one of those who believe that hypocrisy is a vice that grows on every bush. Of course, in religious more than in any other matters, there is a perpetual contradiction between our thoughts and our deeds which is inevitable to our social order, and is bound to lead to cette tromperie mutuelle of which Pascal speaks. But I have often wondered, while admiring the splendid portrait of Tartuffe, whether such a monster ever, or at least often, has walked the stage of life; whether Moliere observed, or only invented him.
To adopt a scheme of religious pretension, with no belief whatever in its being true, merely for sensuous advantage, openly acknowledging to one's inner self the brazen system of deceit,--such a course may, and doubtless has been, trodden, yet surely much less frequently than cynics love to suggest. But at the juncture which I have now reached in my narrative, I had the advantage of knowing a person who was branded before the whole world, and punished by the law of his country, as a felonious hypocrite. My Father himself could only sigh and admit the charge. And yet--I doubt.
About half-way between our village and the town there lay a comfortable villa inhabited by a retired solicitor, or perhaps attorney, whom I shall name Mr. Dormant. We often called at his half-way house, and, although he was a member of the town-meeting, he not unfrequently came up to us for 'the breaking of bread'. Mr. Dormant was a solid, pink man, of a cosy habit. He had beautiful white hair, a very soft voice, and a welcoming, wheedling manner; he was extremely fluent and zealous in using the pious phraseology of the sect. My Father had never been very much attracted to him, but the man professed, and I think felt, an overwhelming admiration for my Father. Mr. Dormant was not very well off, and in the previous year he had persuaded an aged gentleman of wealth to come and board with him. When, in the course of the winter, this gentleman died, much surprise was felt at the report that he had left almost his entire fortune, which was not inconsiderable, to Mr. Dormant.
Much surprise--for the old gentleman had a son to whom he had always been warmly attached, who was far away, I think in South America, practising a perfectly respectable profession of which his father entirely approved. My own Father always preserved a delicacy and a sense of honour about money which could not have been more sensitive if he had been an ungodly man, and I am very much pleased to remember that when the legacy was first spoken of, he regretted that Mr. Dormant should have allowed the old gentleman to make this will. If he knew the intention, my Father said, it would have shown a more proper sense of his responsibility if he had dissuaded the testator from so unbecoming a disposition. That was long before any legal question arose; and now Mr. Dormant came into his fortune, and began to make handsome gifts to missionary societies, and to his own meeting in the town. If I do not mistake, he gave, unsolicited, a sum to our building fund, which my Father afterwards returned.
But in process of time we heard that the son had come back from the Antipodes, and was making investigations. Before we knew where we were, the news burst upon us, like a bomb-shell, that Mr. Dormant had been arrested on a criminal charge and was now in jail at Exeter.
Sympathy was at first much extended amongst us to the prisoner.
But it was lessened when we understood that the old gentleman had been 'converted' while under Dormant's roof, and had given the fact that his son was 'an unbeliever' as a reason for disinheriting him. All doubt was set aside when it was divulged, under pressure, by the nurse who attended on the old gentleman, herself one of the 'saints', that Dormant had traced the signature to the will by drawing the fingers of the testator over the document when he was already and finally comatose.
