CHAPTER XVI.

FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE AND LIBERTY OF ACTION.

When Eugene had fulfilled the commission of the late duke, and had made the arrangement for Henry Daubrey with the Abbé Martigni, spoken of in the last chapter, he bethought him of his own position. Whither should he bend his own steps? As long as he had been busied in Ellen's affairs, the excitement had in some measure kept him up, and prevented his realizing what it is to be homeless, to have relatives who wish your absence, loved ones to whom your presence causes annoyance, positive annoyance. To be alone in this wide world of sin, without the sanction of family ties; to be disowned, voted an encumbrance, or, worse, an absolute incubus, crushing vitality and joyousness in the home circle! what a feeling it produces! It requires a strong courage, a courage that is the child of faith, that is sustained by grace, to enable one to bear it bravely, working hard the while. Eugene did bear it bravely, though he felted most acutely. He determined to seek M. Bertolot, to take counsel respecting the future. His way lay past his sister Adelaide's present residents. The duchess was now settled in the jointure-house. Decidedly, had Eugene thought she was alone, or with those who to him were strangers, he would have passed quietly on his way; but Euphrasie, did not Euphrasie live with the duchess? At least he supposed so; and though with an effort he conquered his reluctance and announced himself at his sister's mansion.

The duchess received him coldly, almost haughtily. Still the young man waited, in the hope of seeing her for whom the visit was intended. A long two hours passed in painful and constrained conversation. Still neither Madame de Meglior nor her daughter appeared.

Eugene rose to take his leave; then, as if by a sudden impulse, exclaimed: "But, my aunt, Adelaide, and Mademoiselle de Meglior, I most not go without paying my respects to them. Will you not let one of your people tell them that I am here and wish to see them?"

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"Neither the countess nor Mademoiselle Euphrasie are with me," replied the duchess.

"No! where are they, then? at Estcourt Hall?"

"I think not; they left me at Durimond Castle, before I came here at all. They went to Annie then; where they are now I do not know."

"Have they, then, left Annie?"

"Yes! Sir Philip took some exceptions Euphrasie's Jesuitical principles, and the ladies disappeared one day."

"Disappeared! where did they go to?"

"No one knows; truth to say, brother this is a very disagreeable subject; these quarrels about religion are terrible, and have brought much unhappiness to all of us; the less we say about it the better."

"But my aunt and Euphrasie?"

"I have already told you I do not know anything about them, and I must add, I do not wish to know."

"Sister!"

But Adelaide replied no more. Her stateliness and dignity, if they did not awe Eugene, repelled him. He left the house in disgust.

His next visit was to his sister Annie; but it would be more in order were we to relate the occurrences which had taken place with regard to Euphrasie and her mother since the duke's death. Immediately after that event, the two ladies experienced a great change of demeanor toward themselves in the persons of all by whom they were surrounded; even the menials caught the infection, and behaved with supercilious insolence toward the abetter of popery and the female Jesuit, as they termed the emigrant ladies. Madame de Meglior, mindful of Annie's former invitation, wrote to express her willingness to except it now, if Annie still desired their company. The answer was most favorable, and within a week of the duke's funeral Madame and Euphrasie had quitted his haughty and to them now unfriendly widow.

They had not been long at their new abode ere another source of uneasiness arose. Alfred Brookbank had always vehemently disliked Euphrasie, and observing the real pleasure that her company afforded the now too often desolate Lady Conway, he resolved to do his utmost to destroy that pleasure. The reason of the ladies' departure from the protection of the duchess was not indeed guessed; so secret had all transactions connected with the late duke's death been kept, the very word Catholic was suppressed where possible; it was not supposed, nor to be supposed, that they had been driven from so lofty a mansion. Still, Alfred Brookbank knew the religion of Euphrasie, and he deemed he could so use that knowledge as to spite Annie.

Sir Philip had at first been pleased with the new-comers: their history interested him, and native good feeling prompted him to show them kindness and hospitality as his wife's relatives; but Alfred soon worked on his horror of popery. Of all things, the worthy baronet detested a Catholic the most, and Euphrasie was, suggested the lawyer, a Jesuit in petticoats; an insinuating adventuress, one who would risk the downfall of a noble house to make a convert, even of a cook-maid.

Annie found great relief in the society of her guests. She sympathized with her aunt, and entertained her fondly; Euphrasie she had always liked, despite her taciturnity. She would gladly have induced them to prolong their visit to an indefinite period, and was greatly disappointed when she first became aware of Sir Philip's revulsion of feeling in their regard. This revulsion, indeed, soon mastered him so completely that he could scarcely bring himself to be civil to them in his outward demeanor.

Annie remonstrated that as her relatives, and as the relatives of the Godfrey family, they were at least entitled to respect.

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"A respect that will place them at liberty to proselytize all the parish? No, no, my lady; private feeling must be sacrificed to public duty;" and the baronet drew himself up in a very Brutus-like fashion.

"But my aunt is not a Catholic that I am aware of," pleaded Annie; "and as for Euphrasie, she scarcely speaks, so how can she convert any one?"

"'Twere hard to tell, yet we know these silent people are the very ones to be dreaded. One thing I am determined on, she shall not remain here."

"But how can we turn them out of the house?"

"That is your business, my lady; you invited them, now get rid of them."

The speech was a cruel one, for although Sir Philip did not know they had already been ejected from the other part of the family, he knew that Mr. Godfrey and Hester were so taken up just now in establishing the duchess in her jointure-house and in removing thither the divinities of the far-famed pagan temple, that they could think of nothing else. Mrs. Godfrey was at home, but was said to be in delicate health, and Eugene was absent; none seemed to know where or why. A moment's reflection might have told Sir Philip that just then the unfortunate emigrant ladies had no home save the one in which they now found themselves; but he consulted only his own dogged temper, and tormented his wife at every private interview to get rid of them.

But Annie knew not how, and her obstinacy in not complying with his commands enraged him; Sir Philip had a high idea of his marital authority, though he knew not whence he derived it, nor, indeed, how to enforce it. In this latter particular, however, he sought counsel from his friend Brookbank, as he termed his lawyer, and this latter was not slow in using every advantage he could obtain over Annie.

"Prudence and patience. Sir Philip, will accomplish all things." said the lawyer; "it would be unwise, as you perceive, to incur the odium of turning those ladies out of doors, until the grounds of complaint become ostnsible; wait awhile, they will become so. From my knowledge of the amiable character of the lady, your wife, Sir Philip, I should be perfectly surprised at this resistance to your legitimate authority, did I not fear that my lady herself is somewhat infected with the opinions of the young French refugee. You, Sir Philip, are well aware, attachment to that baneful creed overcomes every other sense of duty."

"My lady Conway a Catholic!" ejaculated the now bewildered Sir Philip.

"Nay, I say not that--I think not that; only a favorer of her cousin's views. No open profession of Catholicity, only a secret inclination thereunto."

"They shall be separated this very day," thundered the baronet.

"Pardon me. Sir Philip; I have the utmost confidence in your judgment; your just antipathy to popish superstition fortifies my own. But if you will allow me one word which appears to differ, but in fact agrees with your opinion; may I be permitted to say, that it would be hardly prudent just now to give any air of martyrdom to this business. Weak women are flattered thereby. Your object is, of course, to detach Lady Conway from every Catholic idea. Your strong good sense and powers of reasoning will effect this, provided that you do not rouse the strong obstinacy of female nature. Wait till the visit ends in a natural manner, and then take measures to restore your lady wife to her senses."

Alfred knew well that in giving this advice he ran no risk of seeing it acted upon. The character of the man he addressed was too ungovernable for that; he had but roused into fiercer play the half-dormant passion, the half-latent suspicion. Sir Philip appeared {489} to acquiesce, but, as Alfred intended, all his faculties were now aroused to put and unfavorable construction on his wife's actions ions. His tone became more churlish, and even more authoritative then was its wont. Politeness and forbearance were at an end. To his two guests he scarcely behaved with decency.

Annie was too deeply hurt to feel all the indignation that this course would naturally have led her to manifest. She used all her endeavors to shield from actual insult the bereaved emigrants, and to compensate by her own assiduous attentions for the rudeness of her husband. She even mastered herself so as calmly to remonstrate with him on the subject, "Sir Philip," said she, "have you considered that the revolution of France cannot, from the very nature of things, be permanent; that these ladies are of the haute noblesse, and one day their estates will be restored to them?"

"I think not; nay, I hope not," said Sir Philip. "As the French people have had the good sense to banish priests, I hope they will also have wisdom enough to keep all Jesuits, male and female, at a distance. Your cousin is a female Jesuist, depend upon it. It would not surprise me to that she is in actual correspondence with the Pope, or connected with a second Guy Fawkes for the blowing up of this household. Get rid of her, my lady."

"But how? Just now they can go neither to Estcourt Hall nor to Adelaide. Where am I to send them to?"

In a towering passion, and in a thundering voice, the baronet replied: "I don't care a d--n where they go to; but I can't bear the sight of them here."

Annie's heart sank. The window was open, and as her husband spoke she became aware that the ladies in question were seated in an alcove near, partially screened from view by the green boughs of the shrubs that surrounded it. They must have heard the conversation. At this moment they rose, passed the window, bowing as they passed to Annie. There was something of melancholy compassion in that salute; at least Annie thought so. She longed to run after them, to throw herself into her aunt's arms, and weep out the bitterness of her soul; but her husband's eye was upon her, and he was watching her emotions with no friendly feelings. She turned back into the library with him and endeavored to master her oppression. The time passed drearily away as she awaited their return from their walk; but in vain she waited, they came not; one hour, two hours, three hours; dinner was served and they came not. The meal was taken silently; each one was too much absorbed in thought to speak. A long evening was gone through, and at length when Sir Philip went out to speak to his farm bailiff, Annie wandered in sadness on to the lawn. It was a fitful night, the clouds were chasing each other through the atmosphere, here and there revealing a star, now and then disclosing the moon. A feeling of desolation came over her, her grief was too great for tears; but when she approached the deep haw-haw that bounded the garden to the south, she felt as if she could willingly lie down therein and die. "Was the water there deep enough to destroy life? What is life? Is it something we hold in common with cows, horses, dogs? That is easily destroyed! Is man only an animal? If so, I at least had better die, for what happiness can I expect with such a mate as I have? But animal life cannot be all! What is it makes us so sure of this? O Euphrasie! where are you? You could answer this; why are you so happy, why am I se wretched? If it is not poverty that makes unhappiness, what does make it? What has Euphrasie more than I have? She is a wanderer, homeless, penniless, yet I feel satisfied she is to be envied even now."

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Strange that in her vexation and utter mortification, Annie felt no intense anxiety respecting the fate of her guests. She had a sort of belief that Euphrasie bore a charmed life, and that under any circumstances she was ever the happiest person in the circle in which she might be placed. She thought her aunt privileged in having such a companion.

The deep night came, and Sir Philip, uneasy at Annie's prolonged absence, went to seek her. She was still leaning over a rail close to the water's edge. "What are you doing there?" he said, but his tone was softer than usual, for his wife was trembling with emotion; and her eyes were filled with tears. He took one hand in his, and passed one arm round her waist, to support her and draw her from her position. "Are you ill, Annie?" he asked.

Instead of replying, Annie asked in a faltering voice: "What has become of them?"

"It matters not; it was a providence that made them hear they were not welcome. It saved us both some uneasiness. They will be taken care of, never fear. There is a sort of free-masonry among such people. Only don't let me see my wife, Lady Conway, make herself miserable about a couple of papists: it would be too absurd."

Two days after, toward the evening, a stranger came, a poor Irishman, with a cart; he brought a note to Annie. It was from Madame: she thanked Annie cordially and affectionately for her good wishes and kind attentions; pleaded that a sudden emergency had arisen which prevented her profiting longer from them; excused her informal leave-taking by the same necessity, and begged Annie would forward to her whatever she had left behind. Annie fairly cried with vexation; she questioned the man as to where the ladies were, but the man had seen no ladies. A gentleman, whose name he had forgotten, had given him the note and two keys, which he said would unlock two trunks, which were to be packed and sent back. That was all he knew. The gentleman would meet him at the same place, and receive the trunks from him. But he was sure the gentlemen did not live there; he was going further on. Annie could make out nothing more. She packed the trunks herself, and enclosed a fifty pound Bank of England note, with a deprecating letter in one of the boxes. It was all the money she had at that moment in hand.

A week elapsed, and a letter came by a private hand; the bearer leaving the premises immediately on delivering it. The letter contained no address, but it returned the fifty pound note, "with thanks--it was not needed." Sir Philip was present when the letter was opened; his eyes were fixed on Annie, and he sternly demanded, "From whom?" There was no alternative native but to hand the letter to him and he exclaimed in a fury, "And is it thus you would waste my substance madam? To nourish vipers, Jesuits, beasts! I will take care from henceforth your means of doing this shall be lessened," and he stalked indignantly from the room, bearing the money and the letter with him. This was a manifest injustice, as the money was Annie's private property, by right of her marriage settlements; but when was prejudice ever just?

* * * * *

It was several weeks after this that Eugene made his appearance to inquire after the refugees. Annie would have greeted him warmly, but Sir Philip's haughty and distant manner plainly told him he was not welcome. Eugene waited till the baronet had quitted the apartment ere he inquired for his aunt and her step-daughter. He heard the tale relative to their withdrawal with undisguised indignation, and said:

"And you do not know what has become of them?"

"No!"

"And you say my father does not know?"

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"No!"

"Will he let his own sister and the orphan daughter of his friend suffer for want?"

"They cannot be suffering, they refused the fifty pound note."

"That says nothing; or rather it says they preferred suffering to insult. O Annie! Annie! I had not dreamed you would lend yourself to persecution like this."

"Young man," said Sir Philip, who now entered the room, "I am master in my own house; I have heard your conversation with Lady Conway in regard to your _protégé_. I will have no papists here, nor any encouragement given to them; and the day that Lady Conway holds communication again with papists, or with suspected papists, without my sanction, that day she ceases to abide under one roof with me."

Annie looked as if she wished that day were already come, but she said nothing. Eugene was watching her and he whispered: "Wives must obey their husbands, Annie, in all that is not sin. Adieu, I blame you no longer; I see where the fault lies. Adieu once more." And Eugene hastened from the house without trusting himself to reply to the haughty speech of it's master.

The whisper had been observed; a frown darkened Sir Philips brow, "Your brother has forgotten the forms of good breeding," he said, "to enter a gentleman's house and treat him with contempt. Is that what the Catholic religion enjoins?"

"The Catholic religion! What do I know of the Catholic religion? How should that influence our actions?"

"You do not favor Catholics in your heart, I suppose, my lady?"

"Not as Catholics. My regard for Euphrasie had no reference to religion at all."

"A nice distinction, learnt of the Jesuits, I suppose."

"I never saw a Jesuit that I am aware of," said Annie.

And thus the pair parted, to meet again and jar, and live in jarring discord every day.

Had Annie been able to make Mr. Godfrey understand how unjustly she was treated, she would have applied for a separation; but Mr. Godfrey would not hear of such a thing. "He was glad, for his part," he said, "that Sir Philip took so sensible a view of Catholic influence. It had raised his son-in-law in his esteem, and if Annie showed any disposition to break through the salutary regulations laid down for her, it would be advisable rather to put her under restraint as a lunatic, than to emancipate her from marital control. Sir Philip had the legal power of locking her up in his own house; and if he did so for such a cause as that, Mr. Godfrey would hold him justified."

Mrs. Godfrey was in dismay. Her health visibly declined. A melancholy seemed to overspread her intellect, and at times to overpower her. All was changed at Estcourt Hall now. The once fond, indulgent husband, seemed to take but little notice of the ailments of his faithful partner. He dreaded her taking part with Eugene and Annie, if the subject were introduced, and he avoided all intimate conversation. Hester was too much wrapt up in her own ideas to watch her mother closely. She saw that the servants attended to her, that there was no fear of her suffering for want of care or nourishment; but unheedful of the power of affection and of sympathy, she gave her little personal attendance. Annie's case she thought a hard one, and once ventured to remonstrate with her father on the subject; but Mr. Godfrey justified his proceedings by painting to her the horrors of popery in glowing colors. He demonstrated to her that all sincere Catholics were fools, the wise ones hypocrites, of whom it might be predicted as it was of the soothsayers by Cicero, that it was a wonder how one priest could look another in the face without laughing together at their success in gulling the public mind. "Now," {492} said Mr. Godfrey, "the object of these priests and rulers being to subjugate the human will, and to level the human reason to their standard, in order that themselves may rule supreme, it becomes the duty of every thinking mind to war with the system on principle. You, my dear daughter," continued the fond father, for fond even to doting was Mr. Godfrey of this one child, "you, my dear daughter, would idolize the hero who fought and achieved his country's freedom--external freedom merely; should you not unite with those who would save the world from mental bondage of the most degrading order?"

"Yes, if papistry be really this," said Hester; "but that it is difficult to conceive it to be. But, grant that it is so, Annie does not seem to be in any way implicated in it. She disclaims all connection with it, and certainly she never used to manifest any religious propensities whatever."

"Even so, surely no harm can come of keeping her apart from papists for awhile. If this is all she has to complain of, her grievances are not great."

"I think the real grievance, father, is the shackling her liberty, denying her freedom of intercourse. Trampling on her freedom is no light matter."

"Hester, dear, listen: when two people are yoked together, and their interests differ, one must give way; law and custom say this one must be the wife. Now, if Sir Philip were thought to encourage Catholics, his political interests would suffer; therefore he must not encourage them; but if his wife encourage them, it would appear that the encouragement had his sanction; therefore his wife must not encourage them: and if reasonable means fail in teaching her this lesson, others may be resorted to. A wife is a wife, after all."

"I will never be a wife," said Hester.

"As you please," said her father. "but Annie is one, and must therefore submit. She has the less excuse for resistance, in that she had her own choice. No one was more surprised than myself when Sir Philip applied to me for her hand."

Meantime the cause of all these disagreements was altogether supposititious. Up to that time Annie had no acquaintance with the first principles of religion. Probably but for this annoyance she would ever have remained equally ignorant; but, driven from friendship, shut out from sympathy, her attention was naturally fixed on the subject; she began to meditate on Euphrasie's practices, to put together the ideas she had allowed to escape her. A copy of the Imitation of Christ had accidentally been left behind by Euphrasie; it was found under the pillow on which she had slept. It was a book of mystery to Annie, wonderfully enigmatical; yet this book and the New Testament were her constant companions for months, and she learned to cherish them as friends.