Peccavi

"My next question is dictated by information received, or let me say by suspicions communicated. It is a vital question; do not answer unless you like. It is, however, a question that will infallibly arise elsewhere. Were you, or were you not, privy to this poor young woman's disappearance?"

"Before God, my lord, I was not!"

"I understand that her parents had no idea where she was until the very end. Had you none either?"

"No more than they had. We were equally in the dark. We believed that she had gone to stay with a friend from the village – a young woman who had married from service, and was settled near London. It was several weeks before we discovered that her friend had never seen her."

"And all this time you did not suspect her condition?"

"Yes; then I did; but not before."

"She made no communication before she went away?"

"None whatever to me – none whatever, to my knowledge."

"And this was early in the year?"

"She left Long Stow in January, and we had no news of her till the middle of June, when strangers communicated with her father."

Again the bishop leant over his foolscap.

"Did you ever offer her marriage?" he asked abruptly.

"Repeatedly!"

The clear eyes looked up.

"Did you not tell her father this?"

"No; I couldn't condescend to tell him," said Carlton, flushing for the first time. "My lord, I have made no excuses. There are none to make. That was none at all."

His lordship regarded the changed face with no further change in his own.

"So you loved her," he said softly, after a pause.

"Ah! if only I had loved her more!"

"If excuse there could be.. love.. is some."

It was the old man murmuring, as old men will, all unknown to the bishop and the judge.

"But I want no excuses!" cried Carlton, wildly. "And let me be honest now, whatever I have been in the past; if I deceived myself and others, let me undeceive myself and you! Oh, my lord, that wasn't love! It's the bitterest thought of all, the most shameful confession of all. But love must be something better; that can't be love! It was passion, if you like; it was a passion that swept me away in the pride of my strength; but, God forgive me, it was not love!"

He hid his face in his writhing hands; and, with those wild eyes off him, the bishop could no longer swallow his compassion. The lines of his mouth relaxed, and lo, the mouth was beautiful. A tender light suffused the aged face, and behold, the face was gentle beyond belief.

"Love is everything," the old man said; "but even passion is something, in these cold days of little lives and little sins. And honesty like yours is a great deal, Robert Carlton, though your sin be as scarlet, and the Blood of our Blessed Lord alone can make you clean."

Carlton looked up swiftly, a new solicitude in his eyes.

"In me it was scarlet: not in her. She loved.. she loved. Oh, to have loved as well – to have that to remember!.. She thought it would spoil my life; and I never guessed it was that! But now I know, I know! It was for my sake she went away.. poor child.. poor mistaken heroine! She died for me, and I cannot die for her. Isn't that hard? I can't even die for her!"

His bodily weakness betrayed itself in his swimming eyes; in the night of his agony no tear had dimmed them before men. But his will was not all gone. With clenched fists, and locked jaw, and beaded brow, he fought his weakness, while the good bishop sat with his head on his hand, and closed eyes, praying for a brother in the valley of despair. When he opened his eyes, it was as though his prayer was heard; for Robert Carlton was bearing himself with a new bravery; and the incongruous unquenched fires, which had caused surprise at the outset of the interview, burnt brightly as before in the younger eyes. The old man met them with a sad, grave scrutiny. But the lines of his mouth remained relaxed. And, when he spoke again, his voice was very gentle.

"You may think that I have put you to unnecessary pain," he said, "when I give you fair warning that your case must form the subject of further proceedings in another place. But I had heard that your conduct was indefensible, root and branch, from beginning to end. Of that I am now able to form my own opinion. Yet my individual opinion can make no difference in the result, since absolute deprivation I had never contemplated in your case, and it is only the extreme penalty which rests with me. On the other hand, it will be my duty to set the ecclesiastical law in motion; and the ecclesiastical law must take its course. I take it that you do not propose to defend your case?"

A grim light flickered for an instant in Robert Carlton's eyes. "Have I defended it hitherto, my lord?"

"Then there can only be one result; and you must make up your mind, as you have doubtless already done, to suspension for a term of years. If word of mine can lessen that term, it shall be spoken in your favour, both out of consideration of the great work that you were doing, and have done, and in view of certain circumstances which our conversation has brought to light."

"But can you want me back in the Church?" cried Carlton; and his heart beat high with the question; but turned heavier than before in the interval of prudent deliberation which preceded any answer.

"I would punish no man beyond the letter of the law," declared the bishop at length, "even if it were in my power to do so. The Act debars suspended clergymen from all exercise of their divine calling and from all pecuniary enjoyment of their benefice until the term of such suspension is up. I would not, if I could, prolong the period of disability by throwing further let or hindrance in the way of an erring brother who repents him truly of his sin. I would rather say, 'Come back to your work, live down the past, and, by your example in the years that may be left you, pluck up the tares that your bad example has surely sown. Retrieve all but the irretrievable. Undo what you can.'"

Carlton's eyes melted in gratitude too great for speech, but plain as the benediction which his trembling lips left eloquently unsaid.

"That," continued the bishop, "is what I should say to you – because I think we understood each other. You have not sought to palliate your offence; nor are you the man to misconstrue the little I may have said concerning the offence itself. What is there to be said? You know well enough that I lament it as I lament its mournful result, and deplore it as I deplore the blot on the whole body of Christ's Church militant here on earth. You have committed a great sin, against humanity, against God, and against your Church; yet he would commit a greater who sought on that account to hound you from that Church for ever. Courage, brother! Pray without ceasing. Look forward, not back; and do not despair. Despair is the devil's best friend; better give way to deadly sin than to deadlier despair! Remember that you have done good work for God in days gone by; and live for that brighter day when you have purged your sin, and may be worthy to work for Him again."

"And meanwhile?" whispered Carlton, for fear of shouting it in his passionate anxiety. "Is there nothing I may do meanwhile – among my own poor people – before the tares come up?"

"If you are suspended you will be unable to hold any service; and I hardly think you will care to go among your parishioners while that is so."

"But I shall not be forbidden my own parish?"

"Not forbidden."

"Nor my rectory?"

"No; so far as I am aware, at least, you retain your right to reside there; but I can hardly think that it would be expedient."

"And the church! They must have their church back again. Who is going to rebuild it for them?"

Carlton was on his feet in the last excitement. The bishop regarded him with puzzled eyebrows.

"I have heard nothing on that subject as yet; it is a little early, is it not? But I have no doubt that it will be a matter for subscription among themselves."

"Among my poor people?"

"With substantial aid, I should hope, from men of substance in the neighbourhood."

"But why should they pay?" cried Carlton, impetuously. "The church was not burnt down for my neighbours' sins, nor for the sins of the parish, but for mine alone.. Oh, my lord, if I could but go back among my people, and be their servant, I who was too much their master before! I was not quite dependent – thank God, I had a little of my own – but every penny should be theirs!"

And the profligate priest stood upright before his bishop – his white hands clasped, his white face shining, his burning eyes moist – zealot and suppliant in one.

"You desire to spend your income – "

"No, no, my capital!"

"On the poor of your parish? I – I fail to understand."