He looked up at her and smiled, an affectionate, very expressive, wistful smile.

'Can it not, mother? What mean Christ's words here,--"Whosoever doth not _take up his cross_ and follow me, he cannot be my disciple"? The cross meant shame, torture, and death, in those days; and I think in a modified way, it means the same thing now. It means something.'

'But Mr. Pitt, you do not answer my argument,' Miss Frere repeated. 'If this view is correct, how comes it that n.o.body takes it but you?'

'Your argument is where the dew is after a hot sun,--nowhere. Instead of n.o.body taking this view, it has been held by hundreds of thousands, who, like the first disciples, _have_ forsaken all and followed Him.

Rather than be false to it they have endured the loss of all things, they have given up father and mother, they have borne torture and faced the lions. In later days, they have been chased and worried from hiding-place to hiding-place, they have been cut down by the sword, buried alive, thrown from the tops of rocks, and burned at the stake.

And in peacefuller times they have left their homes and countries and gone to the ends of the earth to tell the gospel. They have done what was given them to do, without regarding the cost of it.'

'Then you think all the people who fill our churches are no Christians!'

'I say nothing about the people who fill our churches.'

Pitt rose here.

'But, Mr. Dallas, how can all the world be so mistaken? Our clergymen, our bishops, do not preach such doctrine as you do, if I understand you.'

'That has been a great puzzle to me,' he said.

'Is it not enough to make you doubt?'

'Can I question the words I have read to you?'

'No, but perhaps your interpretation of them.'

'When you have got down to the simplest possible English, there is no room that I see for interpretation. "Follow me" can mean nothing but "follow me;" and "forsaking all" is not a doubtful expression.'

The discussion would probably have gone on still further, but the elder Dallas's step was heard in the house, and Pitt went away with his book.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

_A STAND_.

Mrs. Dallas was very deeply disturbed. She saw in these strange views of Pitt's all sorts of possible dangers to what she had hoped would be his future career in life. Even granting that they were a youthful folly and would pa.s.s away, how soon would they pa.s.s away? and in the meantime what chances Pitt might lose, what time might be wasted, what fatal damage his prospects might suffer! And Pitt held a thing so fast when he had once taken it up. Almost her only hope lay in Betty's influence.

Betty herself was disturbed, much more than she cared to have known. If _this_ fascination got hold of Pitt, she knew very well he would, for the time at least, be open to no other. Her ordinary power would be gone; he would see in her nothing but a talking machine with whom he could discuss things. It was not speculation merely that busied his thoughts now, she could see; not mere philosophy, or study of human nature; Pitt was carrying all these Bible words in upon himself, comparing them with himself, and working away at the discrepancy.

Something that he called conscience was engaged, and restless. Betty saw that there was but one thing left for her to do. Diversion was not possible; she could not hope to turn Pitt aside from his quest after truth; she must seem to take part in it, and so gain her advantage from what threatened to be her discomfiture.

The result of all which was, that after this there came to be a great deal of talk between the two upon Bible subjects, intermingled with not a little reading aloud from the Bible itself. This was at Betty's instance, rather than Pitt's. When she could she got him out for a walk or a drive; in the house (and truly, often out of the house too) she threw herself with great apparent interest into the study of the questions that had been started, along with others collateral, and desired to learn and desired to discuss all that could be known about them. So there were, as I said, continual Bible readings, mingled occasionally with references to some old commentary; and Betty and Pitt sat very near together, looking over the same page; and remained long in talk, looking eagerly into one another's eyes. Mrs. Dallas was not satisfied.

She came upon Betty one day in the verandah, just after Pitt had left her. The young lady was sitting with her hand between the leaves of a Bible, and a disturbed, far-away look in her eyes, which might have been the questioning of a troubled conscience, or--of a very different feeling. She roused up as Mrs. Dallas came to her, and put on a somewhat wan smile.

'Where is Pitt?'

'Going to ride somewhere, I believe.'

'What have you got there? the Bible again? I don't believe in all this Bible reading! Can't you get him off it?'

'It is the only thing to do now.'

'But cannot you get him off it?'

'Not immediately. Mr. Dallas takes a fancy hard.'

'So unlike him!' the mother went on. 'So unlike all he used to be. He always took things "hard," as you say; but then it used to be science and study of history, and collecting of natural curiosities, and drawing. Have you seen any of Pitt's drawings? He has a genius for that. Indeed, I think he has a genius for everything,' Mrs. Dallas said with a sigh; 'and he used to be keen for distinguishing himself, and he did distinguish himself everywhere, always; here at school and at college, and then at Oxford. My dear, he distinguished himself at _Oxford_. He was always a good boy, but not in the least foolish, or superst.i.tious, or the least inclined to be fanatical. And now, as far as I can make out, he is for giving up everything!'

'He does nothing by halves.'

'No; but it is very hard, now when he is just reading law and getting ready to take his place in the world--and he would take no mean place in the world, Betty--it is hard! Why, he talks as if he would throw everything up. I never would have thought it of Pitt, of all people. It is due, I am convinced, to the influence of those dissenting friends of his!'

'Who are they?' Miss Betty asked curiously.

'You have heard the name,' said Mrs. Dallas, lowering her voice, though Pitt was not within hearing. 'They used to live here. It was a Colonel Gainsborough--English, but of a dissenting persuasion. That kind of thing seems to be infectious.'

'He must have been a remarkable man, if his influence could begin so early and last so long.'

'Well, it was not just that only. There was a daughter'--

'And a love affair?' asked Miss Betty, with a slight laugh which covered a sudden down-sinking of her heart.

'Oh dear no! she was a child; there was no thought of such a thing. But Pitt was fond of her, and used to go roaming about the fields with her after flowers. My son is a botanist; I don't know if you have found it out.'

'And those were the people he went to New York to seek?'

'Yes, and could not find--most happily.'

Miss Betty mused. Certainly Pitt was 'persistent.' And now he had got this religious idea in his head, would there be any managing it, or him? It did not frighten Miss Betty, so far as the religious idea itself was concerned; she reflected sagely that a man might be worse things than philanthropic, or even than pious. She had seen wives made unhappy by neglect, and others made miserable by the dissipated habits or the ungoverned tempers of their husbands; a man need not be unendurable because he was true and thoughtful and conscientious, or even devout. She could bear that, quite easily; the only thing was, that in thoughts which possessed Pitt lately he had pa.s.sed out of her influence; beyond her reach. All she could do was to follow him into this new and very unwonted sphere, and seem to be as earnest as he was.

He met her, he reasoned with her, he read to her, but Betty did not feel sure that she got any nearer to him, nevertheless. She was shrewd enough to divine the reason.

'Mr. Pitt,' she said frankly to him one day, when the talk had been eager in the same line it had taken that first day on the verandah, and both parties had held the same respective positions with regard to each other,--'Mr. Pitt, are you fighting me, or yourself?'

He paused and looked at her, and half laughed.

'You are right,' said he. And then he went off, and for the present that was all Miss Betty gained by her motion.

n.o.body saw much of Pitt during the rest of the day. The next morning, after breakfast, he came out to the two ladies where as usual they were sitting at work. It was another September day of sultry heat, yet the verandah was also in the morning a pleasant place, sweet with the honeysuckle fragrance still lingering, and traversed by a faint intermittent breeze. Both ladies raised their heads to look at the young man as he came towards them, and then, struck by something in his face, could not take their eyes away. He came straight to his mother and stood there in front of her, looking down and meeting her look; Miss Frere could not see how, but evidently it troubled Mrs. Dallas.

'What is it now, Pitt?' she asked.

'I have come to tell you, mother. I have come to tell you that I have given up fighting.'

'Fighting!?'

'Yes. The battle is won, and I have lost, and gained. I have given up fighting, mother, and I am Christ's free man.'