As the youth uttered these words, with his usual impetuosity, his mother could only weep and tremble in her weak and nervous way; but his sisters exclaimed: "Go back to your old mill-life at Hillaton!"
"Yes, by the first train, to-morrow."
"Well!" they chorused, with a long breath, but as all language seemed inadequate they added nothing to their exclamation.
Mrs. Haldane slowly wiped her eyes, and said, "Egbert is excited now, and does not realize how we feel. After he has thought it all over quietly he will see things in a different light, and will perceive that he should take counsel from his mother rather than from a stranger" (with peculiar emphasis on this word). "If he really wishes to do his duty as a Christian man, he will see that the first and most sacred obligations resting on him are to us and not to others, even though they may be more angelic than we are. You promised last evening that it would be your life-effort to make amends for the wrongs you have inflicted upon us; and going back to your old, sordid life and vulgar associations would be a strange way of keeping this pledge. I suggest that we all retire to our rooms, and in the after part of the day we shall be calmer, and therefore more rational;" and the ladies quietly glided out, like black shadows. Indeed, they and their lives had become little more than attenuated shadows.
There is nothing which so thoroughly depletes and robs moral character of all substance--there is nothing which so effectually destroys all robust individuality--as the continuous asking of the question, "What will, people say?"
Poor Haldane went to his room, and paced it by the hour. He had learned thus early that the Christian life was not made up of sacred and beatific emotions, under the influence of which duty would become an easy, sun-illumined path.
He already was in sore perplexity as to what his duty was in this instance. Ought he not to devote himself to his mother and sisters, and hope that time would bring a healthful change in their morbid feeling? Surely what they asked would not seem hard in the world's estimation--a trip to Europe, and a life of luxurious ease and amusement--for society would agree with his mother, that he could be as good and Christian-like as he pleased in the meantime. The majority would say that if he could in part make amends by acquiescence in so reasonable a request, and one that promised so much of pleasure and advantage to himself, he ought certainly to yield.