‘Might I, perhaps, venture to beg, just this
one night——’
That chastened and entreating look it was hard to
resist. But somehow the whole thing seemed to
Lake to say, ’Do allow me this once to prescribe;
do give your poor soul this one chance,’ and
Lake answered him superciliously and irreverently.
’No, thank you, no—any prayers I
require I can manage for myself, thank you. Good-night.’
And he lighted a bed-room candle and left the room.
’What a beast that fellow is. I don’t
know why the d— I stay in his house.’
One reason was, perhaps, that it saved him nearly
a guinea a day, and he may have had some other little
reasons just then.
’Family prayers indeed! and such a pair of women—witches,
by Jove!—and that rascally groom, and a
hypocritical attorney! And the vulgar brute will
be as rich as Croesus, I dare say.’
Here soliloquised Stanley Lake in that gentleman’s
ordinary vein. His momentary disgust had restored
him for a few seconds to his normal self. But
certain anxieties of a rather ghastly kind, and speculations
as to what might be going on in London just then,
were round him again, like armed giants, in another
moment, and the riches or hypocrisy of his host were
no more to him than those of Overreach or Tartuffe.
IN WHICH CAPTAIN LAKE VISITS HIS SISTER’S SICK
BED.
I suspect there are very few mere hypocrites on earth.
Of course, I do not reckon those who are under compulsion
to affect purity of manners and a holy integrity of
heart—and there are such—but
those who volunteer an extraordinary profession of
holiness, being all the while conscious villains.
The Pharisees, even while devouring widows’ houses,
believed honestly in their own supreme righteousness.
I am afraid our friend Jos. Larkin wore a mask.
I am sure he often wore it when he was quite alone.
I don’t know indeed, that he ever took it off.
He was, perhaps, content to see it, even when he looked
in the glass, and had not a very distinct idea what
the underlying features might be. It answers
with the world; it almost answers with himself.
Pity it won’t do everywhere! ‘When
Moses went to speak with God,’ says the admirable
Hall, ’he pulled off his veil. It was good
reason he should present to God that face which he
had made. There had been more need of his veil
to hide the glorious face of God from him than to hide
his from God. Hypocrites are contrary to Moses.
He showed his worst to men, his best to God; they
show their best to men, their worst to God; but God
sees both their veil and their face, and I know not
whether He more hates their veil of dissimulation
or their face of wickedness.’
Captain Lake wanted rest—sleep—quiet
thoughts at all events. When he was alone he
was at once in a state of fever and gloom, and seemed
always watching for something. His strange eyes
glanced now this way, now that, with a fierce restlessness—now
to the window—now to the door—and
you would have said he was listening intently to some
indistinct and too distant conversation affecting
him vitally, there was such a look of fear and conjecture
always in his face.
