‘Oh! Charley, Charley, that was too bad!’
‘I knew it, Wilfrid, and yet I did it! But if your father had made a downright coward of you, afraid to speak the truth, or show what you were thinking, you also might find that, when anger gave you a fictitious courage, you could not help breaking out. It’s only another form of cowardice, I know; and I am as much ashamed of it as you could wish me to be.’
‘No. Where’s the use? He never would understand me. He knows no more of the condition of my mind than he does of the other side of the moon. If I offered such, he would put aside all apology for my behaviour to him--repudiating himself, and telling me it was the wrath of an offended God, not of an earthly parent, I had to deprecate. If I told him I had only spoken against his false God--how far would that go to mend the matter, do you think?’
‘Not far, I must allow. But I am very sorry.’
‘I wouldn’t care if I could be sure of anything--or even sure that, if I were sure, I shouldn’t be mistaken.’
‘I’m afraid you’re very morbid, Charley.’
‘Perhaps. But you cannot deny that my father is sure of things that you believe utterly false.’
‘I suspect, however, that, if we were able to get a bird’s-eye view of his mind and all its workings, we should discover that what he called assurance was not the condition you would call such. You would find it was not the certainty you covet.’
‘I _have_ thought of that, and it is my only comfort. But I am sick of the whole subject. See that cloud! Isn’t it like Death on the pale horse? What fun it must be for the cherubs, on such a night as this, to go blowing the clouds into fantastic shapes with their trumpet cheeks!’
Assurance was ever what Charley wanted, and unhappily the sense of intellectual insecurity weakened his moral action.
Once more I reveal a haunting uneasiness in the expression of a hope that the ordered character of the conversation I have just set down may not render it incredible to my reader. I record the result alone. The talk itself was far more desultory, and in consequence of questions, objections, and explanations, divaricated much from the comparatively direct line I have endeavoured to give it here. In the hope of making my reader understand both Charley and myself, I have sought to make the winding and rough path straight and smooth.