I took home the diary; but several days elapsed before I had courage to open it. Let the words I read there be as secret as the misery which dictated them. I had broken my mother's heart!--no! I had not!--The infernal superstition which taught her to fancy that Heaven's love was narrower than her own--that God could hate his creature, not for its sins, but for the very nature which he had given it--that, that had killed her.
And I remarked too, with a gleam of hope, that in several places where sunshine seemed ready to break through the black cloud of fanatic gloom--where she seemed inclined not merely to melt towards me (for there was, in every page, an under-current of love deeper than death, and stronger than the grave), but also to dare to trust God on my behalf--whole lines carefully erased page after page torn out, evidently long after the MSS. were written. I believe, to this day, that either my poor sister or her father-confessor was the perpetrator of that act. The _fraus pia_ is not yet extinct; and it is as inconvenient now as it was in popish times, to tell the whole truth about saints, when they dare to say or do things which will not quite fit into the formulæ of their sect.
But what was to become of Susan? Though my uncle continued to her the allowance which he had made to my mother, yet I was her natural protector--and she was my only tie upon earth. Was I to lose her, too? Might we not, after all, be happy together, in some little hole in Chelsea, like Elia and his Bridget? That question was solved for me. She declined my offers; saying, that she could not live with any one whose religious opinions differed from her own, and that she had already engaged a room at the house of a Christian friend; and was shortly to be united to that dear man of God, Mr. Wigginton, who was to be removed to the work of the Lord in Manchester.
I knew the scoundrel, but it would have been impossible for me to undeceive her. Perhaps he was only a scoundrel--perhaps he would not ill-treat her. And yet--my own little Susan! my play-fellow! my only tie on earth!--to lose her--and not only her, but her respect, her love!--And my spirit, deep enough already, sank deeper still into sadness; and I felt myself alone on earth, and clung to Mackaye as to a father--and a father indeed that old man was to me.