Page:Artabanzanus (Ferrar, 1896).djvu/285

Rh I anticipated with delight my approaching re-union with my family and friends. Doctor Julius seemed to be tired, and oppressed with some kind of gloomy apprehension. The wanderings of his eyes from one object to another, on the earth and in the sky, were incessant. He had promised to tell me some of Helen's history, but gave no indication now of remembering his promise. I could not ask him to mention her name. He had not brought his pipe with him out of the lower regions, and had made no allusion to his habit of smoking. Now, however, he asked me if I had a pipe, and on my offering him my pocket meerschaum, he lit it and commenced:

'If Helen,' said he with a sad smile, 'should come to me now, as indeed I expect she will, she will not be pleased, I shall smell of tobacco; yet what would poor Roman Catholic priests be without their pipes? What was tobacco given to us for? What were brandy, rum, gin, and wine given to us for, with which so many thousands of people ruin themselves? Did God give them to us, who gave us wheat and sheep and flowers; or did the prince of wickedness, from whom we have made our escape, who gave us nettles, serpents, and prussic acid, give them to us?'

'We cannot answer such questions, sir,' I replied, 'and it is useless to ask them. You spoke of Helen just now, and you promised——'

'Yes, I know; I promised to tell you more about her, and I will keep my word, but I have not brought my papers with me, and my memory is, I fear, but as a broken reed. Helen's history must be a short one, for we have but little time now to dwell upon it. You will hardly find anything in it to amuse you, though something, perhaps, to excite your sympathy and pity.

'My father was the proprietor of some two or three hundred acres of land, in the beautiful county of Devon.