LITMIR.BIZ

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Through wind and storm unto thine ear

          Cry after cry doth run;

        And yet thou seemest not to hear,

          And only smilest on.

        When first thou earnest to the earth,

          All sounds of strife were still;

        A silence lay around thy birth,

          And thou didst sleep thy fill.

        Why sleep'st thou—nay, why weep'st thou not?

          Thy earth is woe-begone;

        Babies and mothers wail their lot,

          And still thou smilest on.

        I read thine eyes like holy book;

          No strife is pictured there;

        Upon thy face I see the look

          Of one who answers prayer.

        Ah, yes!—Thine eyes, beyond this wild,

          Behold God's will well done;

        Men's songs thine ears are hearing, child;

          And so thou smilest on.

        The prodigals arise and go,

          And God goes forth to meet;

        Thou seest them gather, weeping low,

          About the Father's feet.

        And for their brothers men must bear,

          Till all are homeward gone.

        O Eyes, ye see my answered prayer!

          Smile, Son of God, smile on.

      As soon as the vibrations of this song, I do not mean on the chords of the instrument, but in the echo-caves of our bosoms, had ceased, I turned to the doctor and said:

      "Are you ready with your story yet, Mr. Henry?"

      "Oh, dear no!" he answered—"not for days. I am not an idle man like you, Mr. Smith. I belong to the labouring class."

      I knew that he could not have it ready.

      "Well," I said, "if our friends have no objection, I will give you another myself next time."

      "Oh! thank you, uncle," said Adela.—"Another fairy tale, please."

      "I can't promise you another fairy-tale just yet, but I can promise you something equally absurd, if that will do."

      "Oh yes! Anything you like, uncle. I, for one, am sure to like what you like."

      "Thank you, my dear. Now I will go; for I see the doctor waiting to have a word with you."

      The company took their leave, and the doctor was not two minutes behind them; for as I went up to my room, after asking the curate when I might call upon him, I saw him come out of the drawing-room and go down stairs.

      "Monday evening, then," I had heard the colonel say, as he followed his guests to the hall.

      CHAPTER II.

      THE CURATE AND HIS WIFE

      As I approached the door of the little house in which the curate had so lately taken up his abode, he saw me from the window, and before I had had time to knock, he had opened the door.

      "Come in," he said. "I saw you coming. Come to my den, and we will have a pipe together."

      "I have brought some of my favourite cigars," I said, "and I want you to try them."

      "With all my heart."

      The room to which he led me was small, but disfigured with no offensive tidiness. Not a spot of wall was to be seen for books, and yet there were not many books after all. We sat for some minutes enjoying the fragrance of the western incense, without other communion than that of the clouds we were blowing, and what I gathered from the walls. For I am old enough, as I have already confessed, to be getting long-sighted, and I made use of the gift in reading the names of the curate's books, as I had read those of his brother's. They were mostly books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with a large admixture from the nineteenth, and more than the usual proportion of the German classics; though, strange to say, not a single volume of German Theology could I discover. The curate was the first to break the silence.

      "I find this a very painful cigar," he said, with a half laugh.

      "I am sorry you don't like it. Try another."

      "The cigar is magnificent."

      "Isn't it thoroughfare, then?"

      "Oh yes! the cigar's all right. I haven't smoked such a cigar for more than ten years; and that's the reason."

      "I wish I had known you seven years, Mr. Armstrong."

      "You have known me a hundred and seven."

      "Then I have a right to—"

      "Poke my fire as much as you please."

      And as Mr. Armstrong said so, he poked his own chest, to signify the symbolism of his words.

      "Then I should like to know something of your early history—something to account for the fact that a man like you, at your time of life, is only a curate."

      "I can do all that, and account for the pain your cigar gives me, in one and the same story."

      I sat full of expectation.

      "You won't find me long-winded, I hope."

      "No fear of that. Begin directly. I adjure you by our friendship of a hundred years."

      "My father was a clergyman before me; one of those simple-hearted men who think that to be good and kind is the first step towards doing God's work; but who are too modest, too ignorant, and sometimes too indolent to aspire to any second step, or even to inquire what the second step may be. The poor in his parish loved him and preyed upon him. He gave and gave, even after he had no more that he had a right to give.

      "He was not by any means a rich man, although he had a little property besides his benefice; but he managed to send me to Oxford. Inheriting, as I suspect, a little tendency to extravagance; having at least no love of money except for what it would bring; and seeing how easily money might be raised there for need true or false, I gradually learned to think less and less of the burdens grievous to be borne, which a subjection to Mammon will accumulate on the shoulders of the unsuspecting ass. I think the old man of the sea in Sindbad the Sailor, must personify debt. At least I have found reason to think so. At the same time I wish I had done nothing worse than run into debt. Yet by far the greater part of it was incurred for the sake of having works of art about me. Of course pictures were out of the question; but good engravings and casts were within the reach of a borrower. At least it was not for the sake of whip-handles and trowsers, that I fell into the clutches of Moses Melchizedek, for that was the name of the devil to whom I betrayed my soul for money. Emulation, however, mingled with the love of art; and I must confess too, that cigars costs me money as well as pictures; and as I have already hinted, there was worse behind. But some things we can only speak to God about.

      "I shall never forget the oily face of the villain—may God save him, and then he'll be no villain!—as he first hinted that he would lend me any money I might want, upon certain insignificant conditions, such as signing for a hundred and fifty, where I should receive only a hundred. The sunrise of the future glowed so golden, that it seemed to me the easiest thing in the world to pay my debts there. Here, there was what I wanted, cigars and all. There, there must be gold, else whence the hue? I could pay all my debts in the future, with the utmost ease. How was no matter. I borrowed and borrowed. I flattered myself, besides, that in the things I bought I held money's worth; which, in the main, would have been true, if I had been a dealer in such things; but a mere owner can seldom get the worth of what he possesses, especially when he cannot choose but sell, and has no choice of his market. So when, horrified at last with the filth of the refuge into which I had run to escape the bare walls of

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