The Call of the Town Part 24

"Father, a terrible thing has happened. My friend Mr. Grant is dead."

Edward John pursed his mouth to whistle in token of blank surprise, but the scared look on Henry's face stayed him in the act, and he said "Well, well!" instead.

"'Ow did it happen? Run over?"

An accident was about the only means of death to people under seventy that was known in Hampton, if we except consumption.

"Listen to this, father; it's dreadful!"

And Henry re-read the paragraph, turning also to the news columns, where the information was supplemented by the statement of a servant to the effect that the novelist had been heard playing his 'cello late in the night, and had stopped suddenly in the middle of a bar.

"Well, well," said Edward John, "that beats all! Poor fellow, and me went up to Brum to get some things all on account of 'im."

CHAPTER XXIV

ONE SUNDAY, AND AFTER

SUNDAY morning came sweet with the soft breath of golden autumn, and Henry awoke with the breeze whispering through his open window, "Adrian Grant is dead." For a moment it seemed that nothing else mattered, and in a moment more the need to wash and dress dispelled that gloomy thought.

"Poor Grant!" said Henry to himself, as he soused his face at the wash-stand. "Poor Grant! I wonder what he thinks of life and death to-day?" All the cynical utterances of the dead man crowded back on the memory of the living. His contempt of the spiritual life, his jaundiced views of humanity. It was terrible to think of a gifted man dying with such cold thoughts in his mind. The mysterious nature of the death also troubled Henry, and his knowledge of the man led him to suspect the use of some drug.

But these thoughts and speculations were suppressed, if not banished, by the pleasant routine of the rural morning and the going to morning church. Henry found himself searching anxiously with his eyes for Eunice Lyndon, and he was disappointed not to see her there. She was absent owing to household duties, and a pressing visit to be made to a sick member of Mr. Needham's flock.

At the close of the service the vicar announced that his farewell sermon would be delivered in the evening, and extended a fatherly invitation to his parishioners to come and hear his last words to them.

When the clang of the evening bell shook the drowsy air of the village, it evoked an unusual response. Many a wheezing veteran and worn old woman toiled their way up the hill. Never before was the little church so full as on that peaceful autumn evening.

The entire Charles family was present, Henry sitting next to his mother; and as he looked round upon that homely congregation, nearly every face in which was familiar to him, the emotions of his boyhood stirred within him again, and he felt as if all he had pa.s.sed through since then was as a troubled dream.

The slanting rays of the setting sun streamed through the western windows as Mr. Needham slowly mounted the pulpit. Every eye was raised to him as he stood there with his open Bible in his hand. What would he say? What would be his last words to them? They were these:

"I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness."

In coughless silence, with those listening eyes fixed upon him, the vicar began his discourse, making a brave attempt to preserve his outward calm. He dwelt upon the career of St. Paul; followed him in his wanderings, his perils of waters, his perils in the wilderness, and many trials and sufferings through which he had pa.s.sed. And now, in a dungeon at Rome, with a cruel death awaiting him, as he looked back on it all the triumphant note broke from him: "I have fought the good fight."

From that the vicar turned to the career of another: a great poet, one who had all the world could offer, and who had drunk so deeply of the pleasures of life that his soul was satiated with them--Lord Byron. And when at the last, a stranger in a strange land, away from friends and kindred, he took up his pen to write, the last words which he gave to the world were these:

"My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker, and the grief Are mine alone!"

The vicar paused; and then, with simple, touching earnestness, added:

"Which, my brethren will be yours at the last--'the worm, the canker, and the grief,' or the crown of righteousness that fadeth not away?"

Eyes were moist, and hearts throbbed unusually among the simple-minded village folk as they filed out, but little was said; they felt they had been a.s.sisting at one of the solemn mysteries of the church, and no dubious composition, no grandiloquence of the vicar's came between them and the heart-cry of the old man.

Edward John broke the silence in which his little group walked homeward by saying: "There's a deal of truth in what the vicar said about _vanitas vanitatium_, 'Enry. Seems to me there ain't nothing much worth having in this world unless we're keepin' in mind the world that is to come."

"That is so, father," Henry a.s.sented shortly; for his mind was full of new and comforting thoughts, and his heart suffused with a tenderness he could not speak.

A great love for his father had been budding steadily when he fancied most it was withering, and it had burst almost at once into full bloom.

To Mr. Needham also his point of view was suddenly and for ever changed.

Both his father and the vicar had been objects of his youthful admiration; but when there came the illuminating knowledge of the world and the intimate contact with life which journalism brings to its young professors--as they in their fond hearts fancy--both figures began to recede into the background, in common with others that had once been cherished; for, unwillingly it may have been, but still actually, the cynic which is in us all was raised up in Henry by the touch of a master cynic.

Frankly, he had been dangerously near the condition of a "superior person"--of all human states the most contemptible. His father's ignorant ways, the vicar's little affectations of learning, his mother's curl-papers, his sisters' dowdiness of dress--these were the things that caused them to recede to the background of the young man's mind when the young man was in the first l.u.s.t of his life-experience. And all the time he was uneasily conscious that he himself was at fault, and they wholesomer bits of G.o.d's handiwork than he.

But the tragic ending of the disturber of his mind, the almost certainty of the cause, was a crushing commentary on all the philosophy which Adrian Grant had preached. Art for the sake of art, and a dose of poison when you take the fancy to be rid of your responsibilities. That was how Henry's experience of the novelist summed itself up in his mind after Mr. Needham's artless little human sermon. The vicar might be a hide-bound thinker, a mere echo of ages of hide-bound Bible interpreters, but he was a better and a bigger man than he who went out with his 'cello between his knees, thought Henry. Oh, all this prattle of those who were devoted to the arts! How futile it sounded when, as with a new revelation, the young man saw and loved at sight the good, rude health of his father and his sisters, living as bits of Nature, and standing not up to rail at Fate, but without whimpering playing their tiny parts in the drama of life.

"But all need not be vanity, don't you think, Mr. Needham?" said Henry, when he called on the vicar next day. "All isn't vanity, I now feel sure, if we can keep green a simple faith in G.o.d's goodness to us; and surely if we only attempt to model our conduct on the life of Jesus we shall be in the way of spiritual happiness."

"My boy, you have got the drift of what I said. There's nothing in life to place above that. Surely to do these things is to fight the good fight, and learning or want of it matters nothing. All the learning, so far as I can see, brings one only to the starting-place of ignorance when we face the Eternal. Hold fast by that belief, and all will be well. Let your motto be _Servabo fidem_, or as the French hath it, _Gardez la foi_."

Henry did not smile even in his mind at the Latin and French tags. He could now accept and almost welcome these little foibles for the sake of the sheltered life the old man had led, and the white flower of simple faith which had blossomed in the garden of his soul.

"Yes, Mr. Needham, I'm not the first who went to gather wisdom, and came back empty-handed to find it at my own door."

"Nor the last, Henry; nor the last."

Mr. Needham was not the only one at the vicarage whom Henry went to see, and during the remainder of his holiday his visits were remarkably frequent. Henry's new interest in the vicar seemed extraordinary to Edward John, though it rejoiced hearts at the Post Office in a way the postmaster did not then suspect.

Eunice was lovelier than ever, but with the first charm of loveliness to Henry, who had at length discovered that she had violet eyes, and was quite the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen.

"How blind I must have been!" said he to himself.

How blind!--nay, he had only been focussing his gaze on things so far off and vain, that the things near at hand and to be cherished he had overlooked. He had been peering at the mysteries of the heavens through a telescope, and trampling the while on the loveliness of earth. But at last with the naked eye of his heart he saw all things in a truer perspective--a heart refreshed with the re-entry of its old first, simple faith.

"That book" was never finished. Henry read over what he had written, and had the courage to destroy it, convinced that it was gloomy and unhappy.

Eunice probably had something to do with that; for he found her ardent in praise of those who wrote happy books. And when he was in the train for Fleet Street once again it was with a great contentment in his soul, and high hope of doing zestfully his daily task; for he had found that not only wisdom, but love, often lies at our own door if we but open our eyes--and our heart.

THE END

_Printed by Cowan & Co., Limited, Perth._

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