The Pillars of the House Part 28

'Is it really what makes you go and slave away at that old boss's of yours?'

'Why, that's necessity and my duty,' said Felix.

'And is it what makes this little c.o.o.n come and spend all his play- hours on a poor fellow with a broken leg? I've been at many schools, and never saw the fellow who would do that.'

'Oh! you are such fun!' cried Lance.

'All that is right comes from G.o.d first and last,' said Felix gravely.

'And you--you that are no child--you believe all that Lance tells me you do, and think it makes you what you are!'

'I believe it; yes, of course. And believing it should make me much better than I am! I hope it will in time.'

'Ah!' sighed Fernando. 'I never heard anything like it since my father said he'd take the cow-hide to poor old Diego, if he caught him teaching me n.i.g.g.e.r-cant.'

They left him.

'Poor fellow!' sighed Felix; 'what have you been telling him, Lance?'

'Oh, I don't know; only why things were good and bad,' was Lance's lucid answer; and he was then intent on detailing the stories he had heard from Fernando. He had been in the worst days of Southern slavery ere its extinction, on the skirts of the deadly warfare with the Red Indians; and the poor lad had really known of horrors that curdled the blood of Wilmet and Geraldine, and made the latter lie awake or dream dreadful dreams all night.

But the next day Mr. Audley was startled to hear the two friends in the midst of an altercation. When Lance had come in for his mid-day recreation, Fernando had produced five shillings, desiring him to go and purchase a Bible for him; but Lance, who had conceived the idea that the Scriptures ought not to be touched by an unchristened hand, flatly refused, offering, however, to read from his own. Now Lance's reading was at that peculiar school-boy stage which seems calculated to combine the utmost possible noise with the least possible distinctness; and though he had good gifts of ear and voice, and his reciting and singing were both above the average, the moment a book was before him, he roared his sentences between his teeth in horrible monotony. And as he began with the first chapter of St. Matthew, and was not perfectly able to cope with all the names, Fernando could bear it no longer, and insisted on having the book itself. Lance shook his head and refused; and matters were in this stage when Mr.

Audley, not liking the echoes of the voices, opened the door. 'What is it?' he asked anxiously.

'Nothing,' replied Fernando, proudly trying to swallow his vexation.

'Lance!' said Mr. Audley rather severely; but just then, seeing what book the child was holding tight under his arm, he decided to follow him out of the room and interrogate.

'What was it, Lance?'

'He ought not to touch a Bible--he sha'n't have mine,' said Lance resentfully.

'Was he doing anything wrong with it?'

'Oh no! But he ought not to have it before he is christened, and I would have read to him.'

Mr. Audley knew what Lance's reading was, and smiled.

'Was that all, Lance? I like your guardianship of the Bible, my boy; but it was not given only to those who are Christians already, or how could any one learn?'

'He sha'n't touch mine, though,' said Lance, with an odd st.u.r.diness; stumping upstairs with his treasure, a little brown sixpenny S. P. C.

K. book, but in which his father had written his name on his last birthday but one.

Mr. Audley only waited to take down a New Testament, and present himself at Fernando's bedside, observing gladly that there was much more wistfulness than offence about his expression.

'It was a scruple on the young man's part,' said Mr. Audley, smiling, though full of anxiety; 'he meant no unkindness.'

'I know he did not,' said Fernando quietly, but gazing at the purple book in the clergyman's hands.

'Did you want this?' said Mr. Audley; 'or can I find anything in it for you?'

'Thank you;' and there was a pause. The offended manner towards Mr.

Audley had been subsiding of late into friendliness under his constant attentions, and Fernando's desire for an answer prevailed at last. 'Felix told me to read the Life of Christ,' he said, not irreverently, 'and that it would show me He must be True.'

'I hope and trust that so it may be,' said Mr. Audley, more moved than he could bear to show, but with fervour in his voice far beyond his words.

'Felix,' said Fernando, resting on the name, 'Felix does seem as if he must be right, Mr. Audley; can it be really as he says--and Lance- --that their belief makes them like what they are?'

'Most a.s.suredly.'

'And you don't say so only because you are a minister?' asked the boy distrustfully.

'I say so because I know it. I knew that it is the Christian faith that makes all goodness, long before I was a minister.'

'But I have seen plenty of Christians that were not in the least like Felix Underwood.'

'So have I; but in proportion as they live up to their faith, they have what is best in him.'

'I should like to be like him,' mused Fernando; 'I never saw such a fellow. He, and little Lance too, seem to belong to something bright and strong, that seems inside and outside, and I can't lay hold of what it is.'

'One day you will, my dear boy,' said Mr. Audley. 'Let me try to help you.'

Fernando scarcely answered, save by half a smile, and a long sigh of relief: but when Mr. Audley put his hand over the long brown fingers, they closed upon it.

CHAPTER VII

THE CHESS-PLAYER'S BATTLE

'Dost thou believe, he said, that Grace Itself can reach this grief?

With a feeble voice and a woeful eye-- "Lord, I believe," was the sinner's reply, "Help Thou mine unbelief."'

SOUTHEY.

By the beginning of the Christmas holidays, Fernando Travis was able to lie on a couch in Mr. Audley's sitting-room. His recovery was even tardier than had been expected, partly from the shock, and partly from the want of vigour of the tropical const.i.tution: and he still seemed to be a great way from walking, though there was no reason to fear that the power would not return. His father wrote, preparing for a journey to Oregon, and seemed perfectly satisfied, and he was becoming very much at home with his host.

He was much interested in that which he was learning from Mr. Audley, and imbibing from the young Underwoods. The wandering life he had hitherto led, without any tenderness save from the poor old negro, without time to make friends, and often exposed to the perception of some of the darkest sides of human life, in the terrible lawlessness of the Mexican frontier, had hitherto made him dull, dreary, and indifferent, with little perception that there could be anything better; but first the kindness and then the faith he saw at Bexley, had awakened new perceptions and sensations. His whole soul was opening to perceive what the love of G.o.d and man might be; and the sense of a great void, and longing to have it satisfied, seemed to fill him with a constant craving for the revelation of that inner world, whose existence had just dawned upon him.

After a little hesitation, Mr. Audley decided on reading with Geraldine in his presence after he had come into the sitting-room, explaining to her how he thought it might be helpful. She did not much like it, but acquiesced: she used to hop in with her sweet smile, shy greeting, and hand extended to the invalid, who used to lie looking at her through his long eyelashes, and listening to her low voice reading or answering, as if she were no earthly creature; but the two were far too much in awe of one another to go any farther; and he got on much better with Wilmet, when she looked in on him now and then with cheery voice and good-natured care.

Then Fulbert and Robina came home; and the former was half suspicious, half jealous, of Lance's preoccupation with what he chose to denominate 'a black Yankee n.i.g.g.e.r.' He avoided the room himself, and kept Lance from it as much as was in his power; and one day Lance appeared with a black eye, of which he concealed the cause so entirely, that Felix, always afraid of his gamin tendencies, entreated Fulbert, as a friend, to ease his mind by telling him it was not given in a street row.

'I did it,' said Fulbert; 'he was so c.o.c.ky about his Yankee that I could not stand it.'

'Why shouldn't he be kind to a poor sick fellow?'