Part 54 (2/2)
See now, this very hour, when I needed help--could I have contrived a more lovely annihilation of the monotony that threatened to invade my weary spirit, than this inroad of light in the person of my lady Clementina? Nor will he allow me to get over wearied with vain efforts. I do not think he will keep me here long, for I find I cannot do much for these children. They are but some of his many pagans--not yet quite ready to receive Christianity, I think-- not like children with some of the old seeds of the truth buried in them, that want to be turned up nearer to the light. This ministration I take to be more for my good than theirs--a little trial of faith and patience for me--a stony corner of the lovely valley of humiliation to cross. True, I might be happier where I could hear the larks, but I do not know that anywhere have I been more peaceful than in this little room, on which I see you so often cast round your eyes curiously--perhaps pitifully, my lady?”
”It is not at all a fit place for you,” said Clementina, with a touch of indignation.
”Softly, my lady----lest, without knowing it, your love should make you sin! Who set thee, I pray, for a guardian angel over my welfare? I could scarce have a lovelier--true! but where is thy brevet? No, my lady! it is a greater than thou that sets me the bounds of my habitation. Perhaps he may give me a palace one day.
If I might choose, it would be the things that belong to a cottage --the whiteness and the greenness and the sweet odours of cleanliness.
But the father has decreed for his children that they shall know the thing that is neither their ideal nor his. Who can imagine how in this respect things looked to our Lord when he came and found so little faith on the earth! But, perhaps, my lady, you would not pity my present condition so much, if you had seen the cottage in which I was born, and where my father and my mother loved each other, and died happier than on their wedding day. There I was happy too until their loving ambition decreed that I should be a scholar and a clergyman. Not before then did I ever know anything worthy of the name of trouble. A little cold and a little hunger at times, and not a little restlessness always was all. But then --ah then, my troubles began! Yet G.o.d, who bringeth light out of darkness, hath brought good even out of my weakness and presumption and half unconscious falsehood!--When do you go?”
”Tomorrow morning--as I purpose.”
”Then G.o.d be with thee. He is with thee, only my prayer is that thou mayest know it. He is with me and I know it. He does not find this chamber too mean or dingy or unclean to let me know him near me in it.”
”Tell me one thing before I go,” said Clementina: ”are we not commanded to bear each other's burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ? I read it today.”
”Then why ask me?”
”For another question: does not that involve the command to those who have burdens that they should allow others to bear them?”
”Surely, my lady. But I have no burden to let you bear.”
”Why should I have everything, and you nothing?--Answer me that?”
”My lady, I have millions more than you, for I have been gathering the crumbs under my master's table for thirty years.”
”You are a king,” answered Clementina. ”But a king needs a handmaiden somewhere in his house: that let me be in yours. No, I will be proud, and a.s.sert my rights. I am your daughter. If I am not, why am I here? Do you not remember telling me that the adoption of G.o.d meant a closer relation than any other fatherhood, even his own first fatherhood could signify? You cannot cast me off if you would. Why should you be poor when I am rich?--You are poor. You cannot deny it,” she concluded with a serious playfulness.
”I will not deny my privileges,” said the schoolmaster, with a smile such as might have acknowledged the possession of some exquisite and envied rarity.
”I believe,” insisted Clementina, ”you are just as poor as the apostle Paul when he sat down to make a tent--or as our Lord himself after he gave up carpentering.”
”You are wrong there, my lady. I am not so poor as they must often have been.”
”But I don't know how long I may be away, and you may fall ill, or--or--see some--some book you want very much, or--”
”I never do,” said the schoolmaster.
”What! never see a book you want to have?”
”No; not now. I have my Greek Testament, my Plato, and my Shakspere --and one or two little books besides, whose wisdom I have not yet quite exhausted.”
”I can't bear it!” cried Clementina, almost on the point of weeping.
”You will not let me near you. You put out an arm as long as the summer's and push me away from you. Let me be your servant.”
As she spoke, she rose, and walking softly up to him where he sat kneeled at his knees, and held out suppliantly a little bag of white silk, tied with crimson.
”Take it--father,” she said, hesitating, and bringing the word out with an effort; ”take your daughter's offering--a poor thing to show her love, but something to ease her heart.”
He took it, and weighed it up and down in his hand with an amused smile, but his eyes full of tears. It was heavy. He opened it. A chair was within his reach, he emptied it on the seat of it, and laughed with merry delight as its contents came tumbling out.
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