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 passed 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 passed. 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 assisting 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 assented 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 lust of his life-experience. And all the time
he was uneasily conscious that he himself was at fault, and they
wholesomer bits of God'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 God'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._
EVERETT'S NEW NOVELS
_By Popular Authors._
At all Libraries and Booksellers.
=THE GHOST.=
By Mrs. Campbell Praed.
=A ROUMANIAN VENDETTA.=
By "Carmen Sylva" (Queen of Roumania).
=A SON OF MARS.=
By Major Arthur Griffiths.
=BEFORE THE BRITISH RAJ.=
By Major Arthur Griffiths.
=THE GENTLEMEN FROM GOODWOOD.=
By Edward H. Cooper.
=THE MAN WHO DIED=
By G. B. Burgin.
=THE DAUGHTERS OF JOB.=
By "Darley Dale".
=THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT.=
By "Darley Dale".
=A SPORTING ADVENTURER.=
By Fox Russell.
=THE VIKING STRAIN.=
By A. G. Hales.
=THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A MAGISTRATE.=
By T. R. Threlfall, J.P.
=THE KINGS YARD.=
By Walter Jeffery.
=THE EXTRAORDINARY ISLANDERS.=
By Aston Forest.
=A FRONTIER OFFICER.=
By H. Caldwell Lipsett.
=MY JAPANESE WIFE.=
By Clive Holland.
=THE CHASE OF THE RUBY.=
By Richard Marsh.
=THE GOLD WHIP.=
By Nat Gould.
=IN FEAR OF MAN.=
By A. St. John Adcock.
=GOTTLIEB KRUMM: MADE IN ENGLAND.=
By George Darien.
Transcriber's Notes
Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_), and text in
bold is enclosed by equal signs (=bold=).
Text in small caps are replaced by either Title case or ALL CAPS,
depending on how the words were used.
The ads were moved from the front of the book to the end of the book.
Errors in punctuations were not corrected unless otherwise noted below:
On page 15, the [oe] ligature was replaced with "oe".
On page 51, a period was added after "by himself".
On page 171, the [oe] ligature was replaced with "oe".
End of Project Gutenberg's The Call of the Town, by John Alexander Hammerton