The Old Helmet Volume II Part 63

"Don't you do it!" said he smiling, seeing that Eleanor's eye was in earnest.

"Please let me! Do let me! You want them much more than I do, Rowland."

"Then you will have to let them stand; for they are just where I want them."

"But the shade of them is much more needed here."

"I could have had it. You need not disturb yourself. There is a whole stack of them lying under the shelves in your store-room."

"Why are they lying there?" said Eleanor in great surprise.

"I did not want them. I left them for you to dispose of."

"For me! Then I shall dispose some of them here."

"Not with my leave."

"May I not know why?" said Eleanor putting her hand in his to plead for it.

"I do not want to fare too much better than my brethren," he answered with a smile of infinite pleasantness at her. Eleanor's face shewed a sudden accession of intelligence.

"Then, Rowland, let us send the other jalousies to Mr. Balliol to shade his study--with all my heart; and you put up mine here. I did not think about that before. Will you do it?"

"There are plenty of them without taking yours, child."

"Then, O Rowland, why did you not do it before?"

"I have an objection to using other people's property--even for the benefit of my neighbours"--he said, with the provoking smile in the corners of his mouth.

"But it is yours now."

"Well, I make it over to you, to be offered and presented as it seems good to you, to brother Balliol, or to sister Balliol, for his use and behoof."

"Do you mean that I must do it?"

"If it is your pleasure."

"Then I will speak of it immediately."

"You can have an opportunity to-night. But Eleanor,--you must call her, sister Balliol."

"I can't, Rowland!"

Silence fell between the parties. Mr. Rhys's face was impenetrable.

Eleanor glanced at it and again glanced at it; got no help. Finally she laid her hand on his shoulder and spoke a little apprehensively.

"Rowland--are you serious?"

"Perfectly." So he was, outwardly.

"Do you think it matters really whether I call her one thing or another? If it were Mrs. Amos, I should not have the least difficulty.

I could call her sister Amos. What does it matter?"

"Why can't you use a Christian form of address with her as well as with me?"

"Do you consider it a matter of _principle?_"

"Only as it regards the feelings of the individual, in either case."

Mr. Rhys's mouth was looking very comical.

"Would she care, Rowland?"

"I should like to have you try," he said, getting up and arranging his papers to leave. And Eleanor saw he was not going to tell her any more.

"What is the opportunity you spoke of, Rowland?"

"This is our evening for being together--it has hardly been a Cla.s.s before this, we were so few; but we met to talk and think together, and usually considered some given subject. To-night it is, the 'glory to be revealed.'"

"That is what Mr. Amos and I used to do on board the schooner; and we had that subject too, just after we left Tonga. So we shall be ready."

"We ought to go there to tea; but I have to go over first to Nawaile; it will keep me till after tea-time. Do not wait for me, unless you choose."

Eleanor chose, and told him so. While he was gone she sat at the door of the house watching and thinking; thinking of him especially, and of things that his talk that afternoon had brought up. It was a pleasant hour or two. The sea-breeze fresh from the sea; the waving broad banana leaves; the sweet perfume of flowers, which were rarely profuse and beautiful in their garden; the beautiful southern sky of night, with the stars which Eleanor had learned to know as strangers coming over in the s.h.i.+p, and now loved as the companions of her new home. Stillness, and flapping of leaves, and sweet thoughts; until it was time to be expecting Mr. Rhys back again, and Eleanor made the tea, that he might at least not miss so much refreshment. She knew his step rods off, and long before she could see him; his cup was all ready for him when he stepped in. He drank it, looking at Eleanor over it; would stop for nothing else, and carried her off.

"I had a happy time," he said as they went through the plantations. "I have been to see an old man who lies there dying, or very near it. He has been a Christian two years. He is very glad to see me when I come, and ready to talk; but he will not talk with his neighbours. He says he wants to keep his thoughts fixed on G.o.d; and if he listened to these people they would talk to him of village affairs, and turn his mind off."

"Then, if you had a happy time, I suppose _he_ is happy?"

"He is happy. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace! Think of old Caesar, going to glory from the darkness of Fiji. He said to me to-night--'I am weak, and I am old; my time is come, but I am not afraid to die; through Jesus I feel courageous for death. Jesus is my Chief, and I wish to obey him: if he says I am yet to lie here, I will praise him; and if he says I am to go above to him, I will praise him. I do not wish to eat; his word is my food; I think on it, and lean entirely on Jesus.'--Do you know how good it is to be a missionary, Eleanor?"

They exchanged looks; that was all; they were at the door, and went in.

The party there were expecting and waiting for them, and it was more than a common welcome, Eleanor saw, that was given to them. She did not wonder at it. After exchanging warm greetings all round, she sat down; but Mr. Rhys began walking the floor. The rest were silent. There was a somewhat dim light from a lamp in the room; the windows and doors were open; the air, sweet with flowers and fresh from the sea, came in gently; the soft sounds of leaves and insects could be heard through the fall of Mr. Rhys's steps upon the matted floor. The hour had a strange charm to Eleanor.

Silence lasted, until Mr. Rhys interrupted it with kneeling down for prayer. Then followed one of those prayers, in which it always seemed to Eleanor as if somebody had taken her hand, who was leading her where she could almost look in at the gates of that city which Bunyan called the Celestial. Somewhere above earth it took her, and rapt her up as Milton's angel is said to have descended, upon a sunbeam. One came to earth again at the end of the prayer; but not without a remembrance of where one had been.

"Sister Balliol," said Mr. Rhys, "will you put us in mind concerning our subject this evening?"

"It is the glory to be revealed; and I find that it is a glory to be revealed in us," Mrs. Balliol made answer. "Sufferings come first. It is a glory that goes along with sufferings in the present life; but it is so much greater than the sufferings, that no comparison can be made of them. For my part, I do not think the glory would be half so much glory, if it were not for the sufferings going before."

"To suffer with Christ, and for him, that is glory now," said Mr. Rhys; "to have been so honoured will always be part of our joy. If any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but rather let him glorify G.o.d on this behalf. Those be tears that Christ's own hand will wipe off; and what glory will that be!"

"The word of G.o.d fails to express it," said Mr. Amos, "and calls it 'riches of glory.' Riches of glory, to be poured into vessels prepared to receive it. Surely, being such heirs, none of us has a right to call himself poor? we are heirs of an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and not subject to decadence or failure. We may well be content with our penny earnest in this life, who have such an estate coming in."

"I feel poor very often," said gentle Mrs. Amos; "and I suppose that must be my own fault; for the word says, 'Riches and honour are with me; yea, durable riches, and righteousness.'"

"Those are riches that none but the poor come into possession of," said Mr. Rhys. "The poor in spirit inherit the kingdom, and n.o.body else. It is our very emptiness, that fits us for receiving those unsearchable riches. But having those, sister Amos, it is no deprivation of this world's good things that would make you feel poor?"

"O no, indeed!" said Mrs. Amos. "I did not mean that sort of poor."