The Old Helmet Volume II Part 28

"So there is a helmet of salvation for the poor Fijian as well as for the favoured people at home. Praise be to the Lord! Did I tell you, my dear friend, I was restless at the thought of sending letters home? Let me tell you now, I am happy; as happy as I could be in any place in the world; and I would not be in any other place, by my own choice, for all the things in the world. I need only to be made more holy. Just in proportion as I am that, I am happy and I am useful. I want to be perfectly holy. But there is the same way of trusting for the poor Fijian and for me; and I believe in that same precious blood I shall be made clean, even as they. I want to preach Christ a thousand times more than I do. I long to make his love known to these poor people. I rejoice in being here, where every minute may tell actively for him. My dear friend, when we get home, do what we will, we shall not think we have done enough.

"Our life here is full of curious contrasts. Within doors, what our old habits have stereotyped as propriety, is sadly trenched upon. Before the s.h.i.+p came, Mrs. Lefferts' stock of comfort in one line was reduced to a single tea-cup; and in other stores, the demands of the natives had caused us to run very short. You know it is only by payment of various useful articles that we secure any service done or purchase any native produce. Money is unknown. Fruit and vegetables, figs, fish, crabs, fowls, we buy with iron tools, pieces of calico, and the like; and if our supply of these gives out, we have to draw upon the store of things needed by ourselves; and blankets and hardware come to be minus.

Then, forgetting this, which it is easy to do, all the world without is a world of glorious beauty. How I wish I could shew it to you! These islands are of very various character, and many of them like the garden of Eden for natural loveliness; shewing almost every kind of scenery within a small area. Most of them are girdled more or less entirely by what is called a _barrier reef_--an outside and independent coral formation, sometimes narrow, sometimes miles in width, on the outer edge of which the sea breaks in an endless line of white foam. Within the reef the lagoon, as it is called, is perfectly still and clear; and such glories of the animal and vegetable world as lie beneath its surface I have no time to describe to you now. I have had little time to examine them; but once or twice I have taken a canoe and a piece of rest, gliding over this submarine garden, and rejoicing in the Lord who has made everything so beautiful in its time. My writing hour is over for to-day. I am going five or six miles to see a man who is said to be very ill.

"Feb. 16. The man had very little the matter with him. I had my walk for nothing, so far as my character of doctor or nurse was concerned.

"I will give you a little notion of the beauty of these islands, in the description of one that I visited a short time ago. It is one of our out-stations--too small to have a teacher given it; so it is visited from time to time by Mr. Lefferts and myself. With a fair wind the distance is hardly a day's journey; but sometimes as in this case it consumes two days. The voyage was made in a native canoe, manned by native sailors, some Christian, some heathen. They are good navigators, for savages; and need to be, for the character of the seas here, threaded with a network of coral reefs, makes navigation a delicate matter. Our voyage proceeded very well, until we got to the entrance of the island. That seems a strange sentence; but the island itself is a circle, nearly; a band of volcanic rock, not very wide, enclosing a lake or lagoon within its compa.s.s. There is only a rather narrow channel of entrance. Here we were met by difficulty. The surf breaking sh.o.r.ewards was tremendously high; and meeting and struggling with it came a rush of the current from within. Between the two opposing waters the canoe was tossed and swayed like a reed. It was, for a few moments, a scene to be remembered, and not a little terrific. The shoutings and exertions of the men, who felt the danger of their position, added to the roar and the power of the waters, which tossed us. .h.i.ther and thither as a thing of no consequence, made it a strange wild minute,--till we emerged from all that struggle and roar into the still beautiful quiet of the lagoon inside. Imagine it, surrounded with its border of rocky land covered with n.o.ble trees, and spotted with islets covered in like manner. The whole island is of volcanic formation, and its rocks are of black scoria. The theory is, I believe, that a volcano once occupied the whole centre of such islands; which sinking afterwards away left its place to the occupancy of a lake instead.

However produced, the effect is singular in its wild beauty. The soil of this island is poor for any purpose but growing timber; the inhabitants consequently are not many, and they live on roots and fish and what we should think still poorer food--a great wood maggot, which is found in plenty. There are but four villages, two of them Christian.

I staid there one night and the next day, giving them all I could; and it was a good time to me. The day after I returned home. O sweet gospel of Christ! which is lighting up these dark places; and O my blessed Master, who stands by his servants and gives them his own presence and love, when they are about his work and the world is far from them, and men would call them lonely. There is no loneliness where Christ is. I must finish this long letter with giving you the dying testimony of a Tongan preacher who has just gone to his home. He came here as a missionary from his own land, and has worked hard and successfully. He said to Mr. Calvert the day before his death, 'I have long _enjoyed_ religion and felt its _power_. In my former illness I was happy; but now I am greatly blessed. The Lord has come down with mighty power into my soul, and I feel the blessedness of _full rest of soul_ in G.o.d. I feel religion to be peculiarly sweet, and my rejoicing is great. I see more fully and clearly the truth of the word and Spirit of G.o.d, and the suitableness of the Saviour. The whole of Christianity I see as exceedingly excellent.'

"With this testimony I close, my dear friend. It is mine; I can ask no better for you than that it may be yours."

Mrs. Caxton ended her reading and looked at Eleanor. She had done that several times in the course of the reading. Eleanor was always bent over her work, and busily attentive to it; but on each cheek a spot of colour had been fixed and deepening, till now it had reached a broad flush. Silence fell as the reading ceased; Eleanor did not look up; Mrs. Caxton did not take her eyes from her niece's face. It was with a kind of subdued sigh that at last she turned from the table and put her papers away.

"Mr. Morrison is not altogether in the wrong," she remarked at length.

"It is better for a man in those far-off regions, and amidst so many labours and trials, to have the comfort of his own home."

"Do you think Mr. Rhys writes as if he felt the want?"

"It is hard to tell what a man wants, by his writing. I am not quite at rest on that point."

"How happened it that he did not marry, like everybody else, before going there?"

"He is a fastidious man," said Mrs. Caxton; "one of those men that are rather difficult to please, I fancy; and that are apt enough to meet with hindrances because of the very nice points of their own nature."

"I don't think you need wish any better for him, aunt Caxton, than to judge by his letters he has and enjoys as he is. He seems to me, and always did, a very enviable person."

"Can you tell why?"

"Good--happy--and useful," said Eleanor. But her voice was a little choked.

"You know grace is free," said Mrs. Caxton. "He would tell you so. Ring the bell, my dear. And a sinner saved in England is as precious as one saved in Fiji. Let us work where our place is, and thank the Lord!"

CHAPTER X.

IN NEWS.

"Speak, is't so?

If it be so, you have wound a goodly clue; If it be not, forswear't: howe'er, I charge thee, As heaven shall work in me for thine avail, To tell me truly."

Mr. Morrison's visit had drifted off into the distance of time; and the subject of South Sea missions had pa.s.sed out of sight, for all that appeared. Mrs. Caxton did not bring it up again after that evening, and Eleanor did not. The household went on with its quiet ways. Perhaps Mrs. Caxton was a trifle more silent and ruminative, and Eleanor more persistently busy. She had been used to be busy; in these weeks she seemed to have forgotten how to rest. She looked tired accordingly sometimes; and Mrs. Caxton noticed it.

"What became of your bill, Eleanor?" she said suddenly one evening.

They had both been sitting at work some time without a word.

"My bill, ma'am? What do you mean, aunt Caxton?"

"Your Ragged school bill."

"It reached its second reading, ma'am; and there it met with opposition."

"And fell through?"

"I suppose so--for the present. Its time will come, I hope; the time for its essential provisions, I mean."

"Do you think Mr. Carlisle could have secured its pa.s.sage?"

"From what I know and have heard of him, I have no doubt he could."

"His love is not very generous," remarked Mrs. Caxton.

"It never was, aunt Caxton. After I left London I had little hope of my bill. I am not disappointed."

"My dear, are you weary to-night?"

"No ma'am! not particularly."

"I shall have to find some play-work for you to do. Your voice speaks something like weariness."

"I do not feel it, aunt Caxton."

"Eleanor, have you any regret for any part of your decision and action with respect to Mr. Carlisle?"

"Never, aunt Caxton. How can you ask me?"

"I did not know but you might feel weariness now at your long stay in Pla.s.sy and the prospect of a continued life here."

Eleanor put down her work, came to Mrs. Caxton, kneeled down and put her arms about her; kissing her with kisses that certainly carried conviction with them.

"It is the most wicked word I ever heard you say, aunt Caxton. I love Pla.s.sy beyond all places in the world, that I have ever been in. No part of my life has been so pleasant as the part spent here. If I am weary, I sometimes feel as if my life were singularly cut off from its natural duties and stranded somehow, all alone; but that is an unbelieving thought, and I do not give it harbour at all. I am very content--very happy."

Mrs. Caxton brought her hand tenderly down the side of the smooth cheek before her, and her eyes grew somewhat misty. But that was a rare occurrence, and the exhibition of it immediately dismissed. She kissed Eleanor and returned to her ordinary manner.

"Talking about stranded lives," she said; "to take another subject, you must forgive me for that one, dear--I think of Mr. Rhys very often."

"His life is not stranded," said Eleanor; "it is under full sail."

"He is alone, though."

"I do not believe he feels alone, aunt Caxton."

"I do not know," said Mrs. Caxton. "A man of a sensitive nature must feel, I should think, in his circ.u.mstances, that he has put an immense distance between himself and all whom he loves."