第70章

BOOT FOR BALE.

Mary St.John was the orphan daughter of an English clergyman, who had left her money enough to make her at least independent.Mrs.

Forsyth, hearing that her niece was left alone in the world, had concluded that her society would be a pleasure to herself and a relief to the housekeeping.Even before her father's death, Miss St.John, having met with a disappointment, and concluded herself dead to the world, had been looking about for some way of doing good.The prospect of retirement, therefore, and of being useful to her sick aunt, had drawn her northwards.

She was now about six-and-twenty, filled with two passions--one for justice, the other for music.Her griefs had not made her selfish, nor had her music degenerated into sentiment.The gentle style of the instruction she had received had never begotten a diseased self-consciousness; and if her religion lacked something of the intensity without which a character like hers could not be evenly balanced, its force was not spent on the combating of unholy doubts and selfish fears, but rose on the wings of her music in gentle thanksgiving.Tears had changed her bright-hued hopes into a dove-coloured submission, through which her mind was passing towards a rainbow dawn such as she had never dreamed of.To her as yet the Book of Common Prayer contained all the prayers that human heart had need to offer; what things lay beyond its scope must lie beyond the scope of religion.All such things must be parted with one day, and if they had been taken from her very soon, she was the sooner free from the painful necessity of watching lest earthly love should remove any of the old landmarks dividing what was God's from what was only man's.She had now retired within the pale of religion, and left the rest of her being, as she thought, 'to dull forgetfulness a prey.'

She had little comfort in the society of her aunt.Indeed, she felt strongly tempted to return again to England the same month, and seek a divine service elsewhere.But it was not at all so easy then as it is now for a woman to find the opportunity of being helpful in the world of suffering.

Mrs.Forsyth was one of those women who get their own way by the very vis inertiae of their silliness.No argument could tell upon her.She was so incapable of seeing anything noble that her perfect satisfaction with everything she herself thought, said, or did, remained unchallenged.She had just illness enough to swell her feeling of importance.She looked down upon Mrs.Falconer from such an immeasurable height that she could not be indignant with her for anything; she only vouchsafed a laugh now and then at her oddities, holding no further communication with her than a condescending bend of the neck when they happened to meet, which was not once a year.

But, indeed, she would have patronized the angel Gabriel, if she had had a chance, and no doubt given him a hint or two upon the proper way of praising God.For the rest, she was good-tempered, looked comfortable, and quarrelled with nobody but her rough honest old bear of a husband, whom, in his seventieth year, she was always trying to teach good manners, with the frequent result of a storm of swearing.

But now Mary St.John was thoroughly interested in the strange boy whose growing musical pinions were ever being clipped by the shears of unsympathetic age and crabbed religion, and the idea of doing something for him to make up for the injustice of his grandmother awoke in her a slight glow of that interest in life which she sought only in doing good.But although ere long she came to love the boy very truly, and although Shargar's life was bound up in the favour of Robert, yet neither stooping angel nor foot-following dog ever loved the lad with the love of that old grandmother, who would for him have given herself to the fire to which she had doomed his greatest delight.

For some days Robert worked hard at his lessons, for he had nothing else to do.Life was very gloomy now.If he could only go to sea, or away to keep sheep on the stormy mountains! If there were only some war going on, that he might list! Any fighting with the elements, or with the oppressors of the nations, would make life worth having, a man worth being.But God did not heed.He leaned over the world, a dark care, an immovable fate, bearing down with the weight of his presence all aspiration, all budding delights of children and young persons: all must crouch before him, and uphold his glory with the sacrificial death of every impulse, every admiration, every lightness of heart, every bubble of laughter.

Or--which to a mind like Robert's was as bad--if he did not punish for these things, it was because they came not within the sphere of his condescension, were not worth his notice: of sympathy could be no question.

But this gloom did not last long.When souls like Robert's have been ill-taught about God, the true God will not let them gaze too long upon the Moloch which men have set up to represent him.He will turn away their minds from that which men call him, and fill them with some of his own lovely thoughts or works, such as may by degrees prepare the way for a vision of the Father.