"A most excellent young man that, Ruys; I am afraid I misjudged him sadly to-day," and the missionary, pulling a chair near his wife, rubbed the palms of his hands together softly. "Remarkably good-looking, too, don't you think?"
She turned and looked him full in the face. "I don't think I've given Mr. Jackson's looks a thought."
"Of course not, of course not," said Habakkuk timidly, and began to repeat the nervous rubbing of his hands together.
"Why of course not?"
The calm tone in which this question was asked entirely upset Smalley; he stopped his hand exercise, and, crossing one leg over his knee, began to nurse it and sway slightly backward and forward. He did not answer his wife's question, and she watched him for a moment, and in her heart began to wonder how it was she had ever consented to marry this lanky, shuffling creature before her. She knew his moral character was irreproachable; if only his personal appearance were more prepossessing. She had truly and honestly tried to do her duty as his wife, but the chains of her bondage were beginning to gall. Mentally she was far Smalley's inferior. She could not live in the clear ether, in the pure air of his thoughts, and she was always unconsciously dragging him down while making many an honest effort to rise to his level. She had lived so quietly for so long a time that the sudden and unconventional manner of her meeting with Jackson had affected her powerfully. There was no denying that he was good-looking, and she had drifted into a flirtation with him at sight as naturally as a duck takes to the water. Oh, if life were only different for her! she thought as she watched Smalley swinging himself in his chair. The slow motion exasperated her; her nerves were at a tension, and she said sharply:
"Habakkuk, I wish you wouldn't fidget so! Can't you sit still anyhow, like any other mortal? Do read, or do something. I want to think, and my head is aching."
"Of course, of course," assented the missionary, and a furious light gleamed in his wife's eyes, which, fortunately for him, Habakkuk did not observe. He was a man slow of thought, and it was only after a little time that he began to realize that his wife had said she was in pain. He looked at her softly from his calm blue eyes, and then, putting forth his hand, laid it gently on hers. Ruys received the caress passively. Then Habakkuk was emboldened, and he tried to draw her toward him. She evaded him, however, by a deft turn of the shoulder, and, rising, walked to a table in the room, and picking up a heavy Bible placed it before her husband, as she said primly:
"It is getting very late. I think you had better read a chapter before going to bed."
CHAPTER V
"FURIIS AGITATUS AMOR."
Belike for her, a royal crown
I'd wager to a penny piece.
As Jackson and his guide left the gates of the parsonage Peregrine struggled with a temptation to look back over his shoulder. Finally he gave in with a sense of shame at his weakness, and then was unreasonably irritated to find that no shadowy figure behind the tinkling bead screen before the open window watched their passage down the moonlit road. The result was that for the first few hundred yards of their walk there was very little talk, for Peregrine's silence discouraged all the missionary's attempts at conversation. Suddenly the whole countryside seemed to be filled with the flashing light of gems. A blaze of jewelled glory came and vanished in a moment, and then appeared again in all its fairy beauty to slip away as swiftly as before.
"What on earth is that?" asked Peregrine, moved out of his reserve at the sight.
"Bugs," replied Habakkuk, "fire-bugs. They're pretty lively to-night, anyhow. Each one with the little lantern God has given him. They don't make a real show, however, because of the moon."
"Of course," said Peregrine, "I might have known they were fireflies, but it all came so suddenly, and I had no idea the sight was so perfectly beautiful," and he pointed to the millions of little lights twinkling through the night.
"I guess so, Mr. Jackson; just as if all the little stars had come down to earth and hung themselves out on the trees to dry." The constraint with which the walk began now vanished, and Smalley took the opportunity to read Jackson a lecture on the subject of health, summing up with these words, "I am speaking as a medical man now, Mr. Jackson; you must remember to take care of No. 1-that is, of yourself. This is a most treacherous climate, and I have known many men stronger even than you look fall before it like withered leaves. Take a quinine pill daily, and always wear flannel next to your skin. I don't do it myself, but then I'm a seasoned vessel. Ah! here we are at your gate."
"Do come in, Dr. Smalley?" and Jackson held the wicket invitingly open.
"No, no, thanks," replied Habakkuk. "Pooh, man! Don't thank me for showing you the way a few yards. Good-night! I must get back, for my wife is sure to be waiting for me."
The last words jarred on Jackson, and he felt all his old feelings returning as he shook hands with his guide, who turned and shuffled off into the moonlight. When Jackson had got about a third of the way down to his own door, however, he heard his name shouted out by Habakkuk.
"What is it?" he called out as he hastened back.
"Only this-don't forget about the flannel and the quinine. Good-night!"
"Confound him!" and the angry young man turned on his heel and entered the house. It was very fairly late now, and Jackson had worked himself again into a thoroughly excited frame of mind. Ah-Geelong devoted himself to making his master comfortable for the night, and as the slippered Galahad sat in an easy-chair trying to collect himself and gather together the fragments of resolve to attack the pile of papers he saw on the table in his study, he heard the angry fizz of a soda-water bottle and the hissing of its contents as it was poured into a long tumbler and placed beside him.
"What are you doing, Ah-Geelong?"
"Allee masters dlinkee peg-peg him keep off fever. Dlinkee peg and go sleep," and Ah-Geelong almost lit up the room with the shining row of teeth he displayed. It was impossible to be angry, but Jackson told the man to go, and he went, wondering, perhaps, wherein he had done wrong.
Peregrine rose from his seat and went to his study. But over the file before him flirted the outlines of the face he had seen. "Ruys," he murmured to himself, repeating the name by which he had heard her called, and it almost seemed to him that she replied, and that he heard the melody of her voice again. The far-off shadows of the room gathered to themselves form and substance, and as he leaned back idly there rose before him the vision of the dimly lighted school hall and that golden head bending slightly over the music. He had never been in love, and he gave himself up for the moment to the fascination of dreaming over the face he had seen. This was what inspired the knights of old. He stretched out his strong right arm and almost felt that he held a lance in rest. What would he not give to know that this peerless woman was his own? How he would work and labour! But a few short hours ago he was bowing at the shrine of a lofty ideal that was to carry him through life, at that invisible glory which strengthened his shrinking heart and nerved him to the highest for duty's sake. And all this was gone. The old god was dethroned in a moment, and the soft notes of a woman's voice, the touch of her hand, a glance from her eyes, and the past was rolled up like a scroll.
"My God," he said, "can this be love?" It never struck him that he had unconsciously appealed to that Godhead in whom he thought he had no belief. He was not able to think of that then-of how in a moment of trial the doubting soul turns instinctively to cling for support to that ethereal essence we call the Creator, and endows it with a living faculty to hear and to answer. Surely this spontaneous appealing to a higher power is something more than the mere force of habit. It springs from the heart pure as the snows of Everest, genuine and true. And this is the instinct which is not taken into account in the mathematical reasoning of the atheist; the touch of fire that would enlighten him out of his darkness is wanting. He will allow the instinct which tells an animal of his danger, which signals to him a friend; but to man, the highest of all animals, will he deny the instinct of the soul which shouts aloud to him the existence of God.
And the answer to Peregrine's question came unspoken, but he felt it ringing within him. Yes, and a hot flush of shame