'Beforehand with us?' asked Mr. Audley, as Felix broke down. 'The nurse has been just telling me how he sat on his bed saying bits of psalms and verses to him when he had that bad fit of cramp, "so pretty," she said; but I was afraid it must have been rather like a spell.'
Felix told his story, feeling it too much not to make it lame, and with the tearfulness trembling in his voice and eyes all the time.
'Our little gamin has the most of the good Samaritan in him,' said Mr. Audley. ''Tis not quite the end I should have begun at, but perhaps it may work the better.'
'Dear little boy, that he should have remembered that sermon!' exclaimed Wilmet.
'I am afraid it is more than I do,' said Felix; 'all last summer the more I tried to listen, the more I saw how he was changing. Do you remember it, Wilmet?'
'Yes; the text was, "The joy of the Lord is your strength," and he said how praising God, and going on thinking about His goodness and thankfulness, was the way to make our adversaries dissolve before us, and never trouble us at all, just like the bands of the Moabites and Ammonites before Jehoshaphat.'
'I recollect it well, and how I thought it such a likeness of himself,' said Mr. Audley; 'he was walking over his troubles, scarcely seeing them, as if they could not dim the shine of his armour while he went on looking up and being thankful. I fancy little Lance has a good deal of that kind of bright fearless way.'
'He has,' said Felix in a grave thoughtful tone that made the Curate look at him and sigh to think how early care and grief had come to make that joyous buoyancy scarce possible to the elder boy, little more than seventeen though he was.
'He is very idle, though,' added Wilmet; 'such caricatures as there are all over his books! Edgar's were bad enough, but Lance puts pig- tails and cocked hats to all Edgar's.'
So Lance's visits to the sick stranger remained unobstructed. He had no notion of teaching him; but the foreign boy in his languor and helplessness curiously fascinated him, perhaps from the very contrast of the passive, indolent, tropical nature with his own mercurial temperament. The Spaniard, or perhaps the old Mexican, seemed to predominate in Fernando, as far as could be guessed in one so weak and helpless. He seemed very quiet and inanimate, seldom wanting or seeking diversion, but content to lie still, with half-closed eyes; his manner was reserved, and with something of courteous dignity, especially when Lady Price came to visit him; and the Yankeeisms that sometimes dropped from his tongue did not agree with the polish of the tone, and still less with the imperious manner in which he sometimes addressed the nurse. He seemed, though not clever, to be tolerably well cultivated; he had been at the schools of whatever cities his father had resided in, and his knowledge of languages was of course extensive.
However, he never talked freely to Mr. Audley. He had bitterly resented that gentleman's interference, one day when he was peremptorily commanding the nurse to place him in a position that had been forbidden, and the endeavour to control him had made him fearfully angry. There was a stormy outbreak of violent language, only checked by a severe rebuke, for which he did not forgive the Curate; he was coldly civil, and accepted the attentions he could not dispense with in a grave formal manner that would have been sulky in an English lad, but had something of the dreary grandeur of the Spanish Don from that dark lordly visage, and made Mr. Audley half provoked, half pitying, speak of him always as his Cacique. He only expanded a little even to Lance, though the little boy waited on him assiduously, chattering about school doings, illustrating them on a slate, singing to him, acting Blondin, exhibiting whatever he could lay his hands on, including the twins, whom he bore down one after the other, to the great wrath of Sibby, not to say of little Stella herself, while Theodore took the exhibition with perfect serenity.
As to Felix, he was, as Lance said, the subject of the sick lad's fervent admiration. Perhaps the open, fair, cheerful, though grave countenance, fresh complexion, and strong, steadfast, upright bearing had something to do with the strange adoration that in his silent way Fernando paid to the youth, who looked in from time to time, bringing a sort of air of refreshment with his good-natured shy smile, even when he least knew what to say. Or else it was little Lance's fervent affection for Felix which had conduced to the erection of the elder brother into the idol of Fernando's fancy; and his briefest visit was the event of the long autumnal days spent in the uncurtained iron bed in the corner of the low room. The worship, silent though it was, was manifest enough to become embarrassing and ridiculous to the subject of it, whose sense of duty and compassion was always at war with his reluctance to expose himself to it. Not another word passed on any religious subject. Mr. Audley was not forgiven enough to venture on the attempt; the Rector was shy and frightened about it, and could make no beginning; and Mr. Mowbray Smith, who found great fault with them for their neglect, had been fairly stared down by the great black eyes, which, when the heavy lids were uplifted, proved to be of an immense size and force; and Felix was so sure that it could not be his business while three clergymen were going in and out that he had never done more than describe the weather, or retail any fresh bit of London news that had come down to the office.
At last, however, one November day, he found Fernando sitting up in bed, and Lance, perched on the table, talking so earnestly as not to perceive his entrance, until Fernando broke upon his words: 'There! it's no use!'
'Yes, it is,' cried Lance, jumping down. 'O Fee, I am glad you are come; I want you to tell him the rights of it.'
'The rights of what, Lance?'
'Tell him that it is all the devil's doing, and the men he has got on his side; and that it was the very thing our Saviour came for to set us free, only everybody won't,' said Lance clinging to his brother's hand and looking up in his face.
'That's about right, Lance,' said Felix, 'but I don't quite know what you are talking about.'
'Just this,' said Fernando. 'Lance goes on about God being merciful and good and powerful-Almighty, as he says; but whatever women may tell a little chap like that, nobody can think so that has seen the things I have, down in the West, with my own eyes.'
'Felix!' cried Lance, 'say it. You know and believe just as I do, as everybody good does, men and all.'
'Yes, indeed!' said Felix with all his heart.
'Then tell me how it can be,' said Fernando.
Felix stood startled and perplexed, feeling the awful magnitude and importance of the question, but also feeling his own incompetence to deal with it; and likewise that Wilmet was keeping the tea waiting for him. He much wished to say, 'Keep it for Mr. Audley,' but he feared to choke the dawning of faith, and he likewise feared the appearance of hesitation.
'Nobody can really explain it,' he said, 'but that's no wonder. One cannot explain a thunderstorm, but one knows that it is.'
'That's electricity,' said Fernando.
'And what's electricity?'
'A fluid that-'
'Yes; that's another word. But you can't get any farther. God made electricity, or whatever it is, and when you talk about explaining it, you only get to something that is. You know it is, and you can't get any farther,' he repeated.
'Well, that's true; though science goes beyond you in America.'
'But no searching finds out all about God!' said Felix reverently. 'All we know is that He is so infinitely great and wise, that of course we cannot understand why all He does is right, any more than a private soldier understands his general's orders.'
'And you-you,' said Fernando, 'are content to say you don't understand.'
'Why not?' said Felix.
There was a silence. Fernando seemed to be thinking; Lance gazed from one to the other, as if disappointed that his brother was not more explicit.
'And how do you know it is true?' added Fernando. 'I mean, what Lance has been telling me! What makes you sure of it, if you are?'
'If I am !' cried Felix, startled into indignation. 'To be sure I am!'
'But how?'
'I know it!' said Felix.
<
br /> 'How?'
'The Bible!' gasped Lance impatiently.
'Ay; so you have said for ever,' broke in Fernando; 'but what authenticates that?'
'The whole course of history,' said Felix. 'There is a great chain of evidence, I know, but I never got it up. I can't tell it you, Fernando, I never wanted it, never even tried to think about the proofs. It is all too sure.'
'But wouldn't a Mahometan say that?' said Fernando.
'If he did, look at the Life of our Lord and of Mahomet together, and see which must be the true prophet-the Way, the Life, the Truth.'
'That one could do,' said Fernando thoughtfully. 'I say' as Felix made a movement as if he thought the subject concluded, 'I want to know one thing more. Lance says it is believing all this that makes you-any one I mean-good.'
'I don't know what else should,' said Felix, smiling a little; the question seemed to him so absurd.
'Is it really what makes you go and slave away at that old boss's of yours?'
'Why, that's necessity and my duty,' said Felix.
'And is it what makes this little coon come and spend all his play- hours on a poor fellow with a broken leg? I've been at many schools, and never saw the fellow who would do that.'
'Oh! you are such fun!' cried Lance.
'All that is right comes from God first and last,' said Felix gravely.
'And you-you that are no child-you believe all that Lance tells me you do, and think it makes you what you are!'
'I believe it; yes, of course. And believing it should make me much better than I am! I hope it will in time.'
'Ah!' sighed Fernando. 'I never heard anything like it since my father said he'd take the cow-hide to poor old Diego, if he caught him teaching me nigger-cant.'
They left him.
'Poor fellow!' sighed Felix; 'what have you been telling him, Lance?'
'Oh, I don't know; only why things were good and bad,' was Lance's lucid answer; and he was then intent on detailing the stories he had heard from Fernando. He had been in the worst days of Southern slavery ere its extinction, on the skirts of the deadly warfare with the Red Indians; and the poor lad had really known of horrors that curdled the blood of Wilmet and Geraldine, and made the latter lie awake or dream dreadful dreams all night.
But the next day Mr. Audley was startled to hear the two friends in the midst of an altercation. When Lance had come in for his mid-day recreation, Fernando had produced five shillings, desiring him to go and purchase a Bible for him; but Lance, who had conceived the idea that the Scriptures ought not to be touched by an unchristened hand, flatly refused, offering, however, to read from his own. Now Lance's reading was at that peculiar school-boy stage which seems calculated to combine the utmost possible noise with the least possible distinctness; and though he had good gifts of ear and voice, and his reciting and singing were both above the average, the moment a book was before him, he roared his sentences between his teeth in horrible monotony. And as he began with the first chapter of St. Matthew, and was not perfectly able to cope with all the names, Fernando could bear it no longer, and insisted on having the book itself. Lance shook his head and refused; and matters were in this stage when Mr. Audley, not liking the echoes of the voices, opened the door. 'What is it?' he asked anxiously.
'Nothing,' replied Fernando, proudly trying to swallow his vexation.
'Lance!' said Mr. Audley rather severely; but just then, seeing what book the child was holding tight under his arm, he decided to follow him out of the room and interrogate.
'What was it, Lance?'
'He ought not to touch a Bible-he sha'n't have mine,' said Lance resentfully.
'Was he doing anything wrong with it?'
'Oh no! But he ought not to have it before he is christened, and I would have read to him.'
Mr. Audley knew what Lance's reading was, and smiled.
'Was that all, Lance? I like your guardianship of the Bible, my boy; but it was not given only to those who are Christians already, or how could any one learn?'
'He sha'n't touch mine, though,' said Lance, with an odd sturdiness; stumping upstairs with his treasure, a little brown sixpenny S. P. C. K. book, but in which his father had written his name on his last birthday but one.
Mr. Audley only waited to take down a New Testament, and present himself at Fernando's bedside, observing gladly that there was much more wistfulness than offence about his expression.
'It was a scruple on the young man's part,' said Mr. Audley, smiling, though full of anxiety; 'he meant no unkindness.'
'I know he did not,' said Fernando quietly, but gazing at the purple book in the clergyman's hands.
'Did you want this?' said Mr. Audley; 'or can I find anything in it for you?'
'Thank you;' and there was a pause. The offended manner towards Mr. Audley had been subsiding of late into friendliness under his constant attentions, and Fernando's desire for an answer prevailed at last. 'Felix told me to read the Life of Christ,' he said, not irreverently, 'and that it would show me He must be True.'
'I hope and trust that so it may be,' said Mr. Audley, more moved than he could bear to show, but with fervour in his voice far beyond his words.
'Felix,' said Fernando, resting on the name, 'Felix does seem as if he must be right, Mr. Audley; can it be really as he says-and Lance- -that their belief makes them like what they are?'
'Most assuredly.'
'And you don't say so only because you are a minister?' asked the boy distrustfully.
'I say so because I know it. I knew that it is the Christian faith that makes all goodness, long before I was a minister.'
'But I have seen plenty of Christians that were not in the least like Felix Underwood.'
'So have I; but in proportion as they live up to their faith, they have what is best in him.'
'I should like to be like him,' mused Fernando; 'I never saw such a fellow. He, and little Lance too, seem to belong to something bright and strong, that seems inside and outside, and I can't lay hold of what it is.'
'One day you will, my dear boy,' said Mr. Audley. 'Let me try to help you.'
Fernando scarcely answered, save by half a smile, and a long sigh of relief: but when Mr. Audley put his hand over the long brown fingers, they closed upon it.
CHAPTER VII. THE CHESS-PLAYER'S BATTLE
'Dost thou believe, he said, that Grace
Itself can reach this grief?
With a feeble voice and a woeful eye-
"Lord, I believe," was the sinner's reply,
"Help Thou mine unbelief."'
SOUTHEY.
By the beginning of the Christmas holidays, Fernando Travis was able to lie on a couch in Mr. Audley's sitting-room. His recovery was even tardier than had been expected, partly from the shock, and partly from the want of vigour of the tropical constitution: and he still seemed to be a great way from walking, though there was no reason to fear that the power would not return. His father wrote, preparing for a journey to Oregon, and seemed perfectly satisfied, and he was becoming very much at home with his host.
He was much interested in that which he was learning from Mr. Audley, and imbibing from the young Underwoods. The wandering life he had hitherto led, without any tenderness save from the poor old negro, without time to make friends, and often exposed to the perception of some of the darkest sides of human life, in the terrible lawlessness of the Mexican frontier, had hitherto made him dull, dreary, and indifferent, with little perception that there could be anything better; but first the kindness and then the faith he saw at Bexley, had awakened new perceptions and sensations. His whole soul was opening to perceive what the love of God and man might be; and the sense of a great void, and longing to have it satisfied, seemed to fill him with a constant craving for the revelation of that inner world, whose existence had just dawned upon him.
After a little hesitation, Mr. Audley decided on reading with Geraldine in his presence after he had come into the sitting-room, explaining to her how he thoug
ht it might be helpful. She did not much like it, but acquiesced: she used to hop in with her sweet smile, shy greeting, and hand extended to the invalid, who used to lie looking at her through his long eyelashes, and listening to her low voice reading or answering, as if she were no earthly creature; but the two were far too much in awe of one another to go any farther; and he got on much better with Wilmet, when she looked in on him now and then with cheery voice and good-natured care.
Then Fulbert and Robina came home; and the former was half suspicious, half jealous, of Lance's preoccupation with what he chose to denominate 'a black Yankee nigger.' He avoided the room himself, and kept Lance from it as much as was in his power; and one day Lance appeared with a black eye, of which he concealed the cause so entirely, that Felix, always afraid of his gamin tendencies, entreated Fulbert, as a friend, to ease his mind by telling him it was not given in a street row.
'I did it,' said Fulbert; 'he was so cocky about his Yankee that I could not stand it.'
'Why shouldn't he be kind to a poor sick fellow?'
'He has no business to be always bothering about Fernando here- Fernando there-Fernando for ever. I shall have him coming up to school a regular spoon, and just not know what to do with him.'
'Well, Fulbert, I think if you had a broken leg you'd wish some one to speak to you. At any rate, I can't have Lance bullied for his good nature; I was very near doing it myself once, but I was shamed out of it.'
'Were you-were you, indeed?' cried Fulbert, delighted at this confession of human nature; and Felix could not help laughing. And that laugh did much to bring him down from the don to the brother. At any rate, Fulbert ceased his persecution in aught but word.
Robina, always Lance's companion, followed him devotedly, and only hung about the stairs forlorn when he went to Fernando without her; or if admitted, she was quite content to sit serenely happy in her beloved Lance's presence, expecting neither notice nor amusement, only watching their occupation of playing at draughts. Sometimes, however, Lance would fall to playing with her, and they would roll on the floor, a tumbling mass of legs, arms, and laughter, to the intense diversion of Fernando, to whom little girls were beings of an unknown order.
The Pillars of the House, V1 Page 16