Had the duty of spiritual visitation been all that had led Henry Eardley to bend his rapid steps towards Wildwaste, he must have returned to Axe disappointed. Cora had passed a favourable night, and suffered little but from the extreme irritation caused by her malady. When Isa softly glided to her side, and whispered that the clergyman had called to inquire for her, and to know whether she had any wish to see him, Cora replied with a characteristic sneer, “I’m not dying; and if I were, I would send for the undertaker as soon as the parson.”
And yet it was with no feeling of disappointment that Henry Eardley went on his homeward way. He turned from the dull, unsightly brick building on the common, as one loath to leave the earthly paradise in which has been passed a golden hour of life. His interview with Isa had indeed been but brief, but it was one which left memories behind which would remain fragrant in his soul to the close of his mortal existence.
“Priceless jewel enclosed in yon dull casket!” said Henry Eardley to himself, turning to give a parting glance at Isa’s home. “May Heaven watch over that precious one’s life, and shield her from the danger to which her noble, unselfish devotion has exposed her.”
That prayer welled up from the depths of the vicar’s soul. It was for one of whom he for the first time dared to let himself think as possibly the future partner of all his joys and his sorrows, his guardian angel, his treasure. Henry Eardley had been fascinated by Isa when meeting her at the Castle; but a painful misgiving had rested on his mind as to whether she, the bright ornament of society, flattered and admired, were suited for, or could ever endure the life of lowly active usefulness which that of a vicar’s wife should be. From the time when he had first given himself to the ministry, Mr. Eardley had made a firm resolve, that should he ever ask a woman in marriage, she should be one who would be his helper, and not his hinderer, in doing his Master’s work. A pastor and his wife should be as the two hands of a watch—the one moving in a larger circle and with more visible activity than the other, but both fixed on the same centre, both moved by the same spring, united in the same work, and pointing to the same truth. With this conviction on his mind, Henry Eardley had almost resolved to shun the society of the baronet’s niece as a dangerous pleasure; such a bird of paradise, he thought, would never brook the lowly perch, the secluded nest. But when he saw Isa pale from watching by the sick-bed of a comparative stranger, for whom the beauteous had risked the loss of beauty, and the youthful that of life, all such misgivings passed for ever away. Henry Eardley felt that if he dare but aspire to the hand of Isa Gritton, even were the malady which she had braved to rob her of all her loveliness, he would be of all men on earth the most blessed. That which the maiden had feared would divide her from him whose regard she most valued, was but as a golden link to bind them together for ever.
CHAPTER XIX.
REFRESHMENT.
