“Why,” said he, coming to a halt, “it means that you have won. It’s victory, dad, and I call it glorious!” His lip trembled. He wanted to put a hand on his father’s shoulder; but his abominable shyness stood between.
“We won long ago, my boy.” And Mr. Raymond wheeled round on his knees, pushed up his spectacles, and quoted the famous lines, very solemnly and slowly:
“‘And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!’”
“I see,” Taffy nodded. “And—I say, that’s jolly. Who wrote it?”
“A man I used to see in the streets of Oxford and always turned to stare after: a man with big ugly shaped feet and the face of a god—a young tormented god. Those were days when young men’s thoughts tormented them. Taffy,” he asked abruptly, “should you like to go to Oxford?”
“Don’t, father!” The boy bit his lip to keep back the tears. “Talk of something else—something cheerful. It has been a splendid fight, just splendid! And now it’s over I’m almost sorry.”
“What is over?”
“Well, I suppose—now that Honoria wants to help—we can hire workmen and have the whole job finished in a month, or two at farthest: and you—”
Mr. Raymond stood up, and leaning against a bench-end, examined the thread of the screw between his fingers.
“That is one way of looking at it, no doubt,” he said slowly; “and I hope God will forgive me if I have put my own pride before His service. But a man desires to leave some completed work behind him— something to which people may point and say, ‘he did it.’ There was my book, now: for years I thought that was to be my work. But God thought otherwise and (to correct my pride, perhaps) chose this task instead. To set a small forsaken country church in order and make it worthy of His presence—that is not the mission I should have chosen. But so be it: I have accepted it. Only, to let others step in at the last and finish even this—I say He must forgive me, but I cannot.”