‘You see, Sir Guy,’ said he, ‘there was some of us thought you might not like to have us coming and singing like old times, ‘cause ‘tis not all as it used to be here with you. Yet we didn’t like not to come at all, when you had been away so long, so we settled just to begin, and see whether you took any notice.’
‘Thank you. It was a very kind thought, James,’ said Guy, touched by the rough delicacy of feeling manifested by these poor men; ‘I had rather hear the carols than anything. Come to the front door; I’ll let you in.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ with a most grateful touch of the hat; and Guy hastened to set things in order, preferring the carols to everything at that moment, even though disabused of his pristine admiration for James Robinson’s fiddle, and for Harry Ray’s grand shake. A long space was spent in listening, and a still longer in the endeavour to show what Mr. Ashford meant by suggesting some improvements which they were regarding with dislike and suspicion, till they found Sir Guy was of the same mind. In fact, when he had sung a verse or two to illustrate his meaning, the opinion of the choir was, that, with equal advantages, Sir Guy might sing quite as well as Harry Ray.
It was the first time he had heard his own voice, except at church, since the earlier days of St. Mildred’s, but as he went up the long stairs and galleries to bed, he found himself still singing. It was,
Who lives forlorn,
On God’s own word doth rest,
His path is bright
With heavenly light,
His lot among the blest.
He wondered, and remembered finding music for it with Amy’s help. He sighed heavily, but the anguish of feeling, the sense of being in the power of evil, had insensibly left him, and though sad and oppressed, the unchangeable joy and hope of Christmas were shedding a beam on him.
They were not gone when he awoke, and rose to a solitary breakfast without one Christmas greeting. The light of the other life was beginning to shine out, and make him see how to do and to bear, with that hope before him. The hope was becoming less vague; the resolution, though not more firm, yet less desponding, that he would go on to grapple with temptation, and work steadfastly; and with that hope before him, he now felt that even a lifetime without Amy would be endurable.
The power of rejoicing came more fully at church, and the service entered into his soul as it never had done before. It had never been such happiness, though repentance and mournful feelings were ever present with him; nor was his ‘Verena’ absent from his mind. He walked about between the services, saw the poor people dining in their holly-decked houses, exchanging Christmas wishes with them, and gave his old, beautiful, bright smile as he received demonstrations of their attachment, or beheld their enjoyment. He went home in the dark, allowed Mrs. Drew to have her own way, and serve him and Bustle with a dinner sufficient for a dozen people, and was shut up for the solitary Christmas evening which he had so much dreaded, and which would have been esteemed a misfortune even by those who had no sad thoughts to occupy them.
Yet when the clock struck eleven he was surprised, and owned that it had been more than not being unhappy. The dark fiends of remorse and despair had not once assaulted him, yet it had not been by force of employment that they had been averted. He had read and written a little, but very little, and the time had chiefly been spent in a sort of day-dream, though not of a return to Hollywell, nor of what Redclyffe might be with Amy. It had been of a darkened and lonely course, yet, in another sense, neither dark nor lonely, of a cheerless home and round of duties, with a true home beyond; and still it had been a happy, refreshing dream, and he began the next morning with the fresh brightened spirit of a man who felt that such an evening was sent him to reinvigorate his energies, and fit him for the immediate duties that lay before him.
On the breakfast-table was what he had not seen for a long time—a letter directed to him. It was from Mr. Ross, in answer to his question about Coombe Prior, entering readily into the subject, and advising him to write to the Bishop, altogether with a tone of friendly interest which, especially as coming from one so near Hollywell, was a great pleasure, a real Christmas treat. There was the wonted wish of the season—a happy Christmas—which he took gratefully, and lastly there was a mention that Charles Edmonstone was better, the suffering over, though he was not yet allowed to move.