"No doubt, mother. Please go away; I am busy."
"There is cold meat and pickles, George."
"I am not hungry."
"I want you to say grace."
Johnson laughed bitterly. "I am not in the mood to say grace, mother."
The old lady, who was somewhat querulous, lifted up her voice in reproof of his irreligious speech; but Johnson cut her short, and persuaded her to leave the room. Then he looked the door and threw himself into his chair with a groan.
"I am only a man--a man. It is past all bearing. Oh, what a life--what a life! No money, no love--and a faith that fails me at need. Yet I was wrong to lose my temper. 'A fool's wrath is presently known; but a prudent man covereth shame.'"
The minister was shaking as a blown reed, and his nerves racked him with pain. There was a French window opening on to a plot of grass, and this he flung wide to the night air. But the calm failed to soothe him, although he walked rapidly up and down the sward trying to forget the girl. He had done all he could; he could do no more. "Bithiah! Tera!" he cried. Then he was silent. He re-entered the room, and sat down resolutely at his desk. "I must try and forget her," said he. "Work! work! Anything to distract my mind."
From a drawer he took a number of bills, and with these, many unpleasant letters insisting upon payment. They were evidence of his youthful folly at college, before he had been called to grace--five hundred pounds of disgrace and self-indulgence which had hung round his neck these many years. Some he had paid, but many remained unsettled. During his two years' absence in the South Seas, these records of sin--as he regarded them--had never troubled him; but since his return to Grimleigh his creditors had found him out, and were persecuting him daily. He was threatened with imprisonment, with bankruptcy, and public shame--he, a minister of the Gospel. If the truth became known he would lose his position; he would be cast without employment on the world. Yet how to conceal his difficulties he did not know. Five hundred pounds he owed, and his stipend was two hundred a year.
"If the pearls were only mine!" he murmured.