The angel of his presence; and Gabriel the Acadian

by Grace Livingston Hill; Edith M. Nicholl

John Stanley scowled and sighed.

“Oh, I suppose that’s the easiest way to get out of it now they’ve sent me this. It will be an awful bore, but then it’ll be over. I shall scarcely know how to carry myself among them, I fear, I’ve been out of this line so long, and they fancy me so virtuous,” and he smiled and shrugged his handsome shoulders.

“But John dear, you mustn’t feel in that way. They really think a great deal of you,” said his mother, smiling indulgently upon him.

“Oh, it’s all right; go ahead, mother. Make it something fine while you’re about it. Give them quite a spread you know. Some of them don’t get many treats, I suppose,” and he sank down in one of the luxurious chairs and looked about him with pleasure.

“This is nice, mother,” he said; “so good of you and father to think of it. I can do great things here. The room is an inspiration in itself. It is a poem in architecture.”

Then the mother left him awhile to his thoughts and he began to piece together his life, that portion he had left behind him across the water, and this new piece, a part of the old, that he had come to take up again. There hovered on the margin of his mind the image of the “ladye of high degree,” and he looked out about on his domain with satisfaction at thought of her. At least she would see that people in this country could do things as well as in hers.

Then by some strange line of thought he remembered his worriment of yesterday about that present, and how he had thought of her laugh if she should know of it. A slight feeling of pleasure passed over him; even in this she could find no fault. It was fine and costly and a work of genius. He need not be ashamed even if some one should say to her that the picture was presented to him by a mission class grateful for what he had done for it. He began to swell with a sense of importance at the thought. It was rather a nice thing, this present, after all. He changed his position that he might examine the picture more carefully at his leisure.

The fire that his mother had caused to be lighted to take off the chill of the summer evening and complete the welcome of the room, sent out a ruddy glow and threw into high relief the rich, dark gloss of the frame and the wonderful picture. It was as if the sombre, stone-arched room opened directly from his own, and he saw the living forms of the Twelve gathered around that table with the Master in the midst. But the Master was looking straight at him—at him, John Wentworth Stanley, self-satisfied gentleman of the world that he was, looking at him and away from the other disciples. Down through all the ages those grave, kind, sad, sweet eyes looked him through and through, and seemed to sift his life, his every action, till things that he had done now and yesterday, and last year, that he had forgotten, and even when he was a little boy, seemed to start out and look him in the face behind the shadows of those solid stones of that upper chamber. The more he looked the more he wondered at the power the picture seemed to have. He looked away to prove it, and he knew the eyes were following his.

The rosy glow of the firelight seemed to be caught and crystallized in a thousand sparkles on one side of the fire. He looked in passing and knew what the sparkles were, the fine crystal points of that cut glass decanter. He had forgotten its existence until now, since the day he had had it packed. He knew it was a beautiful thing in its way, but he had not intended that it should be thus displayed. He hoped his mother had not seen it. He would look at it and then put it away, that is, pretty soon. Now his eyes were held by the eyes of his Master. Yes, his Master, for he had owned his name and called himself a Christian, and no matter what other things had come in to fill his mind, he had no wish to give up the “name to live.” And yet he was conscious, strangely, abnormally conscious of that decanter. His Master seemed to be looking at it too, and to be inquiring of him how he came to have it in his possession. For the first time he was conscious, painfully so, that he had never given its donor any cause to think that such a gift would be less acceptable to him than something else. His Master had understood that too, he felt sure. He was annoyed that he could frame no excuse for himself, as he had so easily done when the gift first reached him. He had even been confident that he would be able to explain it to his mother so that she would be rather pleased with the gift than otherwise, strong temperance woman though he knew her to be. Now all his reasons had fled. The eyes of his Master, his kind, loving, sorrowing Master were upon him. He began to be irritated at the picture. He arose and seized the decanter hastily, to put it somewhere out of sight, just where he had not thought.

Now the officious Thomas, who knew his place and his work so well, had placed in the new, freshly washed decanter a small quantity of the rare old Scotch whisky that had come with it. Thomas knew good whisky when he saw—that is, tasted—it, and he was proud of a master to whom such a gift had been given. John Stanley did not expect to find anything in his decanter until he put it there himself, or gave orders to that effect. He was new to the ways of a “man” who so well understood his business. As he jerked the offending article toward him some of this whisky spilled out of the top that had perhaps not been firmly closed after Thomas had fully tested the whisky. Its fumes so astonished its owner that, he knew not how, he dropped it and it shivered into fragments at his feet on the dull red tiles of the hearth.