He turned again to the volume in his hand. His eyes fell casually on a verse in the poem of 'Resurrection':
"The world is filled with folly and sin; And Love must cling where it can, I say,—For Beauty is easy enough to win, But one isn't loved every day."
He sighed involuntarily. Then to banish an unacknowledged regret, he began to criticise his author.
"If the world and the ambitions of diplomatic service had not stepped in between Lord Lytton and his muse, he would have been a fine poet," he said half aloud;—"A pity he was not born obscurely and in poverty—he would have been wholly great, instead of as now, merely greatly gifted. He missed his true vocation. So many of us do likewise. I often wonder whether I have missed mine?"
But this idea brooked no consideration. He knew he had not mistaken his calling. He was the very man for it. Many of his 'cloth' might have taken a lesson from him in the whole art of unselfish ministration to the needs of others. But with all his high spiritual aim, he was essentially human, and pleasantly conscious of his own failings and obstinacies. He did not hold himself as above the weaker brethren, but as one with them, and of them. And through the steady maintenance of this mental attitude, he found himself able to participate in ordinary emotions, ordinary interests and ordinary lives with small and outlying parishes in the concerns of the people committed to their charge. It is not too much to say that though he was in himself distinctly reserved and apart from the average majority of men, the quiet exercise of his influence over the village of St. Rest had resulted in so attracting and fastening the fibres of love and confidence in all the hearts about him to his own, that anything of serious harm occurring to himself, would have been considered in the light of real fatality and ruin to the whole community. When a clergyman can succeed in establishing such complete trust and sympathy between himself and his parishioners, there can be no question of his fitness for the high vocation to which he has been ordained. When, on the contrary, one finds a village or town where the inhabitants are split up into small and quarrelsome sects, and are more or less in a state of objective ferment against the minister who should be their ruling head, the blame is presumably more with the minister than with those who dispute his teaching, inasmuch as he must have fallen far below the expected standard in some way or other, to have thus incurred general animosity.
"If all fails," mused Walden presently, his thoughts again reverting to the Five Sisters' question,—"If Bainton does his errand awkwardly,—if the lady will not see him,—if any one of the thousand things do happen that are quite likely to happen, and so spoil all chance of interceding with Miss Vancourt to spare the trees,—why then I will go myself to-morrow morning to the scene of intended massacre before six o'clock. I will be there before an axe is lifted! And if Bainton meant anything at all by his hint, others will be there too! Yes!—I shall go,—in fact it will be my duty to go in case of a row."
A smile showed itself under his silver-brown moustache. The idea of a row seemed not altogether unpleasant to him. He stooped and patted his dog playfully.
"Nebuchadnezzar!" he said, with mock solemnity; whereat Nebbie, lying at his feet, opened one eye, blinked it lazily and wagged his tail—"Nebuchadnezzar, I think our presence will be needed to-morrow morning at an early hour, in attendance on the Five Sisters! Do you hear me, Nebuchadnezzar?" Again Nebbie blinked. "Good! That wink expresses understanding. We shall have to be there, in case of a row."
Nebbie yawned, stretched out his paws, and closed both eyes in peaceful slumber. It was a beautiful afternoon;—'sufficient for the day was the evil thereof' according to Nebbie. The Reverend John turned over a few more pages of Owen Meredith, and presently came to the conclusion that he would go punting. The decision was no sooner arrived at than he prepared to carry it out. Nebbie awoke with a start from his doze to see his master on the move, and quickly trotted after him across the lawn to the river. Here, the sole occupant of the shining stream was a maternal swan, white as a cloud on the summit of Mont Blanc, floating in stately ease up and down the water, carrying her young brood of cygnets on her back, under the snowy curve of her arching wings. Walden unchained the punt and sprang into it,—Nebbie dutifully following,—and then divested himself of his coat. He was just about to take the punting pole in hand, when Bainton's figure suddenly emerged from the shrubbery.
"Off on the wild wave, Passon, are ye?" he observed,—"Well, it's a fine day for it! M'appen you ain't seen the corpses of four rats anywhere around? No? Then I 'spect their lovin' relations must ha' been an' ate 'em up, which may be their pertikler way of doin' funerals. I nabbed 'em all last night in the new traps of my own invention. mebbe the lilies will be all the better for their loss. I'll be catchin' some more this evenin'. Lord; Passon, if you was to 'old out offers of a shillin' a head, the rats 'ud be gone in no time,—an' the lilies too!"