I did not talk much. After a minute or two I sat down by the uncurtained window and began to sing as usual. I commenced with a simple ballad, but very soon my songs merged into hymns. It began to be a pleasure to me to sing in that room. I had a strange feeling as though my voice were keeping the evil spirits away. I thought of the shepherd-boy who played before Saul and refreshed the king's tormented mind; and now and then an unuttered prayer would rise to my lips that in this way I might be able to comfort the sad soul that truly Satan had bound.
When my voice grew a little weary, I rose softly and took down the old brown sampler, as I wished to replace it by a little picture I had brought with me.
It was a sacred photograph of the Crucifixion, in a simple Oxford frame, and had always been a great favourite with me; it was less painful in its details than other delineations of this subject: the face of the divine sufferer wore an expression of tender pity. Beneath the cross the Blessed Virgin and St. John stood with clasped hands,—adopted love and most sacred responsibility,—receiving sanction and benediction.
I had scarcely hung it on the nail before Phoebe's querulous voice remonstrated with me.
'Why can you not leave well alone, Miss Garston? I was thanking you in my heart for the music, but you have just driven it away. I cannot have that picture before my eyes; it is too painful.'
'You will not find it so,' I replied quietly; 'it is a little present I have brought you. My dead brother bought it for me when he was a boy at school, and it is one of the things I most prize. He is dead, you know, and that makes it doubly dear to me. That is why I want you to have it, because I have so much and you so little.'
My speech moved her a little, for her great eyes softened as she looked at me.
'So you have been in trouble, too,' she said softly. 'And yet you can sing like a bird that has lost its way and finds itself nearly at the gate of Paradise.'
'Shall I tell you about my trouble?' I returned, sitting down by the bed. It wrung my heart to talk of Charlie, but I knew the history of his suffering and patience would teach Phoebe a valuable lesson.
An hour passed by unheeded, and when I had finished I exclaimed at the lateness of the hour.