HOW MR. PENRYN GOT THE DYKEDALE LIVING. I THE GREAT WHITE FLOOD. "THEO," said the Vicar, "read this." T He put his head into the room where his daughter sat at work; he dropped a note into her hand as she came forward to receive it, pulling back his own hand hastily because it was not quite steady. He did not look at her, nor wait for either question or answer, but shut the door, and went down stairs again into the dining-room, where another daughter sat by the fire reading, and a little boy lay at full length on the rug with a cat in his arms. "Can't you go and play somewhere else, Charlie ?" said his father. "I want to be quiet a bit." another twelvemonth. This recollection it was which had made his hand tremble as he gave the note to his daughter. Mr. Guest had no near relative that he knew of in holy orders, and he could not prevent a little feeble hope from springing up in his heart. What more likely than that Theo's husband should think of her father when the Dykedale living was vacant? But would Julian ever be Theo's husband? That was the point. His heart sank a little again as he asked the question. Only a day or two ago she had said to him, "I wish that stupid Mr. Guest wouldn't come here so often, he makes me nervous.' For his own part, the Vicar was not ambitious nor eager after wealth; but to see his daughter so well provided for, and to be able to educate his boys and start them in life! To be able to give to the poor without the painful conscious ed out of a fund already insufficient for the needs of his family; to be able sometimes to take a little rest in this evening of his hard-worked life! If Theo offended Mr. Guest, or if there could be no marriage relations between them, then of course he, the Vicar, would have no more chance of Dykedale than any other stranger. The boy cleared off, and the Vicar put his slippered feet on the fender with a great sigh. He had had a hard day of it, and was tired; but the sigh did not spring altogether from that source. It broke from him when he thoughtness that his alms were in reality so much pinchof the young girl up stairs, the note he had taken to her, and another letter to himself in which hers had been inclosed. He put his elbows on his knees, and leaned down toward the fire; and there rose before him nearly thirty years of incessant work and poverty. He did not look at the picture to complain about it; on the contrary, something had brought to his recollection a spot in those thirty years which was very bright to him still, in spite of the tongues that raised around it a clamor of imprudence. Well, so he had been imprudent. He, possessing no private property, had dared to marry upon his curacy. He did not think he had ever repented it, however. Imprudent as it was, he might have waited until now, and things would have been but little better in a worldly point of view. It was true that he had been for some few years a vicar, but it was also true that, out of his two hundred per annum, he had to pay a "Meg," said the Vicar, rummaging, "I want curate, since it was impossible for him single--where's that book I had last night ?" handed to work a parish so large and scattered as his present one. "And there are the boys," sighed the Vicar. "Fred is getting toward manhood, and CharlieI'm sure I don't know what I shall do with them." But these desultory thoughts were all outside the subject which in reality had stirred up in him a strange commotion of hope, anxiety, and wonder. He took the letter received but a few minutes ago from his pocket and read it again. It was signed Julian Guest, and contained a proposal for the hand of Mr. Penryn's eldest daughter, Theodora. "I can't make it out at all," commented the Vicar. "A man like Julian Guest, a great estated squire who might be in Parliament, probably will be some day, to think about my Theo! It's the most wonderful thing I ever knew." He remembered, also, that this Julian Guest had in his gift the living of Dykedale, and that by what seemed to him a peculiar chance, the present incumbent was not at all likely to live And then he began to wonder if Theo knew about this living, and what she thought of Julian's letter, and if the incumbent— "God forgive me!" broke out the Vicar in his reverie. "What sort of a servant am I, to be counting the chances of another man's life for my own gain? I won't think about it. I'll put Theo out of my head for a while." He got up and went to a book-case in the corner of the room; but Theo was not to be put aside so easily. "Isn't it there, papa? I'll ask Theo." She was going out of the room, but Mr. Penryn caught her arm, and drew her back. "No; let Theo alone now. And you must learn to be a helpful little woman; we may not always have Theo with us. Go and ask for my boots if they're dry, for I have got to go out again to-night." Meanwhile, Theo up stairs was standing at the window of her room, looking out upon the great white flood which lay along the valley, half swallowing the willows by the river bank, and rising high up the stem of the great ash, under which Fred had made a seat for her in holiday time long ago. Oh, if that time could only come back! Her work lay on the floor as it had dropped from her fingers. She was looking over the flood toward Dykedale, thinking about Julian Guest and wishing-wishing with all her heart that he had never written that letter. Mr. Guest was a rich, great man; he lived in a very different sort of way from theirs; she pied in her home cares to trouble herself about the meaning of his visits. She had spoken the extent of her thoughts concerning Julian when she said he made her nervous. He had some slight impediment in his speech, a sharp occasional catching, which she magnified into a stammer. He could talk to the Vicar fast enough; but if he spoke to her he was almost sure to stammer. What was she to do about this dreadful letter? By-and-by she went down to the diningroom, half hoping, half fearing to find her father there waiting for her. He gave a sharp upward glance as she entered, and then began pulling on his boots hastily. She should never love any body as she loved him; why, then, was this sacrifice impossible? Why not take Julian and leave the result to chance? What matter about her own happiness or Julian's? Why did her whole heart go out against Mr. Guest, and his great house and wealth, with passionate rebellion and causeless dislike? And what was she to do? What could she do? "Oh, must I do it-must I? I hate him. How wicked it is to say so. Julian! like some horrible old name out of a book! How I wish I had got yesterday back again!" She turned back again to the window, and saw the rosy tints dropping upon the flood, as "You are not going out again this evening, it lay spread out before her in the setting sun. papa?" says Theo. She saw small bales of sticks and rubbish go 66 Yes, I am. Combe Lane." There's Harrison ill up in drifting down madly on toward the sea, and a dreary thought suggested itself that she was like "Combe Lane! why, it's miles away. Can't them, drifting on helplessly toward an unknown Mr. Trafford go?" "It isn't Trafford's end of the parish," said Mr. Penryn, curtly. "I must go." "And you haven't had any tea. Papa-" The Vicar got up and silenced her with a quick, imperative gesture. They had both been keeping back from the one subject, he knowing intuitively and feeling in the knowledge a sting of disappointment, that his poor little castle was tottering, and she because she really did not know how to begin or what to say. She looked at him with a glance of mute appeal. What did he want her to do? What was he going to say? Mr. Penryn himself was struggling with a momentary temptation. Theo was so good, so gentle, and loving, that if he were to say now, "For my sake, and for the good of your brothers and sister, accept this offer," he believed she would obey. And the advantages really did seem so great, seconded by an insidious voice which said, "It is for her own good too;, you should urge it upon her," that he had to fight hard for victory. Finally, he bent down his gray head and kissed her. "Don't be precipitate, Theo. Take time to consider; be certain of your answer, and then give it. When I come back to-night you shall tell me what it is. Only be honest and true, and remember we must not do evil that. good may come. God bless you." No one, perhaps, but Theo herself would have known what it cost the poor Vicar to say those words, which he felt were thrusting away his own hopes from before his eyes. He was human, and a father; and the thought of being able to provide for his own had risen up before him as a fair and excusable hope. Theo knew. Theo went back into her own room, put her head down on the window, and sobbed out a sudden passion of sorrow, and love, and anger. Anger against Julian Guest for bringing this trouble upon them; sorrow and love for the gray-haired man who had just gone out to his tramp through the muddy lanes, striking away with his own hand the cup which offered him well-earned help and comfort in his age. sea, unable to stop if she wished it. "What matter if I do suffer, so that he-my father-is happy?" Only remember, we must not do evil that good may come. She recalled the words, but they did not seen to affect her much. She thought of them indifferently-a little impatiently-with a sort of blank wonder why it was so hard to be good. Then her thoughts went out to her father busy in his ministrations according to his habit; going from house to house wherever he was wanted; stinting himself miserably that the famished might be fed. How large the good that might, nay, must result from that one bit of evil, if she could only resolve to do it! Was it evil? She thought it over a little longer, and then covered her face with her hands, and tears— not like the first rebellious outbreak, but gentle tears-fell through the clasped fingers. "It is evil. God help me not to do it; not to want to do it for my father's sake; not to hate Julian Guest!" Mr. Penryn reached Combe Lane, and a woman courtesied to him from the doorway of the house he was about to visit. "He's very bad," she said. "I doubt he'll hardly know you, Sir." Mr. Penryn stopped a moment at the door; he was trying to throw off those personal interests and thoughts, through which the woman's voice, her swollen eyes, and fingers restlessly pinching up patterns in her apron, fell upon him with a dull inconsequence. "What does the doctor say?" "Why, he won't say much good, Sir. told me to get some wine, but—” He Mechanically Mr. Penryn's hand went to his pocket, searched there a minute, and came out again. "I'll see when I go home," he said. "He shall have some to-night, if possible. Now I'll go in, please, for it's getting late." He came out of the cottage with a grave face. If the lines worn in it were deeper and sadder than before, the look of uncertain, unquiet expectation and wishfulness was gone from it. "A little while," he thought, "these great, strong ships go boldly to and fro among the troubled waters; big waves buffet them, but they are unmoved. A sudden blast strikes them, and they swing round and reel, and stagger into port-the last port, from whence they shall issue no more till the great heart of the world itself has ceased to beat. Oh, Divine Hand that rules each tiny voyage, only for courage and a calm trust, to take its waves and buffets cheerfully, and covet only what Supreme Wisdom has seen fit to give!" He passed on into the darkness of the lane between those overhanging hedges; he went down it feeling the way with his stick, and starting now and then as a single heavy drop from the black sky plashed upon his face. He saw light in an upper window of his own house, and the shadow of a curly head and laughing lips upon the blind. Then he went in, and found Theo waiting for him in the dining-room. "I saw Charlie up stairs," he said. "I suppose he went without you. I am glad they spared you to-night." He stood up before the fire, and looked at her in quiet wonder. She was young, and the impulses and passions of the young must be warm at her heart. But she was occupied as usual; and while he watched the needle fly about, shining in the fire-light, he wondered how it was that such a crisis as this had made no vehement stir and flutter in the monotony of the girl's life. tongs he laid down the brief vision of the Dykedale living. Mr. Julian Guest got his letter in the morning. He sat down to read it in a deep old-fashioned window-seat in his picture-gallery; and when he had read it he folded it back into the envelope, put it in his pocket, and looked out, as Theo had looked the evening before, at the flood. He sat there a long time, stung to his finger ends with disappointment and mortification. A servant came to tell him his horse was ready, to which he replied, "Send him back again to the stable; I've changed my mind." He could speak fluently enough to his servants and to those with whom he was on familiar terms; only before strangers this miserable stumbling remembered him, and made prey of him relentlessly. "Well, it wasn't likely!" he said to himself at last. "I am such a great, stupid, silent log that I dare say she never dreamed of such a thing. Would there have been more chance if I had waited a bit, I wonder? But it's of no use to wonder about that now." Then he began to ask himself if he really had not been guilty of a little worldly pride; if he had not cast a passing thought to his position and his wealth as being very much in his favor. At any rate they had not tempted Theo; and in spite of his disappointment, a spark of exultation came into his eyes at the thought. Then his glance fell upon the church tower and the chimneys of the rectory, and his momentary exultation died out. He had thought of Mr. Suddenly she put down the work, and stood Penryn in connection with that house; he thought up also, a little behind him. "Papa, I have thought of it all a great deal. I have been thinking about it ever since you went, and I-can't-" The Vicar put out his hand, and drew her toward him. "My little Theo, you are not afraid to tell me that you can not like Mr. Guest well enough to take him for a husband? It is all as it should be. What could we-what could I have done without you?" Theo, looking up into his face, tried with all her might to read it, and to keep down the rising sob of sorrow for him. "You are very good to me, papa. I suppose it was good of Mr. Guest too, but-" "Good of him! Well, Theo, I don't know about that. At any rate it is the best compliment he could have offered you. Better write your answer to-night, and have done with it. And now, my dear, see if there's any port-wine in the house, will you? I must send some up to Harrison at once. I'm afraid he will hardly live through the night." As he spoke, by the mechanical force of habit, he put down the tongs with which he had been about to break the dull lumps in the grate. There would be colder weather than this, and it would not do to be extravagant. And he smiled as he thought to himself that with the of him again now, and his cheeks burned and his heart sank at the thought. They would be so near to him; and just at the moment he did feel as if he could never face Theo again. "But it ought to make no difference," reflected Mr. Guest. He got up and passed out of the silent company of people whose living feet had once echoed on those shining boards, whose living hearts had once been warm with hope and heavy with regret, as his was. He went into the drawingroom and thought of Theo. He had got into a habit of treating his house and its furniture in this speculative sort of association with her. He looked at a splendidly-covered modern chair standing beside one of the windows, below which lay a vast, undulating panorama, with a faint line of blue in the distance. She would never sit there and look out upon this, as he had fancied her doing. He turned out of that room quickly. It had been especially hers, and now he hated it. "I shall never have a wife, and of what use are all these grand rooms to me? I have a great mind to lock them all up." He went into his own study, and from thence he saw again the rectory house, and its green lawn stretching down to meet his own, with only the river between. Theo would walk there, and he should see her from the windows. A |