“Comes a little cloudlet ’twixt
ourselves and heaven,
And from all the river
fades the silver track;
Put thine arms around me, whisper
low, ‘Forgiven!’
See how on the river
starlight settles back.”
When he had finished, still with face turned aside,
the lady did not, indeed, whisper “Forgiven,”
nor put her arms around him; but, as if by irresistible
impulse, she laid her hand lightly on his shoulder.
The minstrel started.
There came to his ear,—he knew not from
whence, from whom,—
“Mischief! mischief! Remember the little
child!”
“Hush!” he said, staring round.
“Did you not hear a voice?”
“Only yours,” said the lady.
“It was our guardian angel’s, Amalie.
It came in time. We will go within.”
THE next morning betimes Kenelm visited Tom at his
uncle’s home. A comfortable and respectable
home it was, like that of an owner in easy circumstances.
The veterinary surgeon himself was intelligent, and
apparently educated beyond the range of his calling;
a childless widower, between sixty and seventy, living
with a sister, an old maid. They were evidently
much attached to Tom, and delighted by the hope of
keeping him with them. Tom himself looked rather
sad, but not sullen, and his face brightened wonderfully
at first sight of Kenelm. That oddity made himself
as pleasant and as much like other people as he could
in conversing with the old widower and the old maid,
and took leave, engaging Tom to be at his inn at half
past twelve, and spend the day with him and the minstrel.
He then returned to the Golden Lamb, and waited there
for his first visitant; the minstrel. That votary
of the muse arrived punctually at twelve o’clock.
His countenance was less cheerful and sunny than
usual. Kenelm made no allusion to the scene
he had witnessed, nor did his visitor seem to suspect
that Kenelm had witnessed it or been the utterer of
that warning voice.
KENELM.—“I have asked my friend Tom
Bowles to come a little later, because I wished you
to be of use to him, and, in order to be so, I should
suggest how.”
THE MINSTREL.—“Pray do.”
KENELM.—“You know that I am not a
poet, and I do not have much reverence for verse-making
merely as a craft.”
THE MINSTREL.—“Neither have I.”
KENELM.—“But I have a great reverence
for poetry as a priesthood. I felt that reverence
for you when you sketched and talked priesthood last
evening, and placed in my heart—I hope forever
while it beats—the image of the child on
the sunlit hill, high above the abodes of men, tossing
her flower-ball heavenward and with heavenward eyes.”
The singer’s cheek coloured high, and his lip
quivered: he was very sensitive to praise; most
singers are.
Kenelm resumed, “I have been educated in the
Realistic school, and with realism I am discontented,
because in realism as a school there is no truth.
It contains but a bit of truth, and that the coldest
and hardest bit of it, and he who utters a bit of
truth and suppresses the rest of it tells a lie.”
