KENELM.—“Of the little child.
I am glad you remembered her.”
The minstrel again looked hard at Kenelm, this time
without dropping his eyes. Kenelm’s expression
of face was so simply quiet that it might be almost
called vacant.
Kenelm and Tom continued to walk on towards the veterinary
surgeon’s house, for some minutes silently.
Then Tom said in a whisper, “Did you not mean
those rhymes to hit me here—here?”
and he struck his breast.
“The rhymes were written long before I saw you,
Tom; but it is well if their meaning strike us all.
Of you, my friend, I have no fear now. Are you
not already a changed man?”
“I feel as if I were going through a change,”
answered Tom, in slow, dreary accents. “In
hearing you and that gentleman talk so much of things
that I never thought of, I felt something in me,—you
will laugh when I tell you,—something like
a bird.”
“Like a bird,—good!—a
bird has wings.”
“Just so.”
“And you felt wings that you were unconscious
of before, fluttering and beating themselves as against
the wires of a cage. You were true to your instincts
then, my dear fellow-man,—instincts of space
and Heaven. Courage!—the cage-door
will open soon. And now, practically speaking,
I give you this advice in parting: You have a
quick and sensitive mind which you have allowed that
strong body of yours to incarcerate and suppress.
Give that mind fair play. Attend to the business
of your calling diligently; the craving for regular
work is the healthful appetite of mind: but in
your spare hours cultivate the new ideas which your
talk with men who have been accustomed to cultivate
the mind more than the body has sown within you.
Belong to a book-club, and interest yourself in books.
A wise man has said, ‘Books widen the present
by adding to it the past and the future.’
Seek the company of educated men and educated women
too; and when you are angry with another, reason with
him: don’t knock him down; and don’t
be knocked down yourself by an enemy much stronger
than yourself,—Drink. Do all this,
and when I see you again you will be—”
“Stop, sir,—you will see me again?”
“Yes, if we both live, I promise it.”
“When?”
“You see, Tom, we have both of us something
in our old selves which we must work off. You
will work off your something by repose, and I must
work off mine, if I can, by moving about. So I
am on my travels. May we both have new selves
better than the old selves, when we again shake hands!
For your part try your best, dear Tom, and Heaven
prosper you.”
“And Heaven bless you!” cried Tom, fervently,
with tears rolling unheeded from his bold blue eyes.
THOUGH Kenelm left Luscombe on Tuesday morning, he
did not appear at Neesdale Park till the Wednesday,
a little before the dressing-bell for dinner.
His adventures in the interim are not worth repeating.
He had hoped he might fall in again with the minstrel,
but he did not.
