What Will He Do with It — Volume 05 eBook

At the end of the first lesson George Morley felt that his cure was possible.  Making an appointment for the next day at the same place, he came thither stealthily and so on day by day.  At the end of a week he felt that the cure was nearly certain; at the end of a month the cure was self-evident.  He should live to preach the Word.  True, that he practised incessantly in private.  Not a moment in his waking hours that the one thought, one object, was absent from his mind!  True, that with all his patience, all his toil, the obstacle was yet serious, might never be entirely overcome.  Nervous hurry, rapidity of action, vehemence of feeling, brought back, might at unguarded moments always bring back, the gasping breath, the emptied lungs, the struggling utterance.  But the relapse, rarer and rarer now with each trial, would be at last scarce a drawback.  “Nay,” quoth Waife, “instead of a drawback, become but an orator, and you will convert a defect into a beauty.”

Thus justly sanguine of the accomplishment of his life’s chosen object, the scholar’s gratitude to Waife was unspeakable.  And seeing the man daily at last in his own cottage,—­Sophy’s health restored to her cheeks, smiles to her lip, and cheered at her light fancy-work beside her grandsire’s elbow-chair, with fairy legends instilling perhaps golden truths,—­seeing Waife thus, the scholar mingled with gratitude a strange tenderness of respect.  He knew nought of the vagrant’s past, his reason might admit that in a position of life so at variance with the gifts natural and acquired of the singular basketmaker, there was something mysterious and suspicious.  But he blushed to think that he had ever ascribed to a flawed or wandering intellect the eccentricities of glorious Humour,—­abetted an attempt to separate an old age so innocent and genial from a childhood so fostered and so fostering.  And sure I am that if the whole world had risen up to point the finger of scorn at the one-eyed cripple, George Morley—­the well-born gentleman, the refined scholar, the spotless Churchman—­would have given him his arm to lean upon, and walked by his side unashamed.

CHAPTER IV.

     To judge human character rightly, a man may sometimes have very
     small experience, provided he has a very large heart.

Numa Pimpilius did not more conceal from notice the lessons he received from Egeria than did George Morley those which he received from the basketmaker.  Natural, indeed, must be his wish for secrecy; pretty story it would be for Humberston, its future rector learning how to preach a sermon from an old basketmaker!  But he had a nobler and more imperious motive for discretion:  his honour was engaged to it.  Waife exacted a promise that he would regard the intercourse between them as strictly private and confidential.