Far Above Rubies

"That's just why not," answered Hector. "Did you ever know a rich man leave his money to a poor relation? Oh, I hope it does not mean that my father is gone. He may have left us a trifle. Only he could not have had so much to leave to anybody. I know he loved you, Annie."

In the meantime Annie had been doing the one sensible thing—reading the letter, and now she stood pondering it.

"I have it, Hector. He always uses good people to do his kindnesses. Don't you remember me telling you about the little old lady in Graham's shop the time your book came out?"

"Yes, Annie; I wasn't likely to forget that; it was my love for you that made me able to write the poem. Ah, but how soon was the twenty pounds I got for it spent, though I thought it riches then!"

"So it was—and so it is!" cried Annie, half laughing, but crying outright. "It's just that same little old lady. She was so delighted with the book, and with you for writing it, that she put you down at once in her will for five hundred pounds, believing it would help people to trust in God."

"And here was I distrusting so much that I was nearly ready to kill myself. Only I thought it would be such a terrible shock to you, my precious! It would have been to tell God to his face that I knew he would not help me. I am sure now that he is never forgetting, though he seems to have forgotten. There was that letter lying in the dark through all the hours of the long night, while we slept in the weariness of sorrow and fear, not knowing what the light was bringing us. God is good!"

"Let us go and see these people and make sure," said Annie. "'Hale and Hearty,' do they call themselves? But I'm going with you myself this time! I'm not going to have such another day as I had yesterday—waiting for you till the sun was down, and all was dark, you bad man!—and fancying all manner of terrible things! I wonder—I wonder, if—"

"Well, what do you wonder, Annie?"

"Only whether, if now we were to find out it was indeed all a mistake, I should yet be able to hope on through all the rest. I doubt it; I doubt it! Oh, Hector, you have taught me everything!"

"More, it seems, than I have myself learned. Your mother had already taught you far more than ever I had to give you!"

"But it is much too early yet, I fear, to call in the City," said Annie. "Don't you think we should have time first to find out whether the gentleman we were thinking of inquiring after to-day be your old college friend or not? And I will call at the grocer's, and tell him we hope to settle his bill in a few days. Then you can come to me, and I will go to you, and we shall meet somewhere between."

They did as Annie propose; and before they met, Hector had found his friend, and been heartily received both by him and by his young wife.

When at length they reached Philpot Lane, and were seated in an outer room waiting for admission, Annie said: "Surely, if rich people knew how some they do not know need their help, they would be a little more eager to feather their wings ere they fly aloft by making friends with the Mammon of unrighteousness. Don't you think it may be sometimes that they are afraid of doing harm with their money?"

"I'm afraid it is more that they never think what our Lord meant when he said the words. But oh, Annie! is it a bad sign of me that the very possibility of this money could make me so happy?"

They were admitted at length, and kindly received by a gray-haired old man, who warned them not to fancy so much money would last them very long.

"Indeed, sir," answered Annie, "the best thing we expect from it is that it will put my husband in good heart to begin another book."

"Oh! your husband writes books, does he? Then I begin to understand my late client's will. It is just like her," said the old gentleman. "Had you known her long?"

"I never once saw her," said Hector.

"But I did," said Annie, "and I heard her say how delighted she was with his first book. Please, sir," she added, "will it be long before you can let us have the money?"

"You shall have it by-and-by," answered the lawyer; "all in good time."

And now first they learned that not a penny of the money would they receive before the end of a twelvemonth.

"Well, that will give us plenty of time to die first," thought Hector, "which I am sure the kind lady did not intend when she left us the money."

Another thing they learned was that, even then, they would not receive the whole of the money left them, for seeing they could claim no relation to the legator, ten per cent must be deducted from their legacy. If they came to him in a year from the date of her death, he told them he would have much pleasure in handing them the sum of four hundred and fifty pounds.

So they left the office—not very exultant, for they were both rather hungry, and had to go at once in search of work—with but a poor chance of borrowing upon it.

Nevertheless, Hector broke the silence by saying:

"I declare, Annie, I feel so light and free already that I could invent anything, even a fairy tale, and I feel as if it would be a lovely one. I hope you have a penny left to buy a new bottle of ink. The ink at home is so thick it takes three strokes to one mark."

"Yes, dear, I have a penny; I have two, indeed—just twopence left. We shall buy a bottle of ink with one, and—shall it be a bun with the other? I think one penny bun will divide better than two halfpenny ones."

"Very well. Only, mind, I'm to divide it. But, do you know, I've been thinking," said Hector, "whether we might not take a holiday on the strength of our expectations, for we shall have so long to wait for the money that I think we may truly say we have great expectations."

"I think we should do better," answered Annie, "to go back to your old friend, Mr. Gillespie, and tell him of our good-fortune, and see whether he can suggest anything for us to do in the meantime."

Hector agreed, and together they sought the terrace where Mr. and Mrs. Gillespie lived, who were much interested in their story; and then first they learned that the lady was at least well enough off to be able to help them, and, when they left, she would have Annie take with her a dozen of her handkerchiefs, to embroider with her initials and crest; but Annie begged to be allowed to take only one, that Mrs. Gillespie might first see how she liked her work.

"For, then, you see," she said to her husband, as they went home, "I shall be able to take it back to her this very evening and ask her for the half-crown she offered me for doing it, which I should not have had the face to do with eleven more of them still in my possession. I have no doubt of her being satisfied with my work; and in a week I shall have finished the half of them, and we shall be getting on swimmingly."

Throughout the winter Hector wrote steadily every night, and every night Annie sat by his side and embroidered—though her embroidery was not all for other people. Many a time in after years did their thoughts go back to that period as the type of the happy life they were having together.

The next time Hector went to see Mr. Gillespie, that gentleman suggested that he should give a course of lectures to ladies upon English Poetry, beginning with the Anglo-Saxon poets, of whom Gillespie said he knew nothing, but would be glad to learn a great deal. He knew also, he said, some ladies in the neighborhood willing to pay a guinea each for a course of, say, half-a-dozen such lectures. They would not cost Hector much time to prepare, and would at once bring in a little money. Coleridge himself, he suggested, had done that kind of thing.

"Yes," said Hector, "but he was Coleridge. I have nothing to say worth saying."

"Leave your hearers to judge of that," returned Gillespie. "Do your best, and take your chance. I promise you two pupils at least not over-critical—my wife and myself. It is amazing how little those even who imagine they love it know about English poetry."

"But where should I find a room?" Hector still objected.

"Would not this drawing room do?" asked his friend.

"Splendidly!" answered Hector. "But what will Mrs. Gillespie say to it?"

"She and I are generally of one mind—about people, at least."

"Then I will go home at once and set about finding what to say."

"And I will go out at once and begin hunting you up an audience."

Gillespie succeeded even better than he had anticipated; and there was at the first lecture a very fair gathering indeed. When it was over, the one that knew most of the subject was the young lecturer's wife. The first course was followed by two more, the third at the request of almost all his hearers. And the result; was that, before the legacy fell due, Annie had paid all their debts and had not contracted a single new one.

But when the happy day dawned Annie was not able to go with her husband to receive the money; neither did Hector wish that she had been able, for he was glad to go alone. By her side lay a lovely woman-child peacefully asleep. Hector declared her the very image of the child the rainbow left behind as it vanished.

One day, when the mother was a little stronger, she called Hector to her bedside, and playfully claimed the right to be the child's godmother, and to give it her name.

"And who else can have so good a right?" answered Hector. Yet he wondered just a little that Annie should want the child named after herself, and not after her mother.

But when the time for the child's baptism came, Annie, who would hold the little one herself, whispered in the ear of the clergyman:

"The child's name is Iris."

I have told my little story. But perhaps my readers will have patience with me while I add just one little inch to the tail of the mouse my mountain has borne.

Hector's next book, although never so popular as in any outward sense to be called a success, yet was not quite a failure even in regard to the money it brought him, and even at the present day has not ceased to bring in something. Doubtless it has faults not a few, but, happily, the man who knows them best is he who wrote it, and he has never had to repent that he did write it. And now he has an audience on which he can depend to welcome whatever he writes. That he has enemies as well goes without saying, but they are rather scorners than revilers, and they have not yet caused him to retaliate once by criticising any work of theirs. Neither, I believe, has he ever failed to recognize what of genuine and good work most of them have produced. One of the best results to himself of his constant endeavor to avoid jealousy is that he is still able to write verse, and continues to take more pleasure in it than in telling his tales. And still his own test of the success of any of his books is the degree to which he enjoyed it himself while writing it.

His legacy has long been spent, and he has often been in straits since; but he has always gathered good from those straits, and has never again felt as if slow walls were closing in upon him to crush him. And he has hopes by God's help, and with Annie's, of getting through at last, without ever having dishonored his high calling.