The Old Helmet. Volume II

"Rowland," said Eleanor when she had been standing a minute beside him.

"Mrs. Balliol wants me to cut off my hair."

Mr. Rhys looked up at her, for with one arm round her he was still bending attention upon his work. He glanced up as if in doubt or wonder.

"I have been over to see her," Eleanor repeated, "and she counsels me to cut off my hair; cut it short."

"See you don't!" he said sententiously.

"Why?" said Eleanor.

"It would be the cause of our first and last quarrel."

"Our first," said Eleanor stifling some hidden amusement; "but how could you tell that it would be the last?"

"It would be so very disagreeable!" Mr. Rhys said, with a gravity so dryly comic that Eleanor's gravity was destroyed.

"Mrs. Balliol says I shall find it, my hair, I mean, very much in my way."

"It would be in my way, if it was cut off."

"She says it will take a great deal of precious time. She thinks that your razor would be better applied to my head."

"Than to what other object?"

"Than to its legitimate use and application. She wants me to get you to let your beard grow, and to cut off my hair. 'It's unekal' – as Sam Weller says."

Eleanor was laughing; she could not see Mr. Rhys's face very well; it was somewhat bent over his papers; but the side view was of unprovokable gravity. A gravity however which she had learned to know covered a wealth of amusement or of mischief, as the case might be. She knelt down to bring herself within better speaking and seeing distance.

"Rowland, what sort of people are your coadjutors?"

"They are the Lord's people," he answered.

Eleanor felt somewhat checked; the gravity of this answer was of a different character; but she could not refrain from carrying the matter further; she could not let it rest there.

"Do you mean," she said a little timidly, but persistently, "that you are not willing to speak of them as they are, to me?"

He was quite silent half a minute, and Eleanor grew increasingly sober.

He said then, gently but decidedly,

"There are two persons in the field, of whose faults I am willing to talk to you; yours and my own."

"And of others you think it is wrong, then, to speak even so privately and kindly as we are speaking?" Eleanor was very much chagrined. Mr. Rhys waited a moment, and then said, in the same manner,

"I cannot do it, Eleanor."

He got up a moment after and went out of the room. Eleanor felt almost stunned with surprise and discomfort. This was the second time, in the few days that she had been with him, that he had found her wrong in something. It troubled her strangely; and the sense of how much he was better than she – how much higher his sphere of living than the one she moved in – pressed her heart down almost to the ground. She stood by the writing-table where she had risen to her feet, with her eyes brimful of tears, but so still even to her eyelids that the tears had not overflowed. She supposed Mr. Rhys had gone out. In another moment however she heard his step returning and he entered the study. Eleanor moved instantly to leave it, but he met and stayed her with a look infinitely sweet; turned her about, and made her kneel down with him. And then he poured out a prayer for charity; not merely the kindness that throws a covering over the failings of others, or that holds back the report of what they have been; but the overabounding heavenly love that will send its brightness into the dark places of human society and with its own richness fill the barren spots; and above all, for that love of Jesus the King, that makes all his servants dear, for that spirit of Christ that looks with his own love and forbearance on all that need it. And so, as the speaker prayed, he shewed his own possession of that which he asked for; so revealed the tender and high walk of his own mind and its near familiarity with heavenly things, that Eleanor thought her heart would break. The feeling, how far he stood above her in knowledge and in goodness, while it was a secret and deep joy, yet gave her acute pain such as she never had felt before. She would not weep; it was a dry aching pain, that took part of its strength from the thought of having done or shewn something that he did not like. But Mr. Rhys went on to pray for her alone; and Eleanor was conquered then. Tears came and she cried like a little child, and all the hard pain of pride or of fear was washed away; like the dust from the leaves in a summer shower.

She was so far healed, but she would have run way when they rose from their knees if he had permitted her. He had no such intention. Keeping fast hold of her hand he brought her to a seat by the window, opened it, for the day was now cooling off and the sea-breeze was fresh; and taking the book of their studies he put her into a lesson of Fijian practice; till Eleanor's spirits were thoroughly restored. Then throwing away the book and taking her in his arms he almost kissed the tears back again.

"Eleanor – " he said, when he saw that her eyes were wet, and her colour and her voice were fluttering together.

"What?"

"You must bear the inconvenience of your hair for my sake. Tell sister

Balliol you wear it by my express orders."

Eleanor's look was lovely. She saw that the gentleness of this speech was intended to give her back just that liberty she might think was forbidden. Humbleness and affection danced in her face together.

"And you do not object to white dresses, Rowland?"

"Never – when they are white – " he said with one of his peculiar smiles.

"Rowland," said Eleanor, now completely happy again, "you ought to have those jalousie blinds at these windows. You want them here much more than I do."

"How will you prove that?"

"By putting them here; and then you will confess it."

"Don't you do it!" said he smiling, seeing that Eleanor's eye was in earnest.

"Please let me! Do let me! You want them much more than I do, Rowland."

"Then you will have to let them stand; for they are just where I want them."

"But the shade of them is much more needed here."

"I could have had it. You need not disturb yourself. There is a whole stack of them lying under the shelves in your store-room."

"Why are they lying there?" said Eleanor in great surprise.

"I did not want them. I left them for you to dispose of."

"For me! Then I shall dispose some of them here."

"Not with my leave."

"May I not know why?" said Eleanor putting her hand in his to plead for it.

"I do not want to fare too much better than my brethren," he answered with a smile of infinite pleasantness at her. Eleanor's face shewed a sudden accession of intelligence.

"Then, Rowland, let us send the other jalousies to Mr. Balliol to shade his study – with all my heart; and you put up mine here. I did not think about that before. Will you do it?"

"There are plenty of them without taking yours, child."

"Then, O Rowland, why did you not do it before?"