Thomas Wingfold, Curate | Page 8

my part, I would sweep away all illusions,
and get at the heart of the affair."
"But," said Wingfold, with the look of one who, as he tries to say it, is
seeing a thing for the first time, "does not the acorn-cup belong to the
acorn? May not some of what you call illusions, be the finer, or at least

more ethereal qualities of the thing itself? You do not object to music
in church, for instance?"
Bascombe was on the point of saying he objected to it nowhere except
in church, but for his aunt's sake, or rather for his own sake in his aunt's
eyes, he restrained himself, and uttered his feelings only in a peculiar
smile, of import so mingled, that its meaning was illegible ere it had
quivered along his lip and vanished.
"I am no metaphysician," he said, and Wingfold accepted the dismissal
of the subject.
Little passed between the two men over their wine; and as neither of
them cared to drink more than a couple of glasses, they soon rejoined
the ladies in the drawing-room.
Mrs. Ramshorn was taking her usual forty winks in her arm-chair, and
their entrance did not disturb her. Helen was turning over some music.
"I am looking for a song for you, George," she said. "I want Mr.
Wingfold to hear you sing, lest he should take you for a man of stone
and lime."
"Never mind looking," returned her cousin. "I will sing one you have
never heard."
And seating himself at the piano, he sang the following verses. They
were his own, a fact he would probably have allowed to creep out, had
they met with more sympathy. His voice was a full bass one, full of
tone.
"Each man has his lampful, his lampful of oil; He may dull its glimmer
with sorrow and toil; He may leave it unlit, and let it dry, Or wave it
aloft, and hold it high: For mine, it shall burn with a fearless flame In
the front of the darkness that has no name.
"Sunshine and Wind?--are ye there? Ho! ho! Are ye comrades or lords,
as ye shine and blow? I care not, I! I will lift my head Till ye shine and

blow on my grassy bed. See, brother Sun, I am shining too! Wind, I am
living as well as you!
"Though the sun go out like a vagrant spark, And his daughter planets
are left in the dark, I care not, I! For why should I care? I shall be
hurtless, nor here nor there. Sun and Wind, let us shine and shout, For
the day draws nigh when we all go out!"
"I don't like the song," said Helen, wrinkling her brows a little. "It
sounds--well, heathenish."
She would, I fear, have said nothing of the sort, being used to that kind
of sound from her cousin, had not a clergyman been present. Yet she
said it from no hypocrisy, but simple regard to his professional
feelings,
"I sung it for Mr. Wingfold," returned Bascombe. "It would have been
a song after Horace's own heart."
"Don't you think," rejoined the curate, "the defiant tone of your song
would have been strange to him? I confess that what I find chiefly
attractive in Horace is his sad submission to the inevitable."
"Sad?" echoed Bascombe.
"Don't you think so?"
"No. He makes the best of it, and as merrily as he can."
"AS HE CAN, I grant you," said Wingfold.
Here Mrs. Ramshorn woke, and the subject was dropped, leaving Mr.
Wingfold in some perplexity as to this young man and his talk, and
what the phenomenon signified. Was heathenism after all secretly
cherished, and about to become fashionable in English society? He saw
little of its phases, and for what he knew it might be so.
Helen sat down to the piano. Her time was perfect, and she never
blundered a note. She played well and woodenly, and had for her

reward a certain wooden satisfaction in her own performance. The
music she chose was good of its kind, but had more to do with the
instrument than the feelings, and was more dependent upon execution
than expression. Bascombe yawned behind his handkerchief, and
Wingfold gazed at the profile of the player, wondering how, with such
fine features and complexion, with such a fine-shaped and well-set
head? her face should be so far short of interesting. It seemed a face
that had no story.
CHAPTER V.
A STAGGERING QUESTION.

It was time the curate should take his leave. Bascombe would go out
with him and have his last cigar. The wind had fallen, and the moon
was shining. A vague sense of contrast came over Wingfold, and as he
stepped on the pavement from the