The Old Helmet Volume II Part 59

"You have native helpers--?" she said gently.

"Praise the Lord for what they are! but we want missionaries. We want help from England. We cannot get it from the Colonies--not fast enough.

Eleanor,"--and he stopped short and faced her--"a few months ago, to give you another instance, I was beholder of such a scene as this. I was to preach to a community that were for the first time publicly renouncing heathenism. It was Sunday."--Mr. Rhys spoke slowly, evidently exercising some control over himself; how often Eleanor had seen him do that in the pulpit!--

"I stood on the sh.o.r.es of a bay, reefed in from the ocean. I wish I could put the scene before you! On the land side, one of the most magnificent landscapes stretched back into the country, with almost every sort of natural beauty. Before me the bay, with ten large canoes moored in it. An island in the bay, I remember, caught the light beautifully; and beyond that there was the white fence of breakers on the reef barrier. The smallest of the canoes would hold a hundred men; they were the fleet of Thakomban, one of Fiji's fiercest kings formerly, with himself and his warriors on board.

"My preaching place was on what had been the dancing grounds of a village. I had a mat stretched on three poles for an awning--such a mat as they make for sails;--and around me were nine others prepared in like manner. This was my chapel. Just at my left hand was a spot of ground where were ten boiling springs; and until that Sunday, one of them had been the due appointed place for cooking human bodies. That was the place and the preparation I looked at in the still Sunday morning, before service time.

"At that time, the time appointed for service, a drum was beat and the conch sh.e.l.l blown; the same sh.e.l.l which had been used to give the war call. Directly all those canoes were covered with men, and they were plunging into the water and wading to sh.o.r.e. These were Thakomban and his warriors. Not blacked and stripped and armed for fighting, but washed and clothed. They were stopping in that place on their way somewhere else, and now coming and gathering to hear the preaching. On the other side came a procession from the village; and down every hillside and along every path, I could see scattering groups and lines of comers from the neighbouring country. _These_ were the heathen inhabitants, coming up now to hear the truth and profess by a public act of wors.h.i.+p that they were heathens no longer. They all gathered round me there under the mat awnings, and sat on the gra.s.s looking up to hear, while I told them of Jesus."

Mr. Rhys's voice was choked and he broke off abruptly. Eleanor guessed how he had talked to that audience; she could see it in his flus.h.i.+ng face and quivering lip. She could not find a word to say, and let him lead her in silence and slowly away from the chapel and towards the mission house. Before entering the plantation again, Eleanor stopped and said in a low voice,

"What can I do?"

He gave her a look of that moved sweetness she had seen in him all day, and answered with his usual abruptness,

"You can pray."

"I do that."

"Pray as Paul prayed--for your mother, and for Julia, and for Fiji, and for me. Do you know how that was?"

"I know what some of his prayers were."

"Yes, but I never thought how Paul prayed, until the other day. You must put the scattered hints together. Wait until we are at home--I will shew you."

He pushed open the wicket and they went in; and the rest of the evening Eleanor talked to Mrs. Amos or to Mr. Balliol; she sheered off a little from his wife. There was plenty of interesting conversation going on with one and another; but Eleanor had a little the sense of being to that lady an object of observation, and drew into a corner or into the shade as much as she could.

"Your wife is very handsome, brother Rhys," Mrs. Balliol remarked in an aside, towards the end of the evening.

"That is hardly much praise from you, sister Balliol," he answered gravely. "I know you do not set much store by appearances."

"She is very young!"

Both looked over to the opposite corner where Eleanor was talking to Mrs. Amos, sitting on a low seat and looking up; a little drawn back into the shade, yet not so shaded but that the womanly modest sweetness of her face could be seen well enough. Mr. Rhys made no answer.

"I judge, brother Rhys, that she has been brought up in the great world,"--Mrs. Balliol went on, looking across to the ruffled sleeve.

"She is not in it now," Mr. Rhys observed quietly.

"No;--she is in good hands. But, brother Rhys, do you think our sister understands exactly what sort of work she has come to do here?"

"She is teachable," he answered with great imperturbability.

"Well, you will be able to train her, if she wants it. I am glad to know she is in such good hands. I think she has hardly yet a just notion of what lies before her, brother Rhys."

"When did you make your observations?"

"She was with me, you know--you left her with me this morning. We were alone, and we had a little conversation."

"Mrs. Balliol, do you think a just notion of _anything_ call be formed in half an hour?"

His question was rather grave, and the lady's eyes wavered from meeting his. She fidgeted a little.

"O you know best, of course," she said; "I have had very little opportunity--I only judged from the want of seriousness; but that might have been from some other cause. You must excuse me, if I spoke too frankly."

"You can never do that to me," he said. "Thank you, sister Balliol. I will take care of her."

Mrs. Balliol was rea.s.sured. But neither during their walk home nor ever after, did Mr. Rhys tell Eleanor of this little bit of talk that had concerned her.

CHAPTER XX.

AT WORK.

"My Lady comes; my Lady goes; he can see her day by day, And bless his eyes with her beauty, and with blessings strew her way."

The breakfast-table was as much of a mystery to Eleanor as the dinner had been. Not because it looked so homelike; though in the early morning the doors and windows were all open and the sunlight streaming through on Mrs. Caxton's china cups and silver spoons. It all looked foreign enough yet, among those palm-fern pillars, and on the Fijian mat with its border made of red worsted ends and little white feathers.

The basket of fruit, too, on the table, did not look like England. But the tea was unexceptionable, and there was a piece of fresh fish as perfectly broiled as if it had been brought over by some genius or fairy, smoking hot, from an English gridiron. And in the order and arrangements of the table, there had been something more than native skill and taste, Eleanor was sure.

"It seems to me, Mr. Rhys," she said, "that the Fijians are remarkably good cooks!"

"Uncommon, for savages," said Mr. Rhys with perfect gravity.

"This fish is excellent."

"There is no better fish-market in the world, for variety and abundance, than we have here."

"But I mean, it is broiled just like an English fish. Isaac Walton himself would be satisfied with it."

"Isaac Walton never saw such fis.h.i.+ng as is carried on here. The natives are at home in the water from their childhood--men and women both;--and the women do a good deal of the fis.h.i.+ng. But the serious business is the turtle fis.h.i.+ng. It is a hand to hand conflict. The men plunge into the water and grapple bodily with the turtle, after they have brought them into an enclosure with their nets. Four or five men lay hold of one, if it is a large fellow, and they struggle together under water till the turtle thinks he has the worst of the bargain, and concludes to come to the surface."

"Does not the turtle sometimes get the better?"

"Sometimes."

"Mr. Rhys, have you any particular duty to-day?"

"I don't see how you can keep up that form of expression!" said he, with a comic gravity of dislike.

"Why not?"

"It is not treating me with proper confidence."

Her look in reply was so very pretty, both blus.h.i.+ng and winsome, that the corners of his mouth were obliged to give way.