A DEBT.

Otago Witness, 14 December 1893, Page 40

A DEBT.

By Daetii.

I only met him once. lam a life insurance agent, and I called on him in business; but he had such a winning way with him that, ere I knaw, I had achieved what half an hour before had seemed a sheer impossibility — I had opened all the fast-locked chambers of myhoarfc and poured their bitterness into his patient ear. It was a common story mine. I had loved a maiden fair and gentle, wooed her ardently, and won her sweet consent to an engagement. That was three yecors ago. Three years I had enjoyed my dream, only to see it fade to airy nothing iA tho fourth ; and I was sick and sore and melancholy, takiag no pleasure iv cimpiiriionship, in study, in manual labour, or in sportive exerci?e. My faith in human nature was thaken —in woman utterly destroyed. I mused on passages of lyric and dramatic poetry that had for their theme her weakness and her faithlessness— the utter egotism of a mood that could condemn the whole from one small individual experience never striking me ; nor my own miserable

selfishness who thought I loved yet looked at my own wound alone. I told him all, my lips at times quivering with tenderer feelings, curliDg at times sarcastical and scornful ; and when I ended he made some remark that seemed to me so thin, conventional, and commonplace, I flushed with anger, and said : " It's very plain that you have never loved." He smiled, a little flicker of a smile, aa though apart to some one near me, but behind and out of sight ; and Bis eyes shone with an unearthly light. Hs did not answer for a moment, then he turned his eyes, still shining so, full on me, and laid his hand upon my shoulder lovingly, while the faint, private smile, as I can only call it, 1-sst itself in a fuller one that played on lip and cheek, and joined the shining in his eyes, till I began to understand what the evangelists might mean by Christ's transfiguration. He was my senior by a few years only, but in that moment I became aware that I was as a child compared to him ; his body might be young, but he — yes, he was old and wise. I could have bitten out my tongue for that unlucky speech. "My boy," he said, and I did not resent the word, " my dear boy, it is you who have not loved — or, rather, you have only set your foot upon the lowest step of the great temple stair. You look upon the woman whom you love still through the glass of self." I winced a little, but he pressed my shoulder gently and smiled again, and somehow the pain went. " Bud, flower, and fruit," he murmured, thinking aloud rather than speakiDg; "bud, flower, and fruit." Then with a slight start, as though awakening from 'a reverie^he added : "Love has three stages, too. Some never get beyond the first ; some reach the second ; a few — a very few — are called unto the last. . . . You sing ? " he asked abruptly. " Yes," I replied, " a little," wondering rather at the sudden turn his talk had taken ; " only a little, but I 1 rye to listen to good music." " Then I shall sing to you," he said with a sort of quiet pleasure. He crossed the room and opened the piano (a beautiful Justin Browne), and tat down with easy grace upon a stool that I remember had for feet three tigers' heads carved finely in dark wood. O3d how these small things hang around and, as it were, enframe the greater. I remember, too, that on the top of the piano was a small, simple vase of perfectly plain glass, but shaped with true Venetian art, and in it one deep saffronhearted rose, whose perfume filled the chamber and mingled strangely with the song he sang. He sat a minute thinking, his right hand idly playiDg on the keys a plaintive German air ; thsn with the little start I spoke of, as though awakicg from some reverie, he sat erect, though not less gracefully, struck three or four rich chords, threw back his head a little, and began : I love Thee, 0 I love Thee, I love Thee more and more ; On runneth time, And still I climb To heights undreamed befoie. Once yearned I but to fold Thee Close, close against my heart ; Or weal or woe Tis heaven below So be I where thou art. The air was simple, but wonderfully expressive ; the voice, a baritone, was soft and full ; and the singer's self was in the song — words, air, and harmonies alike ; and I had said he had not loved 1 He swung half round upon the stool and leaned his elbow on the open lid of the piano, passing his fingers through the long, fine, wavy hair that had encroached too much upon his forehead. " That's where you are," he said; "I have be6n there, and every human being that has loved has been there, and every human being that will love uoto the end of time — no, no! — far down the agos I can see a day when men and women will no longer need to pass through this augusbum to the fair augusta on the other side. But we live now ; and now — and now, when people love, their first wild impulse is to cling to the beloved one— to have her ever by them. Personal presence is what they seek, and nought but personal presence satisfies. . . . God help the lovers who never get beyond 1 " He turned, and, varying the air a little, sang again : I climbed : when Thou wouldst wander Afar where Life ran strong. Thou couldst leave me, But not grieve nic, And my heart was full of song ; For I said our Houls are wedded ; Though between the world lie wide Life's steepening hill, Together still We conquer— side by side. " That's wheje you are coming to, my boy," he said, after a pause, turning half round again upon his stool and leaning on his elbow as before. " That first love of ours was but a selfish thing at bottom. We wanted the fair woman whom vi c loved to timply give herself to us, to pub her whole life in our hand?, to be beside us ever, to be ready for our kisses or with her own when we would kiss, ready to listen when we wished to talk, to talk when we desired to listen. Stic everywhere ; self underlyirg even the purest thoughts of what we would achieve for her — for was not she to be the price of our achievement? Aye, but we grow, we climb : we learn that we can not possess, that slavery is not a part of love ; wa learn that love is of the iuner, not the outer; a spiritual thing, not a material ; we learn to laugh at our old foolishness and blindness ; we see that space and time are nothing, nothing ; that unity of Soul is all. But there's a further height some have to climb to. There is a selushness of soul as well as body ; there is a slavery upon the h'gher plane as well as on the lower ; and we must learn that perfect love knows naught of self whatever." He turned to the piano once again, and, after playing softly a few ba>-s, struck into a new key, and with an air of triumph and holy gladness, as it were, sang . I climbed : more deeply, widely, Out reaching day by day, Thou break'st youth's bond And far beyond Hoai ocVbt gloiioubly away ; And L— O Lovo 1 bless Thue Ab I watch Thy flight— alone, And bond ruv knee To God and Thee Fov the days that I have known. '• For the days that I have known," h3 said again iv a sort oi solemn rapture ; and his

eyes turned for a few seconds to the far end of the room. Mine turned involuntarily also, and with a feeling of intrusion I saw that his were resting on a portrait of an intensely spiritual face — I think it was a woman's. I ro?e to gj. My heart was full to overflowing ; speech would not come, though my lips moved. He seemed to understand. He took my hand in both of his and said, " Don't say a word. God bless you ! " and presently, I scarce knew how, I found myself outside the house again— a very, very different man from what I had been ere I entered it. "A Debt," I called my story; truly a debt, " still owing, still to owe " ; yet paid with gratitude whenever I am able to pass on to others the sweet lesson learned that morning from what we call so foolishly " a chance acquaintance."