Page:Watch and Ward (Boston, Houghton, Osgood and Company, 1878).djvu/139

136 "You have heard me preach."

"Yes, a year ago, when I was a silly little girl. I want to hear you again."

"No, I have gained my crown, I propose to keep it. I would rather not be found out. Besides, I am not preaching now; I am resting. Some people think me a clergyman, Nora," he said, lowering his voice with a hint of mock humility. "But do you know you are formidable, with your fierce friendships and your jealous suspicions? If you doubt of me, well and good. Let me walk like an Homeric god in a cloud; without my cloud, I should be sadly ungodlike. Indeed, for that matter, I doubt of myself. But I don't really undervalue Roger. I love him, I admire him, I envy him. I would give the world to be able to exchange my restless imagination for his silent, sturdy usefulness. I feel as if I were toiling in the sun, and he were sitting under green trees resting from an effort which he has never needed to make. Well, virtue, I suppose, is welcome to the shade. It 's cool, but it 's dreadfully obscure! People are free to find out the best and the worst of me! Here I stand, with all my imperfections on my head; tricked out with a surplice, baptized with a reverend, (Heaven save the mark!) equipped with platform and pulpit and text and audience,—erected into a mouthpiece of the spiritual aspirations of mankind. Well, I confess our sins; that 's good humble-minded work. And I must say, in justice, that when once I don my surplice (I insist on the surplice, I can do nothing without it) and mount into the pupit, I feel conscious of a certain power. They call it eloquence; I suppose it is. I don't know what it 's worth, but they seem to like it."