The Following of the Star: A RomanceBarclay, Florence L. (Florence Louisa)
General
The Following of the Star: A Romance
Barclay, Florence L. (Florence Louisa)
Clergy -- Fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction; Missionaries -- Fiction
"On the following day, Uncle Falcon sent for another lawyer, a young man
just opening a practice in Riversmead. He arrived with his clerk, but
only spent a very few minutes in the library, and as we have never heard
from him since, no transaction of importance can have taken place. Mr.
Inglestry had the will and the codicil.
"A few nights later, I was summoned to my uncle's room. He neither spoke
nor moved again; but his eyes were still bright beneath the bushy
eyebrows. He knew me to the end. Those living eyes, in the already dead
body, seemed to say: 'Diana, I shall win.'
"At dawn, the brave, dauntless soul left the body, which had long
clogged it, and launched out into the Unknown. My first conscious prayer
was: that he might not there meet either my father or my mother, but
some noble kindred spirit, worthy of him. Cousin David, you would have
liked Uncle Falcon."
"I am sure I should have," said David Rivers.
"Go into the library," commanded Diana, "the door opposite the
dining-room, and study the portrait of him hanging over the
mantel-piece, painted by a famous artist, two years ago."
David went.
Diana rang, and sent for a glass of water; went to the window, and
looked out; crossed to a mirror, and nervously smoothed her abundant
hair. Hitherto she had been cantering smoothly over open country. Now
she was approaching the leap. She must keep her nerve--or she would find
herself riding for a fall.
"Did you notice his eyes?" she asked, as David sat down again.
"Yes," he answered; "wonderful eyes; bright, as golden amber. You must
not be offended--you would not be, if you could know how beautiful they
were--but the only eyes I ever saw at all like them, belonged to a
_Macacus Cynomolgus_, a little African monkey--who was a great pet of
mine."
"I quite understand," said Diana. "I know the eyes of that species of
monkey. Now, tell me? Did Uncle Falcon's amber eyes say anything to
you?"
"Yes," said David. "It must have been simply owing to all you have told
me. But, the longer I looked at them--the more clearly they said: 'I
shall win.'"
"Well, now listen," said Diana, "if my history does not weary you. When
Mr. Inglestry produced Uncle Falcon's will, he had left everything to
me: Riverscourt, the whole estate, the four livings of which he held the
patronage, and--his immense fortune. Cousin David, I am so rich that I
have not yet learned how to spend my money. I want you to help me. I
have indeed the gift of gold to offer to the King. I wish you to have,
at once, all you require for the church, the schools, the
printing-press, and the boat, of which you spoke. And then, I wish you
to have a thousand a year--two, if you need them--for the current
expenses of your work, and to enable you to have a colleague. Will you
accept this, Cousin David, from a grateful heart, guided by you, led by
the Star, and able to-day to offer it to the King?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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