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Title: The Seaboard Parish, Complete

Author: George MacDonald

Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8562]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on July 23, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEABOARD PARISH, COMPLETE ***




Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks
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THE SEABOARD PARISH

BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, LL.D.

VOL. I.




CONTENTS OF VOL. I.




   I. HOMILETIC
  II. CONSTANCE'S BIRTHDAY
 III. THE SICK CHAMBER
  IV. A SUNDAY EVENING
   V. MY DREAM
  VI. THE KEW BABY
 VII. ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING
VIII. THEODORA'S DOOM
  IX. A SPRING CHAPTER
   X. AN IMPORTANT LETTER
  XI. CONNIE'S DREAM
 XII. THE JOURNEY
XIII. WHAT WE DID WHEN WE ARRIVED
 XIV. MORE ABOUT KILKHAVEN
  XV. THE OLD CHURCH
 XVI. CONNIE'S WATCH-TOWER
XVII. MY FIRST SERMON IN THE SEABOARD PARISH





CHAPTER I.

HOMILETIC.


Dear Friends,--I am beginning a new book like an old sermon; but, as you
know, I have been so accustomed to preach all my life, that whatever I say
or write will more or less take the shape of a sermon; and if you had not
by this time learned at least to bear with my oddities, you would not have
wanted any more of my teaching. And, indeed, I did not think you would want
any more. I thought I had bidden you farewell. But I am seated once again
at my writing-table, to write for you--with a strange feeling, however,
that I am in the heart of some curious, rather awful acoustic contrivance,
by means of which the words which I have a habit of whispering over to
myself as I write them, are heard aloud by multitudes of people whom I
cannot see or hear. I will favour the fancy, that, by a sense of your
presence, I may speak the more truly, as man to man.

But let me, for a moment, suppose that I am your grandfather, and that you
have all come to beg for a story; and that, therefore, as usually happens
in such cases, I am sitting with a puzzled face, indicating a more puzzled
mind. I know that there are a great many stories in the holes and corners
of my brain; indeed, here is one, there is one, peeping out at me like a
rabbit; but alas, like a rabbit, showing me almost at the same instant the
tail-end of it, and vanishing with a contemptuous _thud_ of its hind
feet on the ground. For I must have suitable regard to the desires of my
children. It is a fine thing to be able to give people what they want, if
at the same time you can give them what you want. To give people what they
want, would sometimes be to give them only dirt and poison. To give them
what you want, might be to set before them something of which they could
not eat a mouthful. What both you and I want, I am willing to think, is a
dish of good wholesome venison. Now I suppose my children around me are
neither young enough nor old enough to care about a fairy tale, go
that will not do. What they want is, I believe, something that I know
about--that has happened to myself. Well, I confess, that is the kind of
thing I like best to hear anybody talk to me about. Let anyone tell me
something that has happened to himself, especially if he will give me a
peep into how his heart took it, as it sat in its own little room with the
closed door, and that person will, so telling, absorb my attention: he has
something true and genuine and valuable to communicate. They are mostly old
people that can do so. Not that young people have nothing happen to them;
but that only when they grow old, are they able to see things right, to
disentangle confusions, and judge righteous judgment. Things which at the
time appeared insignificant or wearisome, then give out the light that was
in them, show their own truth, interest, and influence: they are far enough
off to be seen. It is not when we are nearest to anything that we know best
what it is. How I should like to write a story for old people! The young
are always having stories written for them. Why should not the old people
come in for a share? A story without a young person in it at all! Nobody
under fifty admitted! It could hardly be a fairy tale, could it? Or a
love story either? I am not so sure about that. The worst of it would be,
however, that hardly a young person would read it. Now, we old people would
not like that. We can read young people's books and enjoy them: they would
not try to read old men's books or old women's books; they would be so sure
of their being dry. My dear old brothers and sisters, we know better, do we
not? We have nice old jokes, with no end of fun in them; only they cannot
see the fun. We have strange tales, that we know to be true, and which look
more and more marvellous every time we turn them over again; only
somehow they do not belong to the ways of this year--I was going to say
_week_,--and so the young people generally do not care to hear them. I have
had one pale-faced boy, to be sure, who will sit at his mother's feet, and
listen for hours to what took place before he was born. To him his mother's
wedding-gown was as old as Eve's coat of skins. But then he was young
enough not yet to have had a chance of losing the childhood common to the
young and the old. Ah! I should like to write for you, old men, old women,
to help you to read the past, to help you to look for the future. Now is
your salvation nearer than when you believed; for, however your souls may
be at peace, however your quietness and confidence may give you strength,
in the decay of your earthly tabernacle, in the shortening of its cords, in
the weakening of its stakes, in the rents through which you see the stars,
you have yet your share in the cry of the creation after the sonship. But
the one thing I should keep saying to you, my companions in old age, would
be, "Friends, let us not grow old." Old age is but a mask; let us not call
the mask the face. Is the acorn old, because its cup dries and drops it
from its hold--because its skin has grown brown and cracks in the earth?
Then only is a man growing old when he ceases to have sympathy with the
young. That is a sign that his heart has begun to wither. And that is a
dreadful kind of old age. The heart needs never be old. Indeed it should
always be growing younger. Some of us feel younger, do we not, than when
we were nine or ten? It is not necessary to be able to play at leapfrog to
enjoy the game. There are young creatures whose turn it is, and perhaps
whose duty it would be, to play at leap-frog if there was any necessity for
putting the matter in that light; and for us, we have the privilege, or if
we will not accept the privilege, then I say we have the duty, of enjoying
their leap-frog. But if we must withdraw in a measure from sociable
relations with our fellows, let it be as the wise creatures that creep
aside and wrap themselves up and lay themselves by that their wings may
grow and put on the lovely hues of their coming resurrection. Such a
withdrawing is in the name of youth. And while it is pleasant--no one knows
how pleasant except him who experiences it--to sit apart and see the drama
of life going on around him, while his feelings are calm and free, his
vision clear, and his judgment righteous, the old man must ever be ready,
should the sweep of action catch him in its skirts, to get on his tottering
old legs, and go with brave heart to do the work of a true man, none the
less true that his hands tremble, and that he would gladly return to his
chimney-corner. If he is never thus called out, let him examine himself,
lest he should be falling into the number of those that say, "I go, sir,"
and go not; who are content with thinking beautiful things in an Atlantis,
Oceana, Arcadia, or what it may be, but put not forth one of their fingers
to work a salvation in the earth. Better than such is the man who, using
just weights and a true balance, sells good flour, and never has a thought
of his own.

I have been talking--to my reader is it? or to my supposed group of
grandchildren? I remember--to my companions in old age. It is time I
returned to the company who are hearing my whispers at the other side of
the great thundering gallery. I take leave of my old friends with one word:
We have yet a work to do, my friends; but a work we shall never do aright
after ceasing to understand the new generation. We are not the men, neither
shall wisdom die with us. The Lord hath not forsaken his people because the
young ones do not think just as the old ones choose. The Lord has something
fresh to tell them, and is getting them ready to receive his message. When
we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world
is over. It might end more honourably.

Now, readers in general, I have had time to consider what to tell you
about, and how to begin. My story will be rather about my family than
myself now. I was as it were a little withdrawn, even by the time of which
I am about to write. I had settled into a gray-haired, quite elderly, yet
active man--young still, in fact, to what I am now. But even then, though
my faith had grown stronger, life had grown sadder, and needed all my
stronger faith; for the vanishing of beloved faces, and the trials of them
that are dear, will make even those that look for a better country both for
themselves and their friends, sad, though it will be with a preponderance
of the first meaning of the word _sad_, which was _settled_, _thoughtful_.

I am again seated in the little octagonal room, which I have made my study
because I like it best. It is rather a shame, for my books cover over every
foot of the old oak panelling. But they make the room all the pleasanter
to the eye, and after I am gone, there is the old oak, none the worse, for
anyone who prefers it to books.

I intend to use as the central portion of my present narrative the history
of a year during part of which I took charge of a friend's parish, while
my brother-in-law, Thomas Weir, who was and is still my curate, took the
entire charge of Marshmallows. What led to this will soon appear. I will
try to be minute enough in my narrative to make my story interesting,
although it will cost me suffering to recall some of the incidents I have
to narrate.






CHAPTER II.

CONSTANCE'S BIRTHDAY.





Was it from observation of nature in its association with human nature, or
from artistic feeling alone, that Shakspere so often represents Nature's
mood as in harmony with the mood of the principal actors in his drama? I
know I have so often found Nature's mood in harmony with my own, even
when she had nothing to do with forming mine, that in looking back I have
wondered at the fact. There may, however, be some self-deception about it.
At all events, on the morning of my Constance's eighteenth birthday, a
lovely October day with a golden east, clouds of golden foliage about the
ways, and an air that seemed filled with the ether of an _aurum potabile_,
there came yet an occasional blast of wind, which, without being absolutely
cold, smelt of winter, and made one draw one's shoulders together with the
sense of an unfriendly presence. I do not think Constance felt it at all,
however, as she stood on the steps in her riding-habit, waiting till the
horses made their appearance. It had somehow grown into a custom with us
that each of the children, as his or her birthday came round, should be
king or queen for that day, and, subject to the veto of father and mother,
should have everything his or her own way. Let me say for them, however,
that in the matter of choosing the dinner, which of course was included
in the royal prerogative, I came to see that it was almost invariably the
favourite dishes of others of the family that were chosen, and not those
especially agreeable to the royal palate. Members of families where
children have not been taught from their earliest years that the great
privilege of possession is the right to bestow, may regard this as an
improbable assertion; but others will know that it might well enough be
true, even if I did not say that so it was. But there was always the choice
of some individual treat, which was determined solely by the preference of
the individual in authority. Constance had chosen "a long ride with papa."

I suppose a parent may sometimes be right when he speaks with admiration of
his own children. The probability of his being correct is to be determined
by the amount of capacity he has for admiring other people's children.
However this may be in my own case, I venture to assert that Constance did
look very lovely that morning. She was fresh as the young day: we were
early people--breakfast and prayers were over, and it was nine o'clock as
she stood on the steps and I approached her from the lawn.

"O, papa! isn't it jolly?" she said merrily.

"Very jolly indeed, my dear," I answered, delighted to hear the word from
the lips of my gentle daughter. She very seldom used a slang word, and when
she did, she used it like a lady. Shall I tell you what she was like? Ah!
you could not see her as I saw her that morning if I did. I will, however,
try to give you a general idea, just in order that you and I should not be
picturing to ourselves two very different persons while I speak of her.

She was rather little, and so slight that she looked tall. I have often
observed that the impression of height is an affair of proportion, and has
nothing to do with feet and inches. She was rather fair in complexion,
with her mother's blue eyes, and her mother's long dark wavy hair. She
was generally playful, and took greater liberties with me than any of the
others; only with her liberties, as with her slang, she knew instinctively
when, where, and how much. For on the borders of her playfulness there
seemed ever to hang a fringe of thoughtfulness, as if she felt that the
present moment owed all its sparkle and brilliance to the eternal sunlight.
And the appearance was not in the least a deceptive one. The eternal was
not far from her--none the farther that she enjoyed life like a bird, that
her laugh was merry, that her heart was careless, and that her voice rang
through the house--a sweet soprano voice--singing snatches of songs (now a
street tune she had caught from a London organ, now an air from Handel
or Mozart), or that she would sometimes tease her elder sister about her
solemn and anxious looks; for Wynnie, the eldest, had to suffer for her
grandmother's sins against her daughter, and came into the world with a
troubled little heart, that was soon compelled to flee for refuge to the
rock that was higher than she. Ah! my Constance! But God was good to you
and to us in you.

"Where shall we go, Connie?" I said, and the same moment the sound of the
horses' hoofs reached us.

"Would it be too far to go to Addicehead?" she returned.

"It is a long ride," I answered.

"Too much for the pony?"

"O dear, no--not at all. I was thinking of you, not of the pony."

"I'm quite as able to ride as the pony is to carry me, papa. And I want to
get something for Wynnie. Do let us go."

"Very well, my dear," I said, and raised her to the saddle--if I may say
_raised_, for no bird ever hopped more lightly from one twig to another
than she sprung from the ground on her pony's back.

In a moment I was beside her, and away we rode.

The shadows were still long, the dew still pearly on the spiders' webs, as
we trotted out of our own grounds into a lane that led away towards the
high road. Our horses were fresh and the air was exciting; so we turned
from the hard road into the first suitable field, and had a gallop to begin
with. Constance was a good horse-woman, for she had been used to the saddle
longer than she could remember. She was now riding a tall well-bred pony,
with plenty of life--rather too much, I sometimes thought, when I was out
with Wynnie; but I never thought so when I was with Constance. Another
field or two sufficiently quieted both animals--I did not want to have all
our time taken up with their frolics--and then we began to talk.

"You are getting quite a woman now, Connie, my dear," I said.

"Quite an old grannie, papa," she answered.

"Old enough to think about what's coming next," I said gravely.

"O, papa! And you are always telling us that we must not think about the
morrow, or even the next hour. But, then, that's in the pulpit," she added,
with a sly look up at me from under the drooping feather of her pretty hat.

"You know very well what I mean, you puss," I answered. "And I don't say
one thing in the pulpit and another out of it."

She was at my horse's shoulder with a bound, as if Spry, her pony, had been
of one mind and one piece with her. She was afraid she had offended me. She
looked up into mine with as anxious a face as ever I saw upon Wynnie.

"O, thank you, papa!" she said when I smiled. "I thought I had been rude. I
didn't mean it, indeed I didn't. But I do wish you would make it a little
plainer to me. I do think about things sometimes, though you would hardly
believe it."

"What do you want made plainer, my child?" I asked.

"When we're to think, and when we're not to think," she answered.

I remember all of this conversation because of what came so soon after.

"If the known duty of to-morrow depends on the work of to-day," I answered,
"if it cannot be done right except you think about it and lay your plans
for it, then that thought is to-day's business, not to-morrow's."

"Dear papa, some of your explanations are more difficult than the things
themselves. May I be as impertinent as I like on my birthday?" she asked
suddenly, again looking up in my face.

We were walking now, and she had a hold of my horse's mane, so as to keep
her pony close up.

"Yes, my dear, as impertinent as you like--not an atom more, mind."

"Well, papa, I sometimes wish you wouldn't explain things so much. I seem
to understand you all the time you are preaching, but when I try the text
afterwards by myself, I can't make anything of it, and I've forgotten every
word you said about it."

"Perhaps that is because you have no right to understand it."

"I thought all Protestants had a right to understand every word of the
Bible," she returned.

"If they can," I rejoined. "But last Sunday, for instance, I did not expect
anybody there to understand a certain bit of my sermon, except your mamma
and Thomas Weir."

"How funny! What part of it was that?"

"O! I'm not going to tell you. You have no right to understand it. But most
likely you thought you understood it perfectly, and it appeared to you, in
consequence, very commonplace."

"In consequence of what?"

"In consequence of your thinking you understood it."

"O, papa dear! you're getting worse and worse. It's not often I ask you
anything--and on my birthday too! It is really too bad of you to bewilder
my poor little brains in this way."

"I will try to make you see what I mean, my pet. No talk about an idea that
you never had in your head at all, can make you have that idea. If you had
never seen a horse, no description even, not to say no amount of remark,
would bring the figure of a horse before your mind. Much more is this the
case with truths that belong to the convictions and feelings of the heart.
Suppose a man had never in his life asked God for anything, or thanked
God for anything, would his opinion as to what David meant in one of his
worshipping psalms be worth much? The whole thing would be beyond him. If
you have never known what it is to have care of any kind upon you, you
cannot understand what our Lord means when he tells us to take no thought
for the morrow."

"But indeed, papa, I am very full of care sometimes, though not perhaps
about to-morrow precisely. But that does not matter, does it?"

"Certainly not. Tell me what you are full of care about, my child, and
perhaps I can help you."

"You often say, papa, that half the misery in this world comes from
idleness, and that you do not believe that in a world where God is at work
every day, Sundays not excepted, it could have been intended that women any
more than men should have nothing to do. Now what am I to do? What have I
been sent into the world for? I don't see it; and I feel very useless and
wrong sometimes."

"I do not think there is very much to complain of you in that respect,
Connie. You, and your sister as well, help me very much in my parish. You
take much off your mother's hands too. And you do a good deal for the poor.
You teach your younger brothers and sister, and meantime you are learning
yourselves."

"Yes, but that's not work."

"It is work. And it is the work that is given you to do at present. And you
would do it much better if you were to look at it in that light. Not that I
have anything to complain of."

"But I don't want to stop at home and lead an easy, comfortable life, when
there are so many to help everywhere in the world."

"Is there anything better in doing something where God has not placed you,
than in doing it where he has placed you?"

"No, papa. But my sisters are quite enough for all you have for us to do at
home. Is nobody ever to go away to find the work meant for her? You won't
think, dear papa, that I want to get away from home, will you?"

"No, my dear. I believe that you are really thinking about duty. And
now comes the moment for considering the passage to which you began by
referring:--What God may hereafter require of you, you must not give
yourself the least trouble about. Everything he gives you to do, you must
do as well as ever you can, and that is the best possible preparation for
what he may want you to do next. If people would but do what they have to
do, they would always find themselves ready for what came next. And I do
not believe that those who follow this rule are ever left floundering on
the sea-deserted sands of inaction, unable to find water enough to swim
in."

"Thank you, dear papa. That's a little sermon all to myself, and I think I
shall understand it even when I think about it afterwards. Now let's have a
trot."

"There is one thing more I ought to speak about though, Connie. It is not
your moral nature alone you ought to cultivate. You ought to make yourself
as worth God's making as you possibly can. Now I am a little doubtful
whether you keep up your studies at all."

She shrugged her pretty shoulders playfully, looking up in my face again.

"I don't like dry things, papa."

"Nobody does."

"Nobody!" she exclaimed. "How do the grammars and history-books come to be
written then?"

In talking to me, somehow, the child always put on a more childish tone
than when she talked to anyone else. I am certain there was no affection in
it, though. Indeed, how could she be affected with her fault-finding old
father?

"No. Those books are exceedingly interesting to the people that make them.
Dry things are just things that you do not know enough about to care for
them. And all you learn at school is next to nothing to what you have to
learn."

"What must I do then?" she asked with a sigh. "Must I go all over my French
Grammar again? O dear! I do hate it so!"

"If you will tell me something you like, Connie, instead of something you
don't like, I may be able to give you advice. Is there nothing you are fond
of?" I continued, finding that she remained silent.

"I don't know anything in particular--that is, I don't know anything in the
way of school-work that I really liked. I don't mean that I didn't try
to do what I had to do, for I did. There was just one thing I liked--the
poetry we had to learn once a week. But I suppose gentlemen count that
silly--don't they?"

"On the contrary, my dear, I would make that liking of yours the foundation
of all your work. Besides, I think poetry the grandest thing God has given
us--though perhaps you and I might not quite agree about what poetry was
poetry enough to be counted an especial gift of God. Now, what poetry do
you like best?"

"Mrs. Hemans's, I think, papa."

"Well, very well, to begin with. 'There is,' as Mr. Carlyle said to a
friend of mine--'There is a thin vein of true poetry in Mrs. Hemans.' But
it is time you had done with thin things, however good they may be. Most
people never get beyond spoon-meat--in this world, at least, and they
expect nothing else in the world to come. I must take you in hand myself,
and see what I can do for you. It is wretched to see capable enough
creatures, all for want of a little guidance, bursting with admiration of
what owes its principal charm to novelty of form, gained at the cost of
expression and sense. Not that that applies to Mrs. Hemans. She is simple
enough, only diluted to a degree. But I hold that whatever mental food you
take should be just a little too strong for you. That implies trouble,
necessitates growth, and involves delight."

"I sha'n't mind how difficult it is if you help me, papa. But it is
anything but satisfactory to go groping on without knowing what you are
about."

I ought to have mentioned that Constance had been at school for two years,
and had only been home a month that very day, in order to account for my
knowing so little about her tastes and habits of mind. We went on talking a
little more in the same way, and if I were writing for young people only,
I should be tempted to go on a little farther with the account of what we
said to each other; for it might help some of them to see that the thing
they like best should, circumstances and conscience permitting, be made the
centre from which they start to learn; that they should go on enlarging
their knowledge all round from that one point at which God intended them to
begin. But at length we fell into a silence, a very happy one on my part;
for I was more than delighted to find that this one too of my children was
following after the truth--wanting to do what was right, namely, to obey
the word of the Lord, whether openly spoken to all, or to herself in the
voice of her own conscience and the light of that understanding which is
the candle of the Lord. I had often said to myself in past years, when
I had found myself in the company of young ladies who announced their
opinions--probably of no deeper origin than the prejudices of their
nurses--as if these distinguished them from all the world besides; who were
profound upon passion and ignorant of grace; who had not a notion whether a
dress was beautiful, but only whether it was of the newest cut--I had often
said to myself: "What shall I do if my daughters come to talk and think
like that--if thinking it can be called?" but being confident that
instruction for which the mind is not prepared only lies in a rotting
heap, producing all kinds of mental evils correspondent to the results of
successive loads of food which the system cannot assimilate, my hope had
been to rouse wise questions in the minds of my children, in place of
overwhelming their digestions with what could be of no instruction or
edification without the foregoing appetite. Now my Constance had begun to
ask me questions, and it made me very happy. We had thus come a long way
nearer to each other; for however near the affection of human animals may
bring them, there are abysses between soul and soul--the souls even of
father and daughter--over which they must pass to meet. And I do not
believe that any two human beings alive know yet what it is to love as love
is in the glorious will of the Father of lights.

I linger on with my talk, for I shrink from what I must relate.

We were going at a gentle trot, silent, along a woodland path--a brown,
soft, shady road, nearly five miles from home, our horses scattering about
the withered leaves that lay thick upon it. A good deal of underwood and
a few large trees had been lately cleared from the place. There were many
piles of fagots about, and a great log lying here and there along the side
of the path. One of these, when a tree, had been struck by lightning, and
had stood till the frosts and rains had bared it of its bark. Now it lay
white as a skeleton by the side of the path, and was, I think, the cause of
what followed. All at once my daughter's pony sprang to the other side of
the road, shying sideways; unsettled her so, I presume; then rearing and
plunging, threw her from the saddle across one of the logs of which I have
spoken. I was by her side in a moment. To my horror she lay motionless. Her
eyes were closed, and when I took her up in my arms she did not open them.
I laid her on the moss, and got some water and sprinkled her face. Then she
revived a little; but seemed in much pain, and all at once went off into
another faint. I was in terrible perplexity.

Presently a man who, having been cutting fagots at a little distance, had
seen the pony careering through the wood, came up and asked what he could
do to help me. I told him to take my horse, whose bridle I had thrown over
the latch of a gate, and ride to Oldcastle Hall, and ask Mrs. Walton to
come with the carriage as quickly as possible. "Tell her," I said, "that
her daughter has had a fall from her pony, and is rather shaken. Ride as
hard as you can go."

The man was off in a moment; and there I sat watching my poor child, for
what seemed to be a dreadfully long time before the carriage arrived. She
had come to herself quite, but complained of much pain in her back; and,
to my distress, I found that she could not move herself enough to make the
least change of her position. She evidently tried to keep up as well as she
could; but her face expressed great suffering: it was dreadfully pale, and
looked worn with a month's illness. All my fear was for her spine.

At length I caught sight of the carriage, coming through the wood as
fast as the road would allow, with the woodman on the box, directing the
coachman. It drew up, and my wife got out. She was as pale as Constance,
but quiet and firm, her features composed almost to determination. I had
never seen her look like that before. She asked no questions: there was
time enough for that afterwards. She had brought plenty of cushions and
pillows, and we did all we could to make an easy couch for the poor girl;
but she moaned dreadfully as we lifted her into the carriage. We did our
best to keep her from being shaken; but those few miles were the longest
journey I ever made in my life.

When we reached home at length, we found that Ethel, or, as we commonly
called her, using the other end of her name, Wynnie--for she was named
after her mother--had got a room on the ground-floor, usually given to
visitors, ready for her sister; and we were glad indeed not to have to
carry her up the stairs. Before my wife left, she had sent the groom off to
Addicehead for both physician and surgeon. A young man who had settled at
Marshmallows as general practitioner a year or two before, was waiting for
us when we arrived. He helped us to lay her upon a mattress in the position
in which she felt the least pain. But why should I linger over the
sorrowful detail? All agreed that the poor child's spine was seriously
injured, and that probably years of suffering were before her. Everything
was done that could be done; but she was not moved from that room for nine
months, during which, though her pain certainly grew less by degrees, her
want of power to move herself remained almost the same.

When I had left her at last a little composed, with her mother seated by
her bedside, I called my other two daughters--Wynnie, the eldest, and
Dorothy, the youngest, whom I found seated on the floor outside, one on
each side of the door, weeping--into my study, and said to them: "My
darlings, this is very sad; but you must remember that it is God's will;
and as you would both try to bear it cheerfully if it had fallen to your
lot to bear, you must try to be cheerful even when it is your sister's part
to endure."

"O, papa! poor Connie!" cried Dora, and burst into fresh tears.

Wynnie said nothing, but knelt down by my knee, and laid her cheek upon it.

"Shall I tell you what Constance said to me just before I left the room?" I
asked.

"Please do, papa."

"She whispered, 'You must try to bear it, all of you, as well as you can.
I don't mind it very much, only for you.' So, you see, if you want to make
her comfortable, you must not look gloomy and troubled. Sick people like to
see cheerful faces about them; and I am sure Connie will not suffer nearly
so much if she finds that she does not make the household gloomy."

This I had learned from being ill myself once or twice since my marriage.
My wife never came near me with a gloomy face, and I had found that it
was quite possible to be sympathetic with those of my flock who were ill
without putting on a long face when I went to see them. Of course, I do not
mean that I could, or that it was desirable that I should, look cheerful
when any were in great pain or mental distress. But in ordinary conditions
of illness a cheerful countenance is as a message of _all's well_, which
may surely be carried into a sick chamber by the man who believes that the
heart of a loving Father is at the centre of things, that he is light all
about the darkness, and that he will not only bring good out of evil
at last, but will be with the sufferer all the time, making endurance
possible, and pain tolerable. There are a thousand alleviations that people
do not often think of, coming from God himself. Would you not say, for
instance, that time must pass very slowly in pain? But have you never
observed, or has no one ever made the remark to you, how strangely fast,
even in severe pain, the time passes after all?

"We will do all we can, will we not," I went on, "to make her as
comfortable as possible? You, Dora, must attend to your little brothers,
that your mother may not have too much to think about now that she will
have Connie to nurse."

They could not say much, but they both kissed me, and went away leaving
me to understand clearly enough that they had quite understood me. I then
returned to the sick chamber, where I found that the poor child had fallen
asleep.

My wife and I watched by her bedside on alternate nights, until the pain
had so far subsided, and the fever was so far reduced, that we could allow
Wynnie to take a share in the office. We could not think of giving her
over to the care of any but one of ourselves during the night. Her chief
suffering came from its being necessary that she should keep nearly one
position on her back, because of her spine, while the external bruise and
the swelling of the muscles were in consequence so painful, that it needed
all that mechanical contrivance could do to render the position endurable.
But these outward conditions were greatly ameliorated before many days were
over.

This is a dreary beginning of my story, is it not? But sickness of all
kinds is such a common thing in the world, that it is well sometimes to
let our minds rest upon it, lest it should take us altogether at unawares,
either in ourselves or our friends, when it comes. If it were not a good
thing in the end, surely it would not be; and perhaps before I have done my
readers will not be sorry that my tale began so gloomily. The sickness in
Judaea eighteen hundred and thirty-five years ago, or thereabouts, has no
small part in the story of him who came to put all things under our feet.
Praise be to him for evermore!

It soon became evident to me that that room was like a new and more sacred
heart to the house. At first it radiated gloom to the remotest corners; but
soon rays of light began to appear mingling with the gloom. I could see
that bits of news were carried from it to the servants in the kitchen, in
the garden, in the stable, and over the way to the home-farm. Even in the
village, and everywhere over the parish, I was received more kindly, and
listened to more willingly, because of the trouble I and my family were in;
while in the house, although we had never been anything else than a loving
family, it was easy to discover that we all drew more closely together in
consequence of our common anxiety. Previous to this, it had been no unusual
thing to see Wynnie and Dora impatient with each other; for Dora was
none the less a wild, somewhat lawless child, that she was a profoundly
affectionate one. She rather resembled her cousin Judy, in fact--whom
she called Aunt Judy, and with whom she was naturally a great favourite.
Wynnie, on the other hand, was sedate, and rather severe--more severe, I
must in justice say, with herself than with anyone else. I had sometimes
wished, it is true, that her mother, in regard to the younger children,
were more like her; but there I was wrong. For one of the great goods that
come of having two parents, is that the one balances and rectifies the
motions of the other. No one is good but God. No one holds the truth, or
can hold it, in one and the same thought, but God. Our human life is often,
at best, but an oscillation between the extremes which together make the
truth; and it is not a bad thing in a family, that the pendulums of father
and mother should differ in movement so far, that when the one is at one
extremity of the swing, the other should be at the other, so that they meet
only in the point of _indifference_, in the middle; that the predominant
tendency of the one should not be the predominant tendency of the other.
I was a very strict disciplinarian--too much so, perhaps, sometimes:
Ethelwyn, on the other hand, was too much inclined, I thought, to excuse
everything. I was law, she was grace. But grace often yielded to law, and
law sometimes yielded to grace. Yet she represented the higher; for in the
ultimate triumph of grace, in the glad performance of the command from love
of what is commanded, the law is fulfilled: the law is a schoolmaster to
bring us to Christ. I must say this for myself, however, that, although
obedience was the one thing I enforced, believing it the one thing upon
which all family economy primarily depends, yet my object always was to set
my children free from my law as soon as possible; in a word, to help them
to become, as soon as it might be, a law unto themselves. Then they would
need no more of mine. Then I would go entirely over to the mother's higher
side, and become to them, as much as in me lay, no longer law and truth,
but grace and truth. But to return to my children--it was soon evident not
only that Wynnie had grown more indulgent to Dora's vagaries, but that Dora
was more submissive to Wynnie, while the younger children began to
obey their eldest sister with a willing obedience, keeping down their
effervescence within doors, and letting it off only out of doors, or in the
out-houses.

When Constance began to recover a little, then the sacredness of that
chamber began to show itself more powerfully, radiating on all sides a yet
stronger influence of peace and goodwill. It was like a fountain of gentle
light, quieting and bringing more or less into tune all that came within
the circle of its sweetness. This brings me to speak again of my lovely
child. For surely a father may speak thus of a child of God. He cannot
regard his child as his even as a book he has written may be his. A man's
child is his because God has said to him, "Take this child and nurse it
for me." She is God's making; God's marvellous invention, to be tended
and cared for, and ministered unto as one of his precious things; a young
angel, let me say, who needs the air of this lower world to make her wings
grow. And while he regards her thus, he will see all other children in the
same light, and will not dare to set up his own against others of God's
brood with the new-budding wings. The universal heart of truth will thus
rectify, while it intensifies, the individual feeling towards one's own;
and the man who is most free from poor partisanship in regard to his own
family, will feel the most individual tenderness for the lovely human
creatures whom God has given into his own especial care and responsibility.
Show me the man who is tender, reverential, gracious towards the children
of other men, and I will show you the man who will love and tend his own
best, to whose heart his own will flee for their first refuge after God,
when they catch sight of the cloud in the wind.






CHAPTER III.

THE SICK CHAMBER.





In the course of a month there was a good deal more of light in the smile
with which my darling greeted me when I entered her room in the morning.
Her pain was greatly gone, but the power of moving her limbs had not yet
even begun to show itself.

One day she received me with a still happier smile than I had yet seen upon
her face, put out her thin white hand, took mine and kissed it, and said,
"Papa," with a lingering on the last syllable.

"What is it, my pet?" I asked.

"I am so happy!"

"What makes you so happy?" I asked again.

"I don't know," she answered. "I haven't thought about it yet. But
everything looks so pleasant round me. Is it nearly winter yet, papa? I've
forgotten all about how the time has been going."

"It is almost winter, my dear. There is hardly a leaf left on the
trees--just two or three disconsolate yellow ones that want to get away
down to the rest. They go fluttering and fluttering and trying to break
away, but they can't."

"That is just as I felt a little while ago. I wanted to die and get away,
papa; for I thought I should never be well again, and I should be in
everybody's way.--I am afraid I shall not get well, after all," she added,
and the light clouded on her sweet face.

"Well, my darling, we are in God's hands. We shall never get tired of you,
and you must not get tired of us. Would you get tired of nursing me, if I
were ill?"

"O, papa!" And the tears began to gather in her eyes.

"Then you must think we are not able to love so well as you."

"I know what you mean. I did not think of it that way. I will never think
so about it again. I was only thinking how useless I was."

"There you are quite mistaken, my dear. No living creature ever was
useless. You've got plenty to do there."

"But what have I got to do? I don't feel able for anything," she said; and
again the tears came in her eyes, as if I had been telling her to get up
and she could not.

"A great deal of our work," I answered, "we do without knowing what it is.
But I'll tell you what you have got to do: you have got to believe in God,
and in everybody in this house."

"I do, I do. But that is easy to do," she returned.

"And do you think that the work God gives us to do is never easy? Jesus
says his yoke is easy, his burden is light. People sometimes refuse to do
God's work just because it is easy. This is, sometimes, because they cannot
believe that easy work is his work; but there may be a very bad pride in
it: it may be because they think that there is little or no honour to be
got in that way; and therefore they despise it. Some again accept it with
half a heart, and do it with half a hand. But, however easy any work may
be, it cannot be well done without taking thought about it. And such
people, instead of taking thought about their work, generally take thought
about the morrow, in which no work can be done any more than in yesterday.
The Holy Present!--I think I must make one more sermon about it--although
you, Connie," I said, meaning it for a little joke, "do think that I have
said too much about it already."

"Papa, papa! do forgive me. This is a judgment on me for talking to you as
I did that dreadful morning. But I was so happy that I was impertinent."

"You silly darling!" I said. "A judgment! God be angry with you for that!
Even if it had been anything wrong, which it was not, do you think God has
no patience? No, Connie. I will tell you what seems to me much more likely.
You wanted something to do; and so God gave you something to do."

"Lying in bed and doing nothing!"

"Yes. Just lying in bed, and doing his will."

"If I could but feel that I was doing his will!"

"When you do it, then you will feel you are doing it."

"I know you are coming to something, papa. Please make haste, for my back
is getting so bad."

"I've tired you, my pet. It was very thoughtless of me. I will tell you the
rest another time," I said, rising.

"No, no. It will make me much worse not to hear it all now."

"Well, I will tell you. Be still, my darling, I won't be long. In the time
of the old sacrifices, when God so kindly told his ignorant children to
do something for him in that way, poor people were told to bring, not a
bullock or a sheep, for that was more than they could get, but a pair of
turtledoves, or two young pigeons. But now, as Crashaw the poet says,
'Ourselves become our own best sacrifice.' God wanted to teach people to
offer themselves. Now, you are poor, my pet, and you cannot offer yourself
in great things done for your fellow-men, which was the way Jesus did.
But you must remember that the two young pigeons of the poor were just as
acceptable to God as the fat bullock of the rich. Therefore you must say to
God something like this:--'O heavenly Father, I have nothing to offer
thee but my patience. I will bear thy will, and so offer my will a
burnt-offering unto thee. I will be as useless as thou pleasest.' Depend
upon it, my darling, in the midst of all the science about the world and
its ways, and all the ignorance of God and his greatness, the man or woman
who can thus say, _Thy will be done_, with the true heart of giving up is
nearer the secret of things than the geologist and theologian. And now, my
darling, be quiet in God's name."

She held up her mouth to kiss me, but did not speak, and I left her, and
sent Dora to sit with her.

In the evening, when I went into her room again, having been out in my
parish all the morning, I began to unload my budget of small events.
Indeed, we all came in like pelicans with stuffed pouches to empty them in
her room, as if she had been the only young one we had, and we must cram
her with news. Or, rather, she was like the queen of the commonwealth
sending out her messages into all parts, and receiving messages in return.
I might call her the brain of the house; but I have used similes enough for
a while.

After I had done talking, she said--

"And you have been to the school too, papa?"

"Yes. I go to the school almost every day. I fancy in such a school as ours
the young people get more good than they do in church. You know I had made
a great change in the Sunday-school just before you came home."

"I heard of that, papa. You won't let any of the little ones go to school
on the Sunday."

"No. It is too much for them. And having made this change, I feel the
necessity of being in the school myself nearly every day, that I may do
something direct for the little ones."

"And you'll have to take me up soon, as you promised, you know, papa--just
before Sprite threw me."

"As soon as you like, my dear, after you are able to read again."

"O, you must begin before that, please.--You could spare time to read a
little to me, couldn't you?" she said doubtfully, as if she feared she was
asking too much.

"Certainly, my dear; and I will begin to think about it at once."

It was in part the result of this wish of my child's that it became the
custom to gather in her room on Sunday evenings. She was quite unable for
any kind of work such as she would have had me commence with her, but I
used to take something to read to her every now and then, and always after
our early tea on Sundays.

What a thing it is to have one to speak and think about and try to find out
and understand, who is always and altogether and perfectly good! Such a
centre that is for all our thoughts and words and actions and imaginations!
It is indeed blessed to be human beings with Jesus Christ for the centre of
humanity.

In the papers wherein I am about to record the chief events of the
following years of my life, I shall give a short account of what passed at
some of these assemblies in my child's room, in the hope that it may give
my friends something, if not new, yet fresh to think about. For God has so
made us that everyone who thinks at all thinks in a way that must be more
or less fresh to everyone else who thinks, if he only have the gift of
setting forth his thoughts so that we can see what they are.

I hope my readers will not be alarmed at this, and suppose that I am about
to inflict long sermons upon them. I am not. I do hope, as I say, to teach
them something; but those whom I succeed in so teaching will share in the
delight it will give me to write about what I love most.

As far as I can remember, I will tell how this Sunday-evening class began.
I was sitting by Constance's bed. The fire was burning brightly, and the
twilight had deepened so nearly into night that it was reflected back from
the window, for the curtains had not yet been drawn. There was no light in
the room but that of the fire.

Now Constance was in the way of asking often what kind of day or night it
was, for there never was a girl more a child of nature than she. Her heart
seemed to respond at once to any and every mood of the world around her.
To her the condition of air, earth, and sky was news, and news of poetic
interest too. "What is it like?" she would often say, without any more
definite shaping of the question. This same evening she said:

"What is it like, papa?"

"It is growing dark," I answered, "as you can see. It is a still evening,
and what they call a black frost. The trees are standing as still as if
they were carved out of stone, and would snap off everywhere if the wind
were to blow. The ground is dark, and as hard as if it were of cast iron. A
gloomy night rather, my dear. It looks as if there were something upon its
mind that made it sullenly thoughtful; but the stars are coming out one
after another overhead, and the sky will be all awake soon. A strange thing
the life that goes on all night, is it not? The life of owlets, and mice,
and beasts of prey, and bats, and stars," I said, with no very categorical
arrangement, "and dreams, and flowers that don't go to sleep like the rest,
but send out their scent all night long. Only those are gone now. There are
no scents abroad, not even of the earth in such a frost as this."

"Don't you think it looks sometimes, papa, as if God turned his back on the
world, or went farther away from it for a while?"

"Tell me a little more what you mean, Connie."

"Well, this night now, this dark, frozen, lifeless night, which you have
been describing to me, isn't like God at all--is it?"

"No, it is not. I see what you mean now."

"It is just as if he had gone away and said, 'Now you shall see what you
can do without me.'

"Something like that. But do you know that English people--at least I think
so--enjoy the changeful weather of their country much more upon the whole
than those who have fine weather constantly? You see it is not enough to
satisfy God's goodness that he should give us all things richly to enjoy,
but he must make us able to enjoy them as richly as he gives them. He has
to consider not only the gift, but the receiver of the gift. He has to make
us able to take the gift and make it our own, as well as to give us the
gift. In fact, it is not real giving, with the full, that is, the divine,
meaning of giving, without it. He has to give us to the gift as well as
give the gift to us. Now for this, a break, an interruption is good, is
invaluable, for then we begin to think about the thing, and do something in
the matter ourselves. The wonder of God's teaching is that, in great part,
he makes us not merely learn, but teach ourselves, and that is far grander
than if he only made our minds as he makes our bodies."

"I think I understand you, papa. For since I have been ill, you would
wonder, if you could see into me, how even what you tell me about the world
out of doors gives me more pleasure than I think I ever had when I could go
about in it just as I liked."

"It wouldn't do that, though, you know, if you hadn't had the other first.
The pleasure you have comes as much from your memory as from my news."

"I see that, papa."

"Now can you tell me anything in history that confirms what I have been
saying?"

"I don't know anything about history, papa. The only thing that comes into
my head is what you were saying yourself the other day about Milton's
blindness."

"Ah, yes. I had not thought of that. Do you know, I do believe that God
wanted a grand poem from that man, and therefore blinded him that he might
be able to write it. But he had first trained him up to the point--given
him thirty years in which he had not to provide the bread of a single day,
only to learn and think; then set him to teach boys; then placed him at
Cromwell's side, in the midst of the tumultuous movement of public affairs,
into which the late student entered with all his heart and soul; and then
last of all he cast the veil of a divine darkness over him, sent him into a
chamber far more retired than that in which he laboured at Cambridge, and
set him like the nightingale to sing darkling. The blackness about him was
just the great canvas which God gave him to cover with forms of light and
music. Deep wells of memory burst upwards from below; the windows of heaven
were opened from above; from both rushed the deluge of song which flooded
his soul, and which he has poured out in a great river to us."

"It was rather hard for poor Milton, though, wasn't it, papa?"

"Wait till he says so, my dear. We are sometimes too ready with our
sympathy, and think things a great deal worse than those who have to
undergo them. Who would not be glad to be struck with _such_ blindness as
Milton's?"

"Those that do not care about his poetry, papa," answered Constance, with a
deprecatory smile.

"Well said, my Connie. And to such it never can come. But, if it please
God, you will love Milton before you are about again. You can't love one
you know nothing about."

"I have tried to read him a little."

"Yes, I daresay. You might as well talk of liking a man whose face you had
never seen, because you did not approve of the back of his coat. But you
and Milton together have led me away from a far grander instance of what we
had been talking about. Are you tired, darling?"

"Not the least, papa. You don't mind what I said about Milton?"

"Not at all, my dear. I like your honesty. But I should mind very much if
you thought, with your ignorance of Milton, that your judgment of him was
more likely to be right than mine, with my knowledge of him."

"O, papa! I am only sorry that I am not capable of appreciating him."

"There you are wrong again. I think you are quite capable of appreciating
him. But you cannot appreciate what you have never seen. You think of him
as dry, and think you ought to be able to like dry things. Now he is not
dry, and you ought not to be able to like dry things. You have a figure
before you in your fancy, which is dry, and which you call Milton. But it
is no more Milton than your dull-faced Dutch doll, which you called after
her, was your merry Aunt Judy. But here comes your mamma; and I haven't
said what I wanted to say yet."

"But surely, husband, you can say it all the same," said my wife. "I will
go away if you can't."

"I can say it all the better, my love. Come and sit down here beside me. I
was trying to show Connie--"

"You did show me, papa."

"Well, I was showing Connie that a gift has sometimes to be taken away
again before we can know what it is worth, and so receive it right."

Ethelwyn sighed. She was always more open to the mournful than the glad.
Her heart had been dreadfully wrung in her youth.

"And I was going on to give her the greatest instance of it in human
history. As long as our Lord was with his disciples, they could not see
him right: he was too near them. Too much light, too many words, too much
revelation, blinds or stupefies. The Lord had been with them long enough.
They loved him dearly, and yet often forgot his words almost as soon as he
said them. He could not get it into them, for instance, that he had not
come to be a king. Whatever he said, they shaped it over again after their
own fancy; and their minds were so full of their own worldly notions of
grandeur and command, that they could not receive into their souls the gift
of God present before their eyes. Therefore he was taken away, that his
Spirit, which was more himself than his bodily presence, might come into
them--that they might receive the gift of God into their innermost being.
After he had gone out of their sight, and they might look all around and
down in the grave and up in the air, and not see him anywhere--when they
thought they had lost him, he began to come to them again from the other
side--from the inside. They found that the image of him which his presence
with them had printed in light upon their souls, began to revive in the
dark of his absence; and not that only, but that in looking at it without
the overwhelming of his bodily presence, lines and forms and meanings began
to dawn out of it which they had never seen before. And his words came back
to them, no longer as they had received them, but as he meant them. The
spirit of Christ filling their hearts and giving them new power, made them
remember, by making them able to understand, all that he had said to them.
They were then always saying to each other, 'You remember how;' whereas
before, they had been always staring at each other with astonishment and
something very near incredulity, while he spoke to them. So that after he
had gone away, he was really nearer to them than he had been before. The
meaning of anything is more than its visible presence. There is a soul in
everything, and that soul is the meaning of it. The soul of the world
and all its beauty has come nearer to you, my dear, just because you are
separated from it for a time."

"Thank you, dear papa. I do like to get a little sermon all to myself now
and then. That is another good of being ill."

"You don't mean me to have a share in it, then, Connie, do you?" said my
wife, smiling at her daughter's pleasure.

"O, mamma! I should have thought you knew all papa had got to say by this
time. I daresay he has given you a thousand sermons all to yourself."

"Then you suppose, Connie, that I came into the world with just a boxful of
sermons, and after I had taken them all out there were no more. I should be
sorry to think I should not have a good many new things to say by this time
next year."

"Well, papa, I wish I could he sure of knowing more next year."

"Most people do learn, whether they will or not. But the kind of learning
is very different in the two cases."

"But I want to ask you one question, papa: do you think that we should not
know Jesus better now if he were to come and let us see him--as he came to
the disciples so long, long ago? I wish it were not so long ago."

"As to the time, it makes no difference whether it was last year or two
thousand years ago. The whole question is how much we understand, and
understanding, obey him. And I do not think we should be any nearer that if
he came amongst us bodily again. If we should, he would come. I believe we
should be further off it."

"Do you think, then," said Connie, in an almost despairing tone, as if I
were the prophet of great evil, "that we shall never, never, never see
him?"

"That is _quite_ another thing, my Connie. That is the heart of my hopes by
day and my dreams by night. To behold the face of Jesus seems to me the one
thing to be desired. I do not know that it is to be prayed for; but I think
it will be given us as the great bounty of God, so soon as ever we are
capable of it. That sight of the face of Jesus is, I think, what is meant
by his glorious appearing, but it will come as a consequence of his spirit
in us, not as a cause of that spirit in us. The pure in heart shall see
God. The seeing of him will be the sign that we are like him, for only by
being like him can we see him as he is. All the time that he was with them,
the disciples never saw him as he was. You must understand a man before you
can see and read his face aright; and as the disciples did not understand
our Lord's heart, they could neither see nor read his face aright. But when
we shall be fit to look that man in the face, God only knows."

"Then do you think, papa, that we, who have never seen him, could know him
better than the disciples? I don't mean, of course, better than they knew
him after he was taken away from them, but better than they knew him while
he was still with them?"

"Certainly I do, my dear."

"O, papa! Is it possible? Why don't we all, then?"

"Because we won't take the trouble; that is the reason."

"O, what a grand thing to think! That would be worth living--worth being
ill for. But how? how? Can't you help me? Mayn't one human being help
another?"

"It is the highest duty one human being owes to another. But whoever wants
to learn must pray, and think, and, above all, obey--that is simply, do
what Jesus says."

There followed a little silence, and I could hear my child sobbing. And the
tears stood in; my wife's eyes--tears of gladness to hear her daughter's
sobs.

"I will try, papa," Constance said at last. "But you _will_ help me?"

"That I will, my love. I will help you in the best way I know; by trying to
tell you what I have heard and learned about him--heard and learned of the
Father, I hope and trust. It is coming near to the time when he was born;--
but I have spoken quite as long as you are able to bear to-night."

"No, no, papa. Do go on."

"No, my dear; no more to-night. That would be to offend against the very
truth I have been trying to set forth to you. But next Sunday--you have
plenty to think about till then--I will talk to you about the baby Jesus;
and perhaps I may find something more to help you by that time, besides
what I have got to say now."

"But," said my wife, "don't you think, Connie, this is too good to keep all
to ourselves? Don't you think we ought to have Wynnie and Dora in?"

"Yes, yes, mamma. Do let us have them in. And Harry and Charlie too."

"I fear they are rather young yet," I said. "Perhaps it might do them
harm."

"It would be all the better for us to have them anyhow," said Ethelwyn,
smiling.

"How do you mean, my dear?"

"Because you will say things more simply if you have them by you. Besides,
you always say such things to children as delight grown people, though they
could never get them out of you."

It was a wife's speech, reader. Forgive me for writing it.

"Well," I said, "I don't mind them coming in, but I don't promise to say
anything directly to them. And you must let them go away the moment they
wish it."

"Certainly," answered my wife; and so the matter was arranged.






CHAPTER IV.

A SUNDAY EVENING.





When I went in to see Constance the next Sunday morning before going to
church, I knew by her face that she was expecting the evening. I took care
to get into no conversation with her during the day, that she might be
quite fresh. In the evening, when I went into her room again with my Bible
in my hand, I found all our little company assembled. There was a glorious
fire, for it was very cold, and the little ones were seated on the rug
before it, one on each side of their mother; Wynnie sat by the further side
of the bed, for she always avoided any place or thing she thought another
might like; and Dora sat by the further chimney-corner, leaving the space
between the fire and my chair open that I might see and share the glow.

"The wind is very high, papa," said Constance, as I seated myself beside
her.

"Yes, my dear. It has been blowing all day, and since sundown it has blown
harder. Do you like the wind, Connie?"

"I am afraid I do like it. When it roars like that in the chimneys, and
shakes the windows with a great rush as if it _would_ get into the house
and tear us to pieces, and then goes moaning away into the woods and
grumbles about in them till it grows savage again, and rushes up at us with
fresh fury, I am afraid I delight in it. I feel so safe in the very jaws of
danger."

"Why, you are quite poetic, Connie," said Wynnie.

"Don't laugh at me, Wynnie. Mind I'm an invalid, and I can't bear to be
laughed at," returned Connie, half laughing herself, and a little more than
a quarter crying.

Wynnie rose and kissed her, whispered something to her which made her laugh
outright, and then sat down again.

"But tell me, Connie," I said, "why you are _afraid_ you enjoy hearing the
wind about the house."

"Because it must be so dreadful for those that are out in it."

"Perhaps not quite so bad as we think. You must not suppose that God has
forgotten them, or cares less for them than for you because they are out in
the wind."

"But if we thought like that, papa," said Wynnie, "shouldn't we come to
feel that their sufferings were none of our business?"

"If our benevolence rests on the belief that God is less loving than we, it
will come to a bad end somehow before long, Wynnie."

"Of course, I could not think that," she returned.

"Then your kindness would be such that you dared not, in God's name, think
hopefully for those you could not help, lest you should, believing in his
kindness, cease to help those whom you could help! Either God intended that
there should be poverty and suffering, or he did not. If he did not
intend it--for similar reasons to those for which he allows all sorts of
evils--then there is nothing between but that we should sell everything
that we have and give it away to the poor."

"Then why don't we?" said Wynnie, looking truth itself in my face.

"Because that is not God's way, and we should do no end of harm by so
doing. We should make so many more of those who will not help themselves
who will not be set free from themselves by rising above themselves. We are
not to gratify our own benevolence at the expense of its object--not to
save our own souls as we fancy, by putting other souls into more danger
than God meant for them."

"It sounds hard doctrine from your lips, papa," said Wynnie.

"Many things will look hard in so many words, which yet will be found
kindness itself when they are interpreted by a higher theory. If the one
thing is to let people have everything they want, then of course everyone
ought to be rich. I have no doubt such a man as we were reading of in the
papers the other day, who saw his servant girl drown without making the
least effort to save her, and then bemoaned the loss of her labour for the
coming harvest, thinking himself ill-used in her death, would hug his own
selfishness on hearing my words, and say, 'All right, parson! Every man for
himself! I made my own money, and they may make theirs!' _You_ know that is
not exactly the way I should think or act with regard to my neighbour. But
if it were only that I have seen such noble characters cast in the mould of
poverty, I should be compelled to regard poverty as one of God's powers in
the world for raising the children of the kingdom, and to believe that it
was not because it could not be helped that our Lord said, 'The poor ye
have always with you.' But what I wanted to say was, that there can be no
reason why Connie should not enjoy what God has given her, although he has
not thought fit to give as much to everybody; and above all, that we shall
not help those right whom God gives us to help, if we do not believe that
God is caring for every one of them as much as he is caring for every one
of us. There was once a baby born in a stable, because his poor mother
could get no room in a decent house. Where she lay I can hardly think. They
must have made a bed of hay and straw for her in the stall, for we know the
baby's cradle was the manger. Had God forsaken them? or would they not have
been more _comfortable_, if that was the main thing, somewhere else? Ah! if
the disciples, who were being born about the same time of fisher-fathers
and cottage-mothers, to get ready for him to call and teach by the time he
should be thirty years of age--if they had only been old enough, and had
known that he was coming--would they not have got everything ready for him?
They would have clubbed their little savings together, and worked day and
night, and some rich women would have helped them, and they would have
dressed the baby in fine linen, and got him the richest room their money
would get, and they would have made the gold that the wise men brought into
a crown for his little head, and would have burnt the frankincense before
him. And so our little manger-baby would have been taken away from us. No
more the stable-born Saviour--no more the poor Son of God born for us all,
as strong, as noble, as loving, as worshipful, as beautiful as he was poor!
And we should not have learned that God does not care for money; that if he
does not give more of it it is not that it is scarce with him, or that he
is unkind, but that he does not value it himself. And if he sent his own
son to be not merely brought up in the house of the carpenter of a little
village, but to be born in the stable of a village inn, we need not suppose
because a man sleeps under a haystack and is put in prison for it next day,
that God does not care for him."

"But why did Jesus come so poor, papa?"

"That he might be just a human baby. That he might not be distinguished
by this or by that accident of birth; that he might have nothing but a
mother's love to welcome him, and so belong to everybody; that from the
first he might show that the kingdom of God and the favour of God lie not
in these external things at all--that the poorest little one, born in the
meanest dwelling, or in none at all, is as much God's own and God's care
as if he came in a royal chamber with colour and shine all about him. Had
Jesus come amongst the rich, riches would have been more worshipped
than ever. See how so many that count themselves good Christians honour
possession and family and social rank, and I doubt hardly get rid of them
when they are all swept away from them. The furthest most of such reach is
to count Jesus an exception, and therefore not despise him. See how, even
in the services of the church, as they call them, they will accumulate
gorgeousness and cost. Had I my way, though I will never seek to rouse
men's thoughts about such external things, I would never have any vessel
used in the eucharist but wooden platters and wooden cups."

"But are we not to serve him with our best?" said my wife.

"Yes, with our very hearts and souls, with our wills, with our absolute
being. But all external things should be in harmony with the spirit of his
revelation. And if God chose that his Son should visit the earth in homely
fashion, in homely fashion likewise should be everything that enforces and
commemorates that revelation. All church-forms should be on the other side
from show and expense. Let the money go to build decent houses for God's
poor, not to give them his holy bread and wine out of silver and gold and
precious stones--stealing from the significance of the _content_ by the
meretricious grandeur of the _continent_. I would send all the church-plate
to fight the devil with his own weapons in our overcrowded cities, and in
our villages where the husbandmen are housed like swine, by giving them
room to be clean and decent air from heaven to breathe. When the people
find the clergy thus in earnest, they will follow them fast enough, and the
money will come in like salt and oil upon the sacrifice. I would there were
a few of our dignitaries that could think grandly about things, even as
Jesus thought--even as God thought when he sent him. There are many of
them willing to stand any amount of persecution about trifles: the same
enthusiasm directed by high thoughts about the kingdom of heaven as within
men and not around them, would redeem a vast region from that indifference
which comes of judging the gospel of God by the church of Christ with its
phylacteries and hems."

"There is one thing," said Wynnie, after a pause, "that I have often
thought about--why it was necessary for Jesus to come as a baby: he could
not do anything for so long."

"First, I would answer, Wynnie, that if you would tell me why it is
necessary for all of us to come as babies, it would be less necessary for
me to tell you why he came so: whatever was human must be his. But I would
say next, Are you sure that he could not do anything for so long? Does a
baby do nothing? Ask mamma there. Is it for nothing that the mother lifts
up such heartfuls of thanks to God for the baby on her knee? Is it nothing
that the baby opens such fountains of love in almost all the hearts around?
Ah! you do not think how much every baby has to do with the saving of the
world--the saving of it from selfishness, and folly, and greed. And for
Jesus, was he not going to establish the reign of love in the earth? How
could he do better than begin from babyhood? He had to lay hold of
the heart of the world. How could he do better than begin with his
mother's--the best one in it. Through his mother's love first, he grew into
the world. It was first by the door of all the holy relations of the family
that he entered the human world, laying hold of mother, father, brothers,
sisters, all his friends; then by the door of labour, for he took his share
of his father's work; then, when he was thirty years of age, by the door of
teaching; by kind deeds, and sufferings, and through all by obedience unto
the death. You must not think little of the grand thirty years wherein he
got ready for the chief work to follow. You must not think that while he
was thus preparing for his public ministrations, he was not all the time
saving the world even by that which he was in the midst of it, ever laying
hold of it more and more. These were things not so easy to tell. And you
must remember that our records are very scanty. It is a small biography we
have of a man who became--to say nothing more--the Man of the world--the
Son of Man. No doubt it is enough, or God would have told us more; but
surely we are not to suppose that there was nothing significant, nothing
of saving power in that which we are not told.--Charlie, wouldn't you have
liked to see the little baby Jesus?"

"Yes, that I would. I would have given him my white rabbit with the pink
eyes."

"That is what the great painter Titian must have thought, Charlie; for he
has painted him playing with a white rabbit,--not such a pretty one as
yours."

"I would have carried him about all day," said Dora, "as little Henny
Parsons does her baby-brother."

"Did he have any brother or sister to carry him about, papa?" asked Harry.

"No, my boy; for he was the eldest. But you may be pretty sure he carried
about his brothers and sisters that came after him."

"Wouldn't he take care of them, just!" said Charlie.

"I wish I had been one of them," said Constance.

"You are one of them, my Connie. Now he is so great and so strong that he
can carry father and mother and all of us in his bosom."

Then we sung a child's hymn in praise of the God of little children, and
the little ones went to bed. Constance was tired now, and we left her with
Wynnie. We too went early to bed.

About midnight my wife and I awoke together--at least neither knew which
waked the other. The wind was still raving about the house, with lulls
between its charges.

"There's a child crying!" said my wife, starting up.

I sat up too, and listened.

"There is some creature," I granted.

"It is an infant," insisted my wife. "It can't be either of the boys."

I was out of bed in a moment, and my wife the same instant. We hurried on
some of our clothes, going to the windows and listening as we did so. We
seemed to hear the wailing through the loudest of the wind, and in the
lulls were sure of it. But it grew fainter as we listened. The night was
pitch dark. I got a lantern, and hurried out. I went round the house till I
came under our bed-room windows, and there listened. I heard it, but not so
clearly as before. I set out as well as I could judge in the direction of
the sound. I could find nothing. My lantern lighted only a few yards around
me, and the wind was so strong that it blew through every chink, and
threatened momently to blow it out. My wife was by my side before I knew
she was coming.

"My dear!" I said, "it is not fit for you to be out."

"It is as fit for me as for a child, anyhow," she said. "Do listen."

It was certainly no time for expostulation. All the mother was awake in
Ethelwyn's bosom. It would have been cruelty to make her go in, though she
was indeed ill-fitted to encounter such a night-wind.

Another wail reached us. It seemed to come from a thicket at one corner of
the lawn. We hurried thither. Again a cry, and we knew we were much nearer
to it. Searching and searching we went.

"There it is!" Ethelwyn almost screamed, as the feeble light of the lantern
fell on a dark bundle of something under a bush. She caught at it. It gave
another pitiful wail--the poor baby of some tramp, rolled up in a dirty,
ragged shawl, and tied round with a bit of string, as if it had been a
parcel of clouts. She set off running with it to the house, and I followed,
much fearing she would miss her way in the dark, and fall. I could hardly
get up with her, so eager was she to save the child. She darted up to her
own room, where the fire was not yet out.

"Run to the kitchen, Harry, and get some hot water. Take the two jugs
there--you can empty them in the sink: you won't know where to find
anything. There will be plenty in the boiler."

By the time I returned with the hot water, she had taken off the child's
covering, and was sitting with it, wrapped in a blanket, before the fire.
The little thing was cold as a stone, and now silent and motionless. We
had found it just in time. Ethelwyn ordered me about as if I had been a
nursemaid. I poured the hot water into a footbath.

"Some cold water, Harry. You would boil the child."

"You made me throw away the cold water," I said, laughing.

"There's some in the bottles," she returned. "Make haste."

I did try to make haste, but I could not be quick enough to satisfy
Ethelwyn.

"The child will be dead," she cried, "before we get it in the water."

She had its rags off in a moment--there was very little to remove after the
shawl. How white the little thing was, though dreadfully neglected! It was
a girl--not more than a few weeks old, we agreed. Her little heart was
still beating feebly; and as she was a well-made, apparently healthy
infant, we had every hope of recovering her. And we were not disappointed.
She began to move her little legs and arms with short, convulsive motions.

"Do you know where the dairy is, Harry?" asked my wife, with no great
compliment to my bumps of locality, which I had always flattered myself
were beyond the average in development.

"I think I do," I answered.

"Could you tell which was this night's milk, now?"

"There will be less cream on it," I answered.

"Bring a little of that and some more hot water. I've got some sugar here.
I wish we had a bottle."

I executed her commands faithfully. By the time I returned the child was
lying on her lap clean and dry--a fine baby I thought. Ethelwyn went on
talking to her, and praising her as if she had not only been the finest
specimen of mortality in the world, but her own child to boot. She got her
to take a few spoonfuls of milk and water, and then the little thing fell
fast asleep.

Ethelwyn's nursing days were not so far gone by that she did not know where
her baby's clothes were. She gave me the child, and going to a wardrobe
in the room brought out some night-things, and put them on. I could not
understand in the least why the sleeping darling must be indued with little
chemise, and flannel, and nightgown, and I do not know what all, requiring
a, world of nice care, and a hundred turnings to and fro, now on its little
stomach, now on its back, now sitting up, now lying down, when it would
have slept just as well, and I venture to think much more comfortably,
if laid in blankets and well covered over. But I had never ventured to
interfere with any of my own children, devoutly believing up to this
moment, though in a dim unquestioning way, that there must be some hidden
feminine wisdom in the whole process; and now that I had begun to question
it, I found that my opportunity had long gone by, if I had ever had one.
And after all there may be some reason for it, though I confess I do
strongly suspect that all these matters are so wonderfully complicated
in order that the girl left in the woman may have her heart's content of
playing with her doll; just as the woman hid in the girl expends no end of
lovely affection upon the dull stupidity of wooden cheeks and a body of
sawdust. But it was a delight to my heart to see how Ethelwyn could not be
satisfied without treating the foundling in precisely the same fashion as
one of her own. And if this was a necessary preparation for what, should
follow, I would be the very last to complain of it.

We went to bed again, and the forsaken child of some half-animal mother,
now perhaps asleep in some filthy lodging for tramps, lay in my Ethelwyn's
bosom. I loved her the more for it; though, I confess, it would have been
very painful to me had she shown it possible for her to treat the baby
otherwise, especially after what we had been talking about that same
evening.

So we had another child in the house, and nobody knew anything about it but
ourselves two. The household had never been disturbed by all the going and
coming. After everything had been done for her, we had a good laugh over
the whole matter, and then Ethelwyn fell a-crying.

"Pray for the poor thing, Harry," she sobbed, "before you come to bed."

I knelt down, and said:

"O Lord our Father, this is as much thy child and as certainly sent to us
as if she had been born of us. Help us to keep the child for thee. Take
thou care of thy own, and teach us what to do with her, and how to order
our ways towards her."

Then I said to Ethelwyn,

"We will not say one word more about it tonight. You must try to go to
sleep. I daresay the little thing will sleep till the morning, and I am
sure I shall if she does. Good-night, my love. You are a true mother. Mind
you go to sleep."

"I am half asleep already, Harry. Good-night," she returned.

I know nothing more about anything till I in the morning, except that I had
a dream, which I have not made up my mind yet whether I shall tell or not.
We slept soundly--God's baby and all.






CHAPTER V.

MY DREAM.





I think I will tell the dream I had. I cannot well account for the
beginning of it: the end will appear sufficiently explicable to those who
are quite satisfied that they get rid of the mystery of a thing when they
can associate it with something else with which they are familiar. Such
do not care to see that the thing with which they associate it may be as
mysterious as the other. For although use too often destroys marvel, it
cannot destroy the marvellous. The origin of our thoughts is just as
wonderful as the origin of our dreams.

In my dream I found myself in a pleasant field full of daisies and white
clover. The sun was setting. The wind was going one way, and the shadows
another. I felt rather tired, I neither knew nor thought why. With an old
man's prudence, I would not sit down upon the grass, but looked about for
a more suitable seat. Then I saw, for often in our dreams there is an
immediate response to our wishes, a long, rather narrow stone lying a few
yards from me. I wondered how it could have come there, for there were no
mountains or rocks near: the field was part of a level country. Carelessly,
I sat down upon it astride, and watched the setting of the sun. Somehow I
fancied that his light was more sorrowful than the light of the setting sun
should be, and I began to feel very heavy at the heart. No sooner had the
last brilliant spark of his light vanished, than I felt the stone under me
begin to move. With the inactivity of a dreamer, however, I did not care
to rise, but wondered only what would come next. My seat, after several
strange tumbling motions, seemed to rise into the air a little way, and
then I found that I was astride of a gaunt, bony horse--a skeleton horse
almost, only he had a gray skin on him. He began, apparently with pain,
as if his joints were all but too stiff to move, to go forward in the
direction in which he found himself. I kept my seat. Indeed, I never
thought of dismounting. I was going on to meet what might come. Slowly,
feebly, trembling at every step, the strange steed went, and as he went his
joints seemed to become less stiff, and he went a little faster. All at
once I found that the pleasant field had vanished, and that we were on the
borders of a moor. Straight forward the horse carried me, and the moor
grew very rough, and he went stumbling dreadfully, but always recovering
himself. Every moment it seemed as if he would fall to rise no more, but
as often he found fresh footing. At length the surface became a little
smoother, and he began a horrible canter which lasted till he reached
a low, broken wall, over which he half walked, half fell into what was
plainly an ancient neglected churchyard. The mounds were low and covered
with rank grass. In some parts, hollows had taken the place of mounds.
Gravestones lay in every position except the level or the upright, and
broken masses of monuments were scattered about. My horse bore me into the
midst of it, and there, slow and stiff as he had risen, he lay down again.
Once more I was astride of a long narrow stone. And now I found that it was
an ancient gravestone which I knew well in a certain Sussex churchyard, the
top of it carved into the rough resemblance of a human skeleton--that of a
man, tradition said, who had been killed by a serpent that came out of a
bottomless pool in the next field. How long I sat there I do not know; but
at last I saw the faint gray light of morning begin to appear in front of
me. The horse of death had carried me eastward. The dawn grew over the top
of a hill that here rose against the horizon. But it was a wild dreary
dawn--a blot of gray first, which then stretched into long lines of dreary
yellow and gray, looking more like a blasted and withered sunset than a
fresh sunrise. And well it suited that waste, wide, deserted churchyard, if
churchyard I ought to call it where no church was to be seen--only a vast
hideous square of graves. Before me I noticed especially one old grave, the
flat stone of which had broken in two and sunk in the middle. While I sat
with my eyes fixed on this stone, it began to move; the crack in the middle
closed, then widened again as the two halves of the stone were lifted up,
and flung outward, like the two halves of a folding door. From the grave
rose a little child, smiling such perfect contentment as if he had just
come from kissing his mother. His little arms had flung the stones apart,
and as he stood on the edge of the grave next to me, they remained
outspread from the action for a moment, as if blessing the sleeping people.
Then he came towards me with the same smile, and took my hand. I rose, and
he led me away over another broken wall towards the hill that lay before
us. And as we went the sun came nearer, the pale yellow bars flushed into
orange and rosy red, till at length the edges of the clouds were swept with
an agony of golden light, which even my dreamy eyes could not endure, and I
awoke weeping for joy.

This waking woke my wife, who said in some alarm:

"What is the matter, husband?"

So I told her my dream, and how in my sleep my gladness had overcome me.

"It was this little darling that set you dreaming so," she said, and
turning, put the baby in my arms.






CHAPTER VI.

THE NEW BABY.





I will not attempt to describe the astonishment of the members of our
household, each in succession, as the news of the child spread. Charlie was
heard shouting across the stable-yard to his brother:

"Harry, Harry! Mamma has got a new baby. Isn't it jolly?"

"Where did she get it?" cried Harry in return.

"In the parsley-bed, I suppose," answered Charlie, and was nearer right
than usual, for the information on which his conclusion was founded had no
doubt been imparted as belonging to the history of the human race.

But my reader can easily imagine the utter bewilderment of those of the
family whose knowledge of human affairs would not allow of their curiosity
being so easily satisfied as that of the boys. In them was exemplified that
confusion of the intellectual being which is produced by the witness of
incontestable truth to a thing incredible--in which case the probability
always is, that the incredibility results from something in the mind of the
hearer falsely associated with and disturbing the true perception of the
thing to which witness is borne.

Nor was the astonishment confined to the family, for it spread over the
parish that Mrs. Walton had got another baby. And so, indeed, she had. And
seldom has baby met with a more hearty welcome than this baby met with from
everyone of our family. They hugged it first, and then asked questions. And
that, I say, is the right way of receiving every good gift of God. Ask what
questions you will, but when you see that the gift is a good one, make
sure that you take it. There is plenty of time for you to ask questions
afterwards. Then the better you love the gift, the more ready you will be
to ask, and the more fearless in asking.

The truth, however, soon became known. And then, strange to relate, we
began to receive visits of condolence. O, that poor baby! how it was
frowned upon, and how it had heads shaken over it, just because it was not
Ethelwyn's baby! It could not help that, poor darling!

"Of course, you'll give information to the police," said, I am sorry to
say, one of my brethren in the neighbourhood, who had the misfortune to be
a magistrate as well.

"Why?" I asked.

"Why! That they may discover the parents, to be sure."

"Wouldn't it be as hard a matter to prove the parentage, as it would be
easy to suspect it?" I asked. "And just think what it would be to give the
baby to a woman who not only did not want her, but who was not her mother.
But if her own mother came to claim her now, I don't say I would refuse
her, but I should think twice about giving her up after she had once
abandoned her for a whole night in the open air. In fact I don't want the
parents."

"But you don't want the child."

"How do you know that?" I returned--rather rudely, I am afraid, for I am
easily annoyed at anything that seems to me heartless--about children
especially.

"O! of course, if you want to have an orphan asylum of your own, no one has
a right to interfere. But you ought to consider other people."

"That is just what I thought I was doing," I answered; but he went on
without heeding my reply--

"We shall all be having babies left at our doors, and some of us are not so
fond of them as you are. Remember, you are your brother's keeper."

"And my sister's too," I answered. "And if the question lies between
keeping a big, burly brother like you, and a tiny, wee sister like that, I
venture to choose for myself."

"She ought to go to the workhouse," said the magistrate--a friendly,
good-natured man enough in ordinary--and rising, he took his hat and
departed.


This man had no children. So he was--or was not, so much to blame. Which?
_I_ say the latter.

Some of Ethelwyn's friends were no less positive about her duty in the
affair. I happened to go into the drawing-room during the visit of one of
them--Miss Bowdler.

"But, my dear Mrs. Walton," she was saying, "you'll be having all the
tramps in England leaving their babies at your door."

"The better for the babies," interposed I, laughing.

"But you don't think of your wife, Mr. Walton."

"Don't I? I thought I did," I returned dryly.

"Depend upon it, you'll repent it."

"I hope I shall never repent of anything but what is bad."

"Ah! but, really! it's not a thing to be made game of."

"Certainly not. The baby shall be treated with all due respect in this
house."

"What a provoking man you are! You know what I mean well enough."

"As well as I choose to know--certainly," I answered.

This lady was one of my oldest parishioners, and took liberties for which
she had no other justification, except indeed an unhesitating belief in the
superior rectitude of whatever came into her own head can be counted
as one. When she was gone, my wife turned to me with a half-comic,
half-anxious look, and said:

"But it would be rather alarming, Harry, if this were to get abroad, and
we couldn't go out at the door in the morning without being in danger of
stepping on a baby on the door-step."

"You might as well have said, when you were going to be married, 'If God
should send me twenty children, whatever should I do?' He who sent us this
one can surely prevent any more from coming than he wants to come. All that
we have to think of is to do right--not the consequences of doing right.
But leaving all that aside, you must not suppose that wandering mothers
have not even the attachment of animals to their offspring. There are not
so many that are willing to part with babies as all that would come to. If
you believe that God sent this one, that is enough for the present. If he
should send another, we should know by that that we had to take it in."

My wife said the baby was a beauty. I could see that she was a plump,
well-to-do baby; and being by nature no particular lover of babies as
babies--that is, feeling none of the inclination of mothers and nurses
and elder sisters to eat them, or rather, perhaps, loving more for what I
believed than what I saw--that was all I could pretend to discover. But
even the aforementioned elderly parishioner was compelled to allow before
three months were over that little Theodora--for we turned the name of
my youngest daughter upside down for her--"was a proper child." To none,
however, did she seem to bring so much delight as to our dear Constance.
Oftener than not, when I went into her room, I found the sleepy, useless
little thing lying beside her on the bed, and her staring at it with such
loving eyes! How it began, I do not know, but it came at last to be called
Connie's Dora, or Miss Connie's baby, all over the house, and nothing
pleased Connie better. Not till she saw this did her old nurse take quite
kindly to the infant; for she regarded her as an interloper, who had no
right to the tenderness which was lavished upon her. But she had no sooner
given in than the baby began to grow dear to her as well as to the rest. In
fact, the house was ere long full of nurses. The staff included everyone
but myself, who only occasionally, at the entreaty of some one or other of
the younger ones, took her in my arms.

But before she was three months old, anxious thoughts began to intrude, all
centering round the question in what manner the child was to be brought up.
Certainly there was time enough to think of this, as Ethelwyn constantly
reminded me; but what made me anxious was that I could not discover the
principle that ought to guide me. Now no one can tell how soon a principle
in such a case will begin, even unconsciously, to operate; and the danger
was that the moment when it ought to begin to operate would be long past
before the principle was discovered, except I did what I could now to find
it out. I had again and again to remind myself that there was no cause for
anxiety; for that I might certainly claim the enlightenment which all who
want to do right are sure to receive; but still I continued uneasy just
from feeling a vacancy where a principle ought to have been.






CHAPTER VII.

ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING.





During all this time Connie made no very perceptible progress--in the
recovery of her bodily powers, I mean, for her heart and mind advanced
remarkably. We held our Sunday-evening assemblies in her room pretty
regularly, my occasional absence in the exercise of my duties alone
interfering with them. In connection with one of these, I will show how
I came at length to make up my mind as to what I would endeavour to
keep before me as my object in the training of little Theodora, always
remembering that my preparation might be used for a very different end
from what I purposed. If my intention was right, the fact that it might be
turned aside would not trouble me.

We had spoken a good deal together about the infancy and childhood of
Jesus, about the shepherds, and the wise men, and the star in the east, and
the children of Bethlehem. I encouraged the thoughts of all the children to
rest and brood upon the fragments that are given us, and, believing that
the imagination is one of the most powerful of all the faculties for aiding
the growth of truth in the mind, I would ask them questions as to what they
thought he might have said or done in ordinary family occurrences, thus
giving a reality in their minds to this part of his history, and trying to
rouse in them a habit of referring their conduct to the standard of his. If
we do not thus employ our imagination on sacred things, his example can be
of no use to us except in exactly corresponding circumstances--and when can
such occur from one end to another of our lives? The very effort to think
how he would have done, is a wonderful purifier of the conscience, and,
even if the conclusion arrived at should not be correct from lack of
sufficient knowledge of his character and principles, it will be better
than any that can be arrived at without this inquiry. Besides, the asking
of such questions gave me good opportunity, through the answers they
returned, of seeing what their notions of Jesus and of duty were, and thus
of discovering how to help the dawn of the light in their growing minds.
Nor let anyone fear that such employment of the divine gift of imagination
will lead to foolish vagaries and useless inventions; while the object is
to discover the right way--the truth--there is little danger of that.
Besides, there I was to help hereby in the actual training of their
imaginations to truth and wisdom. To aid in this, I told them some of
the stories that were circulated about him in the early centuries of the
church, but which the church has rejected as of no authority; and I showed
them how some of them could not be true, because they were so unlike those
words and actions which we had the best of reasons for receiving as true;
and how one or two of them might be true--though, considering the company
in which we found them, we could say nothing for certain concerning them.
And such wise things as those children said sometimes! It is marvellous how
children can reach the heart of the truth at once. Their utterances are
sometimes entirely concordant with the results arrived at through years of
thought by the earnest mind--results which no mind would ever arrive at
save by virtue of the child-like in it.

Well, then, upon this evening I read to them the story of the boy Jesus in
the temple. Then I sought to make the story more real to them by dwelling a
little on the growing fears of his parents as they went from group to group
of their friends, tracing back the road towards Jerusalem and asking every
fresh company they knew if they had seen their boy, till at length they
were in great trouble when they could not find him even in Jerusalem. Then
came the delight of his mother when she did find him at last, and his
answer to what she said. Now, while I thus lingered over the simple story,
my children had put many questions to me about Jesus being a boy, and not
seeming to know things which, if he was God, he must have known, they
thought. To some of these I had just to reply that I did not understand
myself, and therefore could not teach them; to others, that I could explain
them, but that they were not yet, some of them, old enough to receive and
understand my explanation; while others I did my best to answer as simply
as I could. But at this point we arrived at a question put by Wynnie, to
answer which aright I considered of the greatest importance. Wynnie said:

"That is just one of the things about Jesus that have always troubled me,
papa."

"What is, my dear?" I said; for although I thought I knew well enough what
she meant, I wished her to set it forth in her own words, both for her own
sake, and the sake of the others, who would probably understand the
difficulty much better if she presented it herself.

"I mean that he spoke to his mother--"

"Why don't you say _mamma_, Wynnie?" said Charlie. "She was his own mamma,
wasn't she, papa?"

"Yes, my dear; but don't you know that the shoemaker's children down in the
village always call their mamma _mother_?"

"Yes; but they are shoemaker's children."

"Well, Jesus was one of that class of people. He was the son of a
carpenter. He called his mamma, _mother_. But, Charlie, _mother_ is the
more beautiful word of the two, by a great deal, I think. _Lady_ is a very
pretty word; but _woman_ is a very beautiful word. Just so with _mamma_ and
_mother_. _Mamma_ is pretty, but _mother_ is beautiful."

"Why don't we always say _mother_ then?"

"Just because it is the most beautiful, and so we keep it for Sundays--that
is, for the more solemn times of life. We don't want it to get common to us
with too much use. We may think it as much as we like; thinking does not
spoil it; but saying spoils many things, and especially beautiful words.
Now we must let Wynnie finish what she was saying."

"I was saying, papa, that I can't help feeling as if--I know it can't be
true--but I feel as if Jesus spoke unkindly to his mother when he said that
to her."

I looked at the page and read the words, "How is it that ye sought me? wist
ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" And I sat silent for a
while.

"Why don't you speak, papa?" said Harry.

"I am sitting wondering at myself, Harry," I said. "Long after I was your
age, Wynnie, I remember quite well that those words troubled me as they now
trouble you. But when I read them over now, they seemed to me so lovely
that I could hardly read them aloud. I can recall the fact that they
troubled me, but the mode of the fact I scarcely can recall. I can hardly
see now wherein lay the hurt or offence the words gave me. And why is that?
Simply because I understand them now, and I did not understand them then.
I took them as uttered with a tone of reproof; now I hear them as uttered
with a tone of loving surprise. But really I cannot feel sure what it was
that I did not like. And I am confident it is so with a great many things
that we reject. We reject them simply because we do not understand them.
Therefore, indeed, we cannot with truth be said to reject them at all. It
is some false appearance that we reject. Some of the grandest things in
the whole realm of truth look repellent to us, and we turn away from them,
simply because we are not--to use a familiar phrase--we are not up to them.
They appear to us, therefore, to be what they are not. Instruction sounds
to the proud man like reproof; illumination comes on the vain man like
scorn; the manifestation of a higher condition of motive and action
than his own, falls on the self-esteeming like condemnation; but it is
consciousness and conscience working together that produce this impression;
the result is from the man himself, not from the higher source. From the
truth comes the power, but the shape it assumes to the man is from the man
himself."

"You are quite beyond me now, papa," said Wynnie.

"Well, my dear," I answered, "I will return to the words of the boy Jesus,
instead of talking more about them; and when I have shown you what they
mean, I think you will allow that that feeling you have about them is all
and altogether an illusion."

"There is one thing first," said Connie, "that I want to understand. You
said the words of Jesus rather indicated surprise. But how could he be
surprised at anything? If he was God, he must have known everything."

"He tells us himself that he did not know everything. He says once that
even _he_ did not know one thing--only the Father knew it."

"But how could that be if he was God?"

"My dear, that is one of the things that it seems to me impossible I should
understand. Certainly I think his trial as a man would not have been
perfect had he known everything. He too had to live by faith in the Father.
And remember that for the Divine Sonship on earth perfect knowledge was not
necessary, only perfect confidence, absolute obedience, utter holiness.
There is a great tendency in our sinful natures to put knowledge and power
on a level with goodness. It was one of the lessons of our Lord's life that
they are not so; that the one grand thing in humanity is faith in God; that
the highest in God is his truth, his goodness, his rightness. But if Jesus
was a real man, and no mere appearance of a man, is it any wonder that,
with a heart full to the brim of the love of God, he should be for a moment
surprised that his mother, whom he loved so dearly, the best human being
he knew, should not have taken it as a matter of course that if he was not
with her, he must be doing something his Father wanted him to do? For this
is just what his answer means. To turn it into the ordinary speech of our
day, it is just this: 'Why did you look for me? Didn't you know that I must
of course be doing something my Father had given me to do?' Just think of
the quiet sweetness of confidence in this. And think what a life his must
have been up to that twelfth year of his, that such an expostulation with
his mother was justified. It must have had reference to a good many things
that had passed before then, which ought to have been sufficient to make
Mary conclude that her missing boy must be about God's business somewhere.
If her heart had been as full of God and God's business as his, she would
not have been in the least uneasy about him. And here is the lesson of his
whole life: it was all his Father's business. The boy's mind and hands
were full of it. The man's mind and hands were full of it. And the risen
conqueror was full of it still. For the Father's business is everything,
and includes all work that is worth doing. We may say in a full grand
sense, that there is nothing but the Father and his business."

"But we have so many things to do that are not his business," said Wynnie,
with a sigh of oppression.

"Not one, my darling. If anything is not his business, you not only have
not to do it, but you ought not to do it. Your words come from the want of
spiritual sight. We cannot see the truth in common things--the will of God
in little everyday affairs, and that is how they become so irksome to us.
Show a beautiful picture, one full of quiet imagination and deep thought,
to a common-minded man; he will pass it by with some slight remark,
thinking it very ordinary and commonplace. That is because he is
commonplace. Because our minds are so commonplace, have so little of the
divine imagination in them, therefore we do not recognise the spiritual
meaning and worth, we do not perceive the beautiful will of God, in the
things required of us, though they are full of it. But if we do them we
shall thus make acquaintance with them, and come to see what is in them.
The roughest kernel amongst them has a tree of life in its heart."

"I wish he would tell me something to do," said Charlie. "Wouldn't I do
it!"

I made no reply, but waited for an opportunity which I was pretty sure was
at hand, while I carried the matter a little further.

"But look here, Wynnie; listen to this," I said, "'And he went down with
them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.' Was that not doing
his Father's business too? Was it not doing the business of his Father in
heaven to honour his father and his mother, though he knew that his days
would not be long in that land? Did not his whole teaching, his whole
doing, rest on the relation of the Son to the Father and surely it was
doing his Father's business then to obey his parents--to serve them, to be
subject to them. It is true that the business God gives a man to do may be
said to be the peculiar walk in life into which he is led, but that is only
as distinguishing it from another man's peculiar business. God gives us
all our business, and the business which is common to humanity is
more peculiarly God's business than that which is one man's and not
another's--because it lies nearer the root, and is essential. It does not
matter whether a man is a farmer or a physician, but it greatly matters
whether he is a good son, a good husband, and so on. O my children!" I
said, "if the world could but be brought to believe--the world did I say?--
if the best men in the world could only see, as God sees it, that service
is in itself the noblest exercise of human powers, if they could see that
God is the hardest worker of all, and that his nobility are those who do
the most service, surely it would alter the whole aspect of the church.
Menial offices, for instance, would soon cease to be talked of with that
contempt which shows that there is no true recognition of the fact that
the same principle runs through the highest duty and the lowest--that the
lowest work which God gives a man to do must be in its nature noble, as
certainly noble as the highest. This would destroy condescension, which
is the rudeness, yes, impertinence, of the higher, as it would destroy
insolence, which is the rudeness of the lower. He who recognised the
dignity of his own lower office, would thereby recognise the superiority of
the higher office, and would be the last either to envy or degrade it. He
would see in it his own--only higher, only better, and revere it. But I am
afraid I have wearied you, my children."

"O, no, papa!" said the elder ones, while the little ones gaped and said
nothing.

"I know I am in danger of doing so when I come to speak upon this subject:
it has such a hold of my heart and mind!--Now, Charlie, my boy, go to bed."

But Charlie was very comfortable before the fire, on the rug, and did not
want to go. First one shoulder went up, and then the other, and the corners
of his mouth went down, as if to keep the balance true. He did not move to
go. I gave him a few moments to recover himself, but as the black frost
still endured, I thought it was time to hold up a mirror to him. When he
was a very little boy, he was much in the habit of getting out of temper,
and then as now, he made a face that was hideous to behold; and to cure him
of this, I used to make him carry a little mirror about his neck, that the
means might be always at hand of showing himself to him: it was a sort of
artificial conscience which, by enabling him to see the picture of his own
condition, which the face always is, was not unfrequently operative in
rousing his real conscience, and making him ashamed of himself. But now the
mirror I wanted to hold up to him was a past mood, in the light of which
the present would show what it was.

"Charlie," I said, "a little while ago you were wishing that God would give
you something to do. And now when he does, you refuse at once, without even
thinking about it."

"How do you know that God wants me to go to bed?" said Charlie, with
something of surly impertinence, which I did not meet with reproof at once
because there was some sense along with the impudence.

"I know that God wants you to do what I tell you, and to do it pleasantly.
Do you think the boy Jesus would have put on such a face as that--I wish I
had the little mirror to show it to you--when his mother told him it was
time to go to bed?"

And now Charlie began to look ashamed. I left the truth to work in him,
because I saw it was working. Had I not seen that, I should have compelled
him to go at once, that he might learn the majesty of law. But now that his
own better self, the self enlightened of the light that lighteneth every
man that cometh into the world, was working, time might well be afforded it
to work its perfect work. I went on talking to the others. In the space of
not more than one minute, he rose and came to me, looking both good and
ashamed, and held up his face to kiss me, saying, "Goodnight, papa." I bade
him good-night, and kissed him more tenderly than usual, that he might know
that it was all right between us. I required no formal apology, no begging
of my pardon, as some parents think right. It seemed enough to me that
his heart was turned. It is a terrible thing to run the risk of changing
humility into humiliation. Humiliation is one of the proudest conditions
in the human world. When he felt that it would be a relief to say more
explicitly, "Father, I have sinned," then let him say it; but not till
then. To compel manifestation is one surest way to check feeling.

My readers must not judge it silly to record a boy's unwillingness to go to
bed. It is precisely the same kind of disobedience that some of them are
guilty of themselves, and that in things not one whit more important than
this, only those things happen to be _their_ wish at the moment, and not
Charlie's, and so gain their superiority.






CHAPTER VIII.

THEODORA'S DOOM.





Try not to get weary, respected reader, of so much of what I am afraid
most people will call tiresome preaching. But I know if you get anything
practicable out of it, you will not be so soon tired of it. I promise you
more story by and by. Only an old man, like an old horse, must be allowed
to take very much his own way--go his own pace, I should have said. I am
afraid there must be a little more of a similar sort in this chapter.

On the Monday morning I set out to visit one or two people whom the
severity of the weather had kept from church on the Sunday. The last severe
frost, as it turned out, of the season, was possessing the earth. The sun
was low in the wintry sky, and what seemed a very cold mist up in the air
hid him from the earth. I was walking along a path in a field close by a
hedge. A tree had been cut down, and lay upon the grass. A short distance
from it lay its own figure marked out in hoar-frost. There alone was there
any hoar-frost on the field; the rest was all of the loveliest tenderest
green. I will not say the figure was such an exact resemblance as a
photograph would have been; still it was an indubitable likeness. It
appeared to the hasty glance that not a branch not a knot of the upper
side of the tree at least was left unrepresented in shining and glittering
whiteness upon the green grass. It was very pretty, and, I confess, at
first, very puzzling. I walked on, meditating on the phenomenon, till at
length I found out its cause. The hoar-frost had been all over the field in
the morning. The sun had been shining for a time, and had melted the frost
away, except where he could only cast a shadow. As he rose and rose,
the shadow of the tree had shortened and come nearer and nearer to its
original, growing more and more like as it came nearer, while the frost
kept disappearing as the shadow withdrew its protection. When the shadow
extended only to a little way from the tree, the clouds came and covered
the sun, and there were no more shadows, only one great one of the clouds.
Then the frost shone out in the shape of the vanished shadow. It lay at a
little distance from the tree, because the tree having been only partially
lopped, some great stumps of boughs held it up from the ground, and thus,
when the sun was low, his light had shone a little way through beneath, as
well as over the trunk.

My reader needs not be afraid; I am not going to "moralise this spectacle
with a thousand similes." I only tell it him as a very pretty phenomenon.
But I confess I walked on moralising it. Any new thing in nature--I mean
new in regard to my knowledge, of course--always made me happy; and I was
full of the quiet pleasure it had given me and of the thoughts it had
brought me, when, as I was getting over a stile, whom should I see in the
next field, coming along the footpath, but the lady who had made herself so
disagreeable about Theodora. The sight was rather a discord in my feeling
at that moment; perhaps it would have been so at any moment. But I prepared
myself to meet her in the strength of the good humour which nature had just
bestowed upon me. For I fear the failing will go with me to the grave
that I am very ready to be annoyed, even to the loss of my temper, at the
urgings of ignoble prudence.

"Good-morning, Miss Bowdler," I said.

"Good-morning, Mr. Walton," she returned "I am afraid you thought me
impertinent the other week; but you know by this time it is only my way."

"As such I take it," I answered with a smile.

She did not seem quite satisfied that I did not defend her from her own
accusation; but as it was a just one, I could not do so. Therefore she went
on to repeat the offence by way of justification.

"It was all for Mrs. Walton's sake. You ought to consider her, Mr. Walton.
She has quite enough to do with that dear Connie, who is likely to be an
invalid all her days--too much to take the trouble of a beggar's brat as
well."

"Has Mrs. Walton been complaining to you about it, Miss Bowdler?" I asked.

"O dear, no!" she answered. "She is far too good to complain of anything.
That's just why her friends must look after her a bit, Mr. Walton."

"Then I beg you won't speak disrespectfully of my little Theodora."

"O dear me! no. Not at all. I don't speak disrespectfully of her."

"Even amongst the class of which she comes, 'a beggar's brat' would be
regarded as bad language."

"I beg your pardon, I'm sure, Mr. Walton! If you _will_ take offence--"

"I do take offence. And you know there is One who has given especial
warning against offending the little ones."

Miss Bowdler walked away in high displeasure--let me hope in conviction of
sin as well. She did not appear in church for the next two Sundays. Then
she came again. But she called very seldom at the Hall after this, and I
believe my wife was not sorry.

Now whether it came in any way from what that lady had said as to my wife's
trouble with Constance and Theodora together, I can hardly tell; but,
before I had reached home, I had at last got a glimpse of something like
the right way, as it appeared to me, of bringing up Theodora. When I went
into the house, I looked for my wife to have a talk with her about it; but,
indeed, it always necessary to find her every time I got home. I found her
in Connie's room as I had expected. Now although we were never in the habit
of making mysteries of things in which there was no mystery, and talked
openly before our children, and the more openly the older they grew, yet
there were times when we wanted to have our talks quite alone, especially
when we had not made up our minds about something. So I asked Ethelwyn to
walk out with me.

"I'm afraid I can't just this moment, husband," she answered. She was in
the way of using that form of address, for she said it meant everything
without saying it aloud. "I can't just this moment, for there is no one at
liberty to stay with Connie."

"O, never mind me, mamma," said Connie cheerfully. "Theodora will take care
of me," and she looked fondly at the child, who was lying by her side fast
asleep.

"There!" I said. And both, looked up surprised, for neither knew what I
meant. "I will tell you afterwards," I said, laughing. "Come along, Ethel."

"You can ring the bell, you know, Connie, if you should want anything, or
your baby should wake up and be troublesome. You won't want me long, will
you, husband?"

"I'm not sure about that. You must tell Susan to watch for the bell."

Susan was the old nurse.

Ethel put on her hooded cloak, and we went out together. I took her across
to the field where I had seen the hoary shadow. The sun had not shone out,
and I hoped it would be there to gladden her dear eyes as it had gladdened
mine; but it was gone. The warmth of the sun, without his direct rays, had
melted it away, as sacred influences will sometimes do with other shadows,
without the mind knowing any more than the grass how the shadow departed.
There, reader! I have got a bit of a moral in about it before you knew what
I was doing. But I was sorry my wife could see it only through my eyes and
words. Then I told her about Miss Bowdler, and what she had said. Ethel
was very angry at her impertinence in speaking so to me. That was a wife's
feeling, you know, and perhaps excusable in the first impression of the
thing.

"She seems to think," she said, "that she was sent into the world to keep
other people right instead of herself. I am very glad you set her down, as
the maids say."

"O, I don't think there's much harm in her," I returned, which was easy
generosity, seeing my wife was taking my part. "Indeed, I am not sure that
we are not both considerably indebted to her; for it was after I met her
that a thought came into my head as to how we ought to do with Theodora."

"Still troubling yourself about that, husband?"

"The longer the difficulty lasts, the more necessary is it that it should
be met," I answered. "Our measures must begin sometime, and when, who can
tell? We ought to have them in our heads, or they will never begin at all."

"Well, I confess they are rather of a general nature at present--belonging
to humanity rather than the individual, as you would say--consisting
chiefly in washing, dressing, feeding, and apostrophe, varied with
lullabying. But our hearts are a better place for our measures than our
heads, aren't they?"

"Certainly; I walk corrected. Only there's no fear about your heart. I'm
not quite so sure about your head."

"Thank you, husband. But with you for a head it doesn't matter, does it?"

"I don't know that. People should always strengthen the weaker part, for no
chain is stronger than its weakest link; no fortification stronger than
its most assailable point. But, seriously, wife, I trust your head nearly,
though not quite, as much as your heart. Now to go to business. There's
one thing we have both made up our minds about--that there is to be no
concealment with the child. God's fact must be known by her. It would be
cruel to keep the truth from her, even if it were not sure to come upon her
with a terrible shock some day. She must know from the first, by hearing it
talked of--not by solemn and private communication--that she came out of
the shrubbery. That's settled, is it not?"

"Certainly. I see that to be the right way," responded Ethelwyn.

"Now, are we bound to bring her up exactly as our own, or are we not?"

"We are bound to do as well for her as for our own."

"Assuredly. But if we brought her up just as our own, would that, the facts
being as they are, be to do as well for her as for our own?"

"I doubt it; for other people would not choose to receive her as we have
done."

"That is true. She would be continually reminded of her origin. Not that
that in itself would be any evil; but as they would do it by excluding or
neglecting her, or, still worse, by taking liberties with her, it would be
a great pain. But keeping that out of view, would it be good for herself,
knowing what she will know, to be thus brought up? Would it not be kinder
to bring her up in a way that would make it easier for her to relieve the
gratitude which I trust she will feel, not for our sakes--I hope we are
above doing anything for the sake of the gratitude which will be given for
it, and which is so often far beyond the worth of the thing done--"

  "Alas! the gratitude of men
  Hath oftener left me mourning,"

said Ethel.

"Ah! you understand that now, my Ethel!"

"Yes, thank you, I do."

"But we must wish for gratitude for others' sake, though we may be willing
to go without it for our own. Indeed, gratitude is often just as painful as
Wordsworth there represents it. It makes us so ashamed; makes us think how
much more we _might_ have done; how lovely a thing it is to give in return
for such common gifts as ours; how needy the man or woman must be in whom a
trifle awakes so much emotion."

"Yes; but we must not in justice think that it is merely that our little
doing seems great to them: it is the kindness shown them therein, for
which, often, they are more grateful than for the gift, though they can't
show the difference in their thanks."

"And, indeed, are not aware of it themselves, though it is so. And yet, the
same remarks hold good about the kindness as about the gift. But to return
to Theodora. If we put her in a way of life that would be recognisant of
whence she came, and how she had been brought thence, might it not be
better for her? Would it not be building on the truth? Would she not be
happier for it?"


"You are putting general propositions, while all the time you have
something particular and definite in your own mind; and that is not fair to
my place in the conference," said Ethel. "In fact, you think you are trying
to approach me wisely, in order to persuade, I will not say _wheedle_, me
into something. It's a good thing you have the harmlessness of the dove,
Harry, for you've got the other thing."

"Well, then, I will be as plain as ever I can be, only premising that what
you call the cunning of the serpent--"

"Wisdom, Harry, not cunning."

"Is only that I like to give my arguments before my proposition. But here
it is--bare and defenceless, only--let me warn you--with a whole battery
behind it: it is, to bring up little Theodora as a servant to Constance."

My wife laughed.

"Well," she said, "for one who says so much about not thinking of the
morrow, you do look rather far forward."

"Not with any anxiety, however, if only I know that I am doing right."

"But just think: the child is about three months old."

"Well; Connie will be none the worse that she is being trained for her. I
don't say that she is to commence her duties at once."

"But Connie may be at the head of a house of her own long before that."

"The training won't be lost to the child though. But I much fear, my love,
that Connie will never be herself again. There is no sign of it. And Turner
does not give much hope."

"O Harry, Harry, don't say so! I can't bear it. To think of the darling
child lying like that all her life!"

"It is sad, indeed; but no such awful misfortune surely, Ethel. Haven't
you seen, as well as I, that the growth of that child's nature since her
accident has been marvellous? Ten times rather would I have her lying there
such as she is, than have her well and strong and silly, with her bonnets
inside instead of outside her head."

"Yes, but she needn't have been like that. Wynnie never will."

"Well, but God does all things not only well, but best, absolutely best.
But just think what it would be in any circumstances to have a maid that
had begun to wait upon her from the first days that she was able to toddle
after something to fetch it for her."

"Won't it be like making a slave of her?"

"Won't it be like giving her a divine freedom from the first? The lack of
service is the ruin of humanity."

"But we can't train her then like one of our own."

"Why not"? Could we not give her all the love and all the teaching?"

"Because it would not be fair to give her the education of a lady, and then
make a servant of her."

"You forget that the service would be part of her training from the first;
and she would know no change of position in it. When we tell her that she
was found in the shrubbery, we will add that we think God sent her to
take care of Constance. I do not believe myself that you can have perfect
service except from a lady. Do not forget the true notion of service as the
essence of Christianity, yea, of divinity. It is not education that unfits
for service: it is the want of it."

"Well, I know that the reading girls I have had, have, as a rule, served me
worse than the rest."

"Would you have called one of those girls educated? Or even if they had
been educated, as any of them might well have been, better than nine-tenths
of the girls that go to boarding-schools, you must remember that they had
never been taught service--the highest accomplishment of all. To that
everything aids, when any true feeling of it is there. But for service of
this high sort, the education must begin with the beginning of the dawn of
will. How often have you wished that you had servants who would believe in
you, and serve you with the same truth with which you regarded them! The
servants born in a man's house in the old times were more like his children
than his servants. Here is a chance for you, as it were of a servant born
in your own house. Connie loves the child: the child will love Connie, and
find her delight in serving her like a little cherub. Not one of the maids
to whom you have referred had ever been taught to think service other than
an unavoidable necessity, the end of life being to serve yourself, not to
serve others; and hence most of them would escape from it by any marriage
almost that they had a chance of making. I don't say all servants are like
that; but I do think that most of them are. I know very well that most
mistresses are as much to blame for this result as the servants are; but
we are not talking about them. Servants nowadays despise work, and yet are
forced to do it--a most degrading condition to be in. But they would not be
in any better condition if delivered from the work. The lady who despises
work is in as bad a condition as they are. The only way to set them free
is to get them to regard service not only as their duty, but as therefore
honourable, and besides and beyond this, in its own nature divine. In
America, the very name of servant is repudiated as inconsistent with human
dignity. There is _no_ dignity but of service. How different the whole
notion of training is now from what it was in the middle ages! Service was
honourable then. No doubt we have made progress as a whole, but in some
things we have degenerated sadly. The first thing taught then was how to
serve. No man could rise to the honour of knighthood without service. A
nobleman's son even had to wait on his father, or to go into the family of
another nobleman, and wait upon him as a page, standing behind his chair at
dinner. This was an honour. No notion of degradation was in it. It was a
necessary step to higher honour. And what was the next higher honour? To be
set free from service? No. To serve in the harder service of the field; to
be a squire to some noble knight; to tend his horse, to clean his armour,
to see that every rivet was sound, every buckle true, every strap strong;
to ride behind him, and carry his spear, and if more than one attacked him,
to rush to his aid. This service was the more honourable because it was
harder, and was the next step to higher honour yet. And what was this
higher honour? That of knighthood. Wherein did this knighthood consist? The
very word means simply _service_. And for what was the knight thus waited
upon by his squire? That he might be free to do as he pleased? No, but that
he might be free to be the servant of all. By being a squire first, the
servant of one, he learned to rise to the higher rank, that of servant of
all. His horse was tended, this armour observed, his sword and spear and
shield held to his hand, that he might have no trouble looking after
himself, but might be free, strong, unwearied, to shoot like an arrow to
the rescue of any and every one who needed his ready aid. There was a grand
heart of Christianity in that old chivalry, notwithstanding all its abuses
which must be no more laid to its charge than the burning of Jews and
heretics to Christianity. It was the lack of it, not the presence of it
that occasioned the abuses that coexisted with it. Train our Theodora as a
holy child-servant, and there will be no need to restrain any impulse of
wise affection from pouring itself forth upon her. My firm belief is that
we should then love and honour her far more than if we made her just like
one of our own."

"But what if she should turn out utterly unfit for it?"

"Ah! then would come an obstacle. But it will not come till that discovery
is made."

"But if we should be going wrong all the time?"

"Now, there comes the kind of care that never troubles me, and which I so
strongly object to. It won't hurt her anyhow. And we ought always to act
upon the ideal; it is the only safe ground of action. When that which
contradicts and resists, and would ruin our ideal, opposes us, then we
must take measures; but not till then can we take measures, or know what
measures it may be necessary to take. But the ideal itself is the only
thing worth striving after. Remember what our Lord himself said: 'Be ye
therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.'"

"Well, I will think about it, Harry. There is time enough."

"Plenty. No time only not to think about it. The more you think about it
the better. If a thing be a good thing, the more you think about it the
better it will look; for its real nature will go on coming out and showing
itself. I cannot doubt that you will soon see how good it is."

We then went home. It was only two days after that my wife said to me--

"I am more than reconciled to your plan, husband. It seems to me
delightful."

When we reentered Connie's room, we found that her baby had just waked, and
she had managed to get one arm under her, and was trying to comfort her,
for she was crying.






CHAPTER IX.

A SPRING CHAPTER.





More especially now in my old age, I find myself "to a lingering motion
bound." I would, if I might, tell a tale day by day, hour by hour,
following the movement of the year in its sweet change of seasons. This
may not be, but I will indulge myself now so far as to call this a spring
chapter, and so pass to the summer, when my reader will see why I have
called my story "The Seaboard Parish."

I was out one day amongst my people, and I found two precious things:
one, a lovely little fact, the other a lovely little primrose. This was
a pinched, dwarfish thing, for the spring was but a baby herself, and so
could not mother more than a brave-hearted weakling. The frost lay all
about it under the hedge, but its rough leaves kept it just warm enough,
and hardly. Now, I should never have pulled the little darling; it would
have seemed a kind of small sacrilege committed on the church of nature,
seeing she had but this one; only with my sickly cub at home, I felt
justified in ravening like a beast of prey. I even went so far in my greed
as to dig up the little plant with my fingers, and bear it, leaves and all,
with a lump of earth about it to keep it alive, home to my little woman--a
present from the outside world which she loved so much. And as I went there
dawned upon me the recollection of a little mirror in which, if I could
find it, she would see it still more lovely than in a direct looking at
itself. So I set myself to find it; for it lay in fragments in the drawers
and cabinets of my memory. And before I got home I had found all the pieces
and put them together; and then it was a lovely little sonnet which a
friend of mine had written and allowed me to see many years before. I was
in the way of writing verses myself; but I should have been proud to have
written this one. I never could have done that. Yet, as far as I knew, it
had never seen the light through the windows of print. It was with some
difficulty that I got it all right; but I thought I had succeeded very
nearly, if not absolutely, and I said it over and over, till I was sure I
should not spoil its music or its meaning by halting in the delivery of it.

"Look here, my Connie, what I have brought you," I said.

She held out her two white, half-transparent hands, took it as if it had
been a human baby and looked at it lovingly till the tears came in her
eyes. She would have made a tender picture, as she then lay, with her two
hands up, holding the little beauty before her eyes. Then I said what I
have already written about the mirror, and repeated the sonnet to her. Here
it is, and my readers will owe me gratitude for it. My friend had found
the snowdrop in February, and in frost. Indeed he told me that there was a
tolerable sprinkling of snow upon the ground:

  "I know not what among the grass thou art,
    Thy nature, nor thy substance, fairest flower,
    Nor what to other eyes thou hast of power
  To send thine image through them to the heart;
  But when I push the frosty leaves apart,
    And see thee hiding in thy wintry bower,
    Thou growest up within me from that hour,
  And through the snow I with the spring depart.

  I have no words. But fragrant is the breath,
    Pale Beauty, of thy second life within.
  There is a wind that cometh for thy death,
    But thou a life immortal dost begin,
  Where, in one soul, which is thy heaven, shall dwell
  Thy spirit, beautiful Unspeakable!"

"Will you say it again, papa?" said Connie; "I do not quite understand it."

"I will, my dear. But I will do something better as well. I will go and
write it out for you, as soon as I have given you something else that I
have brought."

"Thank you, papa. And please write it in your best Sunday hand, that I may
read it quite easily."

I promised, and repeated the poem.

"I understand it a little better," she said; "but the meaning is just like
the primrose itself, hidden up in its green leaves. When you give it me in
writing, I will push them apart and find it. Now, tell me what else you
have brought me."

I was greatly pleased with the resemblance the child saw between the plant
and the sonnet; but I did not say anything in praise; I only expressed
satisfaction. Before I began my story, Wynnie came in and sat down with us.

"I have been to see Miss Aylmer, this morning," I said. "She feels the loss
of her mother very much, poor thing."

"How old was she, papa?" asked Connie.

"She was over ninety, my dear; but she had forgotten how much herself, and
her daughter could not be sure about it. She was a peculiar old lady,
you know. She once reproved me for inadvertently putting my hat on the
tablecloth. 'Mr. Shafton,' she said, 'was one of the old school; he would
never have done that. I don't know what the world is coming to.'"

My two girls laughed at the idea of their papa being reproved for bad
manners.

"What did you say, papa?" they asked.

"I begged her pardon, and lifted it instantly. 'O, it's all right now, my
dear,' she said, 'when you've taken it up again. But I like good manners,
though I live in a cottage now.'"

"Had she seen better days, then?" asked Wynnie.

"She was a farmer's daughter, and a farmer's widow. I suppose the chief
difference in her mode of life was that she lived in a cottage instead of a
good-sized farmhouse."

"But what is the story you have to tell us?"

"I'm coming to that when you have done with your questions."

"We have done, papa."

"After talking awhile, during which she went bustling a little about the
cottage, in order to hide her feelings, as I thought, for she has a good
deal of her mother's sense of dignity about her,--but I want your mother to
hear the story. Run and fetch her, Wynnie."

"O, do make haste, Wynnie," said Connie.

When Ethelwyn came, I went on.

"Miss Aylmer was bustling a little about the cottage, putting things to
rights. All at once she gave a cry of surprise, and said, 'Here it is, at
last!' She had taken up a stuff dress of her mother's, and was holding it
in one hand, while with the other she drew from the pocket--what do you
think?"

Various guesses were hazarded.

"No, no--nothing like it. I know you _could_ never guess. Therefore it
would not be fair to keep you trying. A great iron horseshoe. The old woman
of ninety years had in the pocket of the dress that she was wearing at the
very moment when she died, for her death was sudden, an iron horseshoe."

"What did it mean? Could her daughter explain it?"

"That she proceeded at once to do. 'Do you remember, sir,' she said,
'how that horseshoe used to hang on a nail over the chimneypiece?' 'I do
remember having observed it there,' I answered; 'for once when I took
notice of it, I said to your mother, laughing, "I hope you are not afraid
of witches, Mrs. Aylmer?" And she looked a little offended, and assured me
to the contrary.' 'Well,' her daughter went on, 'about three months ago, I
missed it. My mother would not tell me anything about it. And here it is!
I can hardly think she can have carried it about all that time without me
finding it out, but I don't know. Here it is, anyhow. Perhaps when she felt
death drawing nearer, she took it from somewhere where she had hidden it,
and put it in her pocket. If I had found it in time, I would have put it
in her coffin.' 'But why?' I asked. 'Do tell me the story about it, if you
know it.' 'I know it quite well, for she told me all about it once. It is
the shoe of a favourite mare of my father's--one he used to ride when he
went courting my mother. My grandfather did not like to have a young man
coming about the house, and so he came after the old folks were gone to
bed. But he had a long way to come, and he rode that mare. She had to go
over some stones to get to the stable, and my mother used to spread straw
there, for it was under the window of my grandfather's room, that her shoes
mightn't make a noise and wake him. And that's one of the shoes,' she said,
holding it up to me. 'When the mare died, my mother begged my father for
the one off her near forefoot, where she had so often stood and patted her
neck when my father was mounted to ride home again.'"

"But it was very naughty of her, wasn't it," said Wynnie, "to do that
without her father's knowledge?"

"I don't say it was right, my dear. But in looking at what is wrong, we
ought to look for the beginning of the wrong; and possibly we might find
that in this case farther back. If, for instance, a father isn't a father,
we must not be too hard in blaming the child for not being a child. The
father's part has to come first, and teach the child's part. Now, if I
might guess from what I know of the old lady, in whom probably it was
much softened, her father was very possibly a hard, unreasoning, and
unreasonable man--such that it scarcely ever came into the daughter's head
that she had anything else to do with regard to him than beware of the
consequences of letting him know that she had a lover. The whole thing, I
allow, was wrong; but I suspect the father was first to blame, and far
more to blame than the daughter. And that is the more likely from the high
character of the old dame, and the romantic way in which she clung to the
memory of the courtship. A true heart only does not grow old. And I have,
therefore, no doubt that the marriage was a happy one. Besides, I daresay
it was very much the custom of the country where they were, and that makes
some difference."

"Well, I'm sure, papa, you wouldn't like any of us to go and do like that,"
said Wynnie.

"Assuredly not, my dear," I answered, laughing. "Nor have I any fear of
it. But shall I tell you what I think would be one of the chief things to
trouble me if you did?"

"If you like, papa. But it sounds rather dreadful to hear such an _if_"
said Wynnie.

"It would be to think how much I had failed of being such a father to you
as I ought to be, and as I wished to be, if it should prove at all possible
for you to do such a thing."

"It's too dreadful to talk about, papa," said Wynnie; and the subject was
dropped.

She was a strange child, this Wynnie of ours. Whereas most people are in
danger of thinking themselves in the right, or insisting that they are
whether they think so or not, she was always thinking herself in the
wrong. Nay more, she always expected to find herself in the wrong. If the
perpetrator of any mischief was inquired after, she always looked into her
own bosom to see whether she could not with justice aver that she was the
doer of the deed. I believe she felt at that moment as if she had been
deceiving me already, and deserved to be driven out of the house. This came
of an over-sensitiveness, accompanied by a general dissatisfaction with
herself, which was not upheld by a sufficient faith in the divine sympathy,
or sufficient confidence of final purification. She never spared herself;
and if she was a little severe on the younger ones sometimes, no one was
yet more indulgent to them. She would eat all their hard crusts for them,
always give them the best and take the worst for herself. If there was any
part in the dish that she was helping that she thought nobody would like,
she invariably assigned it to her own share. It looked like a determined
self-mortification sometimes; but that was not it. She did not care for her
own comfort enough to feel it any mortification; though I observed that
when her mother or I helped her to anything nice, she ate it with as much
relish as the youngest of the party. And her sweet smile was always ready
to meet the least kindness that was offered her. Her obedience was perfect,
and had been so for very many years, as far as we could see. Indeed, not
since she was the merest child had there been any contest between us.
Now, of course, there was no demand of obedience: she was simply the best
earthly friend that her father and mother had. It often caused me some
passing anxiety to think that her temperament, as well as her devotion to
her home, might cause her great suffering some day; but when those thoughts
came, I just gave her to God to take care of. Her mother sometimes said
to her that she would make an excellent wife for a poor man. She would
brighten up greatly at this, taking it for a compliment of the best sort.
And she did not forget it, as the sequel will show. She would choose to sit
with one candle lit when there were two on the table, wasting her eyes to
save the candles. "Which will you have for dinner to-day, papa, roast beef
or boiled?" she asked me once, when her mother was too unwell to attend to
the housekeeping. And when I replied that I would have whichever she liked
best--"The boiled beef lasts longest, I think," she said. Yet she was not
only as liberal and kind as any to the poor, but she was, which is rarer,
and perhaps more important for the final formation of a character,
carefully just to everyone with whom she had any dealings. Her sense of
law was very strong. Law with her was something absolute, and not to be
questioned. In her childhood there was one lady to whom for years she
showed a decided aversion, and we could not understand it, for it was the
most inoffensive Miss Boulderstone. When she was nearly grown up, one of
us happening to allude to the fact, she volunteered an explanation. Miss
Boulderstone had happened to call one day when Wynnie, then between three
and four was in disgrace--_in the corner_, in fact. Miss Boulderstone
interceded for her; and this was the whole front of her offending.

"I _was_ so angry!" she said. "'As if my papa did not know best when I
ought to come out of the corner!' I said to myself. And I couldn't bear her
for ever so long after that."

Miss Boulderstone, however, though not very interesting, was quite a
favourite before she died. She left Wynnie--for she and her brother were
the last of their race--a death's-head watch, which had been in the family
she did not know how long. I think it is as old as Queen Elizabeth's time.
I took it to London to a skilful man, and had it as well repaired as
its age would admit of; and it has gone ever since, though not with the
greatest accuracy; for what could be expected of an old death's-head,
the most transitory thing in creation? Wynnie wears it to this day, and
wouldn't part with it for the best watch in the world.

I tell the reader all this about my daughter that he may be the more able
to understand what will follow in due time. He will think that as yet my
story has been nothing but promises. Let him only hope that I will fulfil
them, and I shall be content.

Mr. Boulderstone did not long outlive his sister. Though the old couple,
for they were rather old before they died, if, indeed, they were not born
old, which I strongly suspect, being the last of a decaying family that had
not left the land on which they were born for a great many generations--
though the old people had not, of what the French call sentiments, one
between them, they were yet capable of a stronger and, I had almost said,
more romantic attachment, than many couples who have married from love; for
the lady's sole trouble in dying was what her brother _would_ do without
her; and from the day of her death, he grew more and more dull and
seemingly stupid. Nothing gave him any pleasure but having Wynnie to dinner
with him. I knew that it must be very dull for her, but she went often, and
I never heard her complain of it, though she certainly did look fagged--not
_bored_, observe, but fagged--showing that she had been exerting herself to
meet the difficulties of the situation. When the good man died, we found
that he had left all his money in my hands, in trust for the poor of the
parish, to be applied in any way I thought best. This involved me in much
perplexity, for nothing is more difficult than to make money useful to the
poor. But I was very glad of it, notwithstanding.

My own means were not so large as my readers may think. The property my
wife brought me was much encumbered. With the help of her private fortune,
and the income of several years (not my income from the church, it may be
as well to say), I succeeded in clearing off the encumbrances. But even
then there remained much to be done, if I would be the good steward that
was not to be ashamed at his Lord's coming. First of all there were many
cottages to be built for the labourers on the estate. If the farmers would
not, or could not, help, I must do it; for to provide decent dwellings for
them, was clearly one of the divine conditions in the righteous tenure of
property, whatever the human might be; for it was not for myself alone, or
for myself chiefly, that this property was given to me; it was for those
who lived upon it. Therefore I laid out what money I could, not only in
getting all the land clearly in its right relation to its owner, but
in doing the best I could for those attached to it who could not help
themselves. And when I hint to my reader that I had some conscience in
paying my curate, though, as they had no children, they did not require so
much as I should otherwise have felt compelled to give them, he will easily
see that as my family grew up I could not have so much to give away of
my own as I should have liked. Therefore this trust of the good Mr.
Boulderstone was the more acceptable to me.

One word more ere I finish this chapter.--I should not like my friends to
think that I had got tired of our Christmas gatherings, because I have made
no mention of one this year. It had been pretermitted for the first time,
because of my daughter's illness. It was much easier to give them now than
when I lived at the vicarage, for there was plenty of room in the old hall.
But my curate, Mr. Weir, still held a similar gathering there every Easter.

Another one word more about him. Some may wonder why I have not mentioned
him or my sister, especially in connection with Connie's accident. The fact
was, that he had taken, or rather I had given him, a long holiday. Martha
had had several disappointing illnesses, and her general health had
suffered so much in consequence that there was even some fear of her lungs,
and a winter in the south of France had been strongly recommended. Upon
this I came in with more than a recommendation, and insisted that they
should go. They had started in the beginning of October, and had not
returned up to the time of which I am now about to write--somewhere in the
beginning of the month of April. But my sister was now almost quite well,
and I was not sorry to think that I should soon have a little more leisure
for such small literary pursuits as I delighted in--to my own enrichment,
and consequently to the good of my parishioners and friends.






CHAPTER X.

AN IMPORTANT LETTER.





It was, then, in the beginning of April that I received one morning an
epistle from an old college friend of mine, with whom I had renewed my
acquaintance of late, through the pleasure which he was kind enough to say
he had derived from reading a little book of mine upon the relation of the
mind of St. Paul to the gospel story. His name was Shepherd--a good name
for a clergyman. In his case both Christian name and patronymic might
remind him well of his duty. David Shepherd ought to be a good clergyman.

As soon as I had read the letter, I went with it open in my hand to find my
wife.

"Here is Shepherd," I said, "with a clerical sore-throat, and forced to
give up his duty for a whole summer. He writes to ask me whether, as he
understands I have a curate as good as myself--that is what the old fellow
says--it might not suit me to take my family to his place for the summer.
He assures me I should like it, and that it would do us all good. His
house, he says, is large enough to hold us, and he knows I should not like
to be without duty wherever I was. And so on Read the letter for yourself,
and turn it over in your mind. Weir will come back so fresh and active that
it will be no oppression to him to take the whole of the duty here. I will
run and ask Turner whether it would be safe to move Connie, and whether the
sea-air would be good for her."

"One would think you were only twenty, husband--you make up your mind so
quickly, and are in such a hurry."

The fact was, a vision of the sea had rushed in upon me. It was many years
since I had seen the sea, and the thought of looking on it once more, in
its most glorious show, the Atlantic itself, with nothing between us and
America, but the round of the ridgy water, had excited me so that my wife's
reproof, if reproof it was, was quite necessary to bring me to my usually
quiet and sober senses. I laughed, begged old grannie's pardon, and set off
to see Turner notwithstanding, leaving her to read and ponder Shepherd's
letter.

"What do you think, Turner?" I said, and told him the case. He looked
rather grave.

"When would you think of going?" he asked.

"About the beginning of June."

"Nearly two months," he said, thoughtfully. "And Miss Connie was not the
worse for getting on the sofa yesterday?"

"The better, I do think."

"Has she had any increase of pain since?"

"None, I quite believe; for I questioned her as to that."

He thought again. He was a careful man, although young.

"It is a long journey."

"She could make it by easy stages."

"It would certainly do her good to breathe the sea-air and have such a
thorough change in every way--if only it could be managed without fatigue
and suffering. I think, if you can get her up every day between this and
that, we shall be justified in trying it at least. The sooner you get her
out of doors the better too; but the weather is scarcely fit for that yet."

"A good deal will depend on how she is inclined, I suppose."

"Yes. But in her case you must not mind that too much. An invalid's
instincts as to eating and drinking are more to be depended upon than those
of a healthy person; but it is not so, I think with regard to anything
involving effort. That she must sometimes be urged to. She must not judge
that by inclination. I have had, in my short practice, two patients, who
considered themselves _bedlars_, as you will find the common people in
the part you are going to, call them--bedridden, that is. One of them I
persuaded to make the attempt to rise, and although her sense of inability
was anything but feigned, and she will be a sufferer to the end of her
days, yet she goes about the house without much inconvenience, and I
suspect is not only physically but morally the better for it. The other
would not consent to try, and I believe lies there still."

"The will has more to do with most things than people generally suppose,"
I said. "Could you manage, now, do you think, supposing we resolve to make
the experiment, to accompany us the first stage or two?"

"It is very likely I could. Only you must not depend upon me. I cannot tell
beforehand. You yourself would teach me that I must not be a respecter of
persons, you know."

I returned to my wife. She was in Connie's room.

"Well, my dear," I said, "what do you think of it?"

"Of what?" she asked.

"Why, of Shepherd's letter, of course," I answered.

"I've been ordering the dinner since, Harry."

"The dinner!" I returned with some show of contempt, for I knew my wife was
only teasing me. "What's the dinner to the Atlantic?"

"What do you mean by the Atlantic, papa?" said Connie, from whose roguish
eyes I could see that her mother had told her all about it, and that _she_
was not disinclined to get up, if only she could.

"The Atlantic, my dear, is the name given to that portion of the waters of
the globe which divides Europe from America. I will fetch you the Universal
Gazetteer, if you would like to consult it on the subject."

"O papa!" laughed Connie; "you know what I mean."

"Yes; and you know what I mean too, you squirrel!"

"But do you really mean, papa," she said "that you will take me to the
Atlantic?"

"If you will only oblige me by getting Well enough to go as soon as
possible."

The poor child half rose on her elbow, but sank back again with a moan,
which I took for a cry of pain. I was beside her in a moment.

"My darling! You have hurt yourself!"

"O no, papa. I felt for the moment as if I could get up if I liked. But I
soon found that I hadn't any back or legs. O! what a plague I am to you!"

"On the contrary, you are the nicest plaything in the world, Connie. One
always knows where to find you."

She half laughed and half cried, and the two halves made a very bewitching
whole.

"But," I went on, "I mean to try whether my dolly won't bear moving. One
thing is clear, I can't go without it. Do you think you could be got on the
sofa to-day without hurting you?"

"I am sure I could, papa. I feel better today than I have felt yet. Mamma,
do send for Susan, and get me up before dinner."

When I went in after a couple of hours or so, I found her lying on the
conch, propped up with pillows. She lay looking out of the window on the
lawn at the back of the house. A smile hovered about her bloodless lips,
and the blue of her eyes, though very gray, looked sunny. Her white face
showed the whiter because her dark brown hair was all about it. We had had
to cut her hair, but it had grown to her neck again.

"I have been trying to count the daisies on the lawn," she said.

"What a sharp sight you must have, child!"

"I see them all as clear as if they were enamelled on that table before
me."

I was not so anxious to get rid of the daisies as some people are. Neither
did I keep the grass quite so close shaved.

"But," she went on, "I could not count them, for it gave me the fidgets in
my feet."

"You don't say so!" I exclaimed.

She looked at me with some surprise, but concluding that I was only making
a little of my mild fun at her expense, she laughed.

"Yes. Isn't it a wonderful fact?" she said.

"It is a fact, my dear, that I feel ready to go on my knees and thank God
for. I may be wrong, but I take it as a sign that you are beginning to
recover a little. But we mustn't make too much of it, lest I should be
mistaken," I added, checking myself, for I feared exciting her too much.

But she lay very still; only the tears rose slowly and lay shimmering in
her eyes. After about five minutes, during which we were both silent,--

"O papa!" she said, "to think of ever walking out with you again, and
feeling the wind on my face! I can hardly believe it possible."

"It is so mild, I think you might have half that pleasure at once," I
answered..

And I opened the window, let the spring air gently move her hair for one
moment, and then shut it again. Connie breathed deep, and said after a
little pause,--

"I had no idea how delightful it was. To think that I have been in the way
of breathing that every moment for so many years and never thought about
it!"

"It is not always just like that in this climate. But I ought not to have
made that remark when I wanted to make this other: that I suspect we shall
find some day that the loss of the human paradise consists chiefly in the
closing of the human eyes; that at least far more of it than people think
remains about us still, only we are so filled with foolish desires and evil
cares, that we cannot see or hear, cannot even smell or taste the pleasant
things round about us. We have need to pray in regard to the right
receiving of the things of the senses even, 'Lord, open thou our hearts to
understand thy word;' for each of these things is as certainly a word of
God as Jesus is the Word of God. He has made nothing in vain. All is for
our teaching. Shall I tell you what such a breath of fresh air makes me
think of?"

"It comes to me," said Connie, "like forgiveness when I was a little girl
and was naughty. I used to feel just like that."

"It is the same kind of thing I feel," I said--"as if life from the Spirit
of God were coming into my soul: I think of the wind that bloweth where it
listeth. Wind and spirit are the same word in the Greek; and the Latin word
_spirit_ comes even nearer to what we are saying, for it is the wind as
_breathed_. And now, Connie, I will tell you--and you will see how I am
growing able to talk to you like quite an old friend--what put me in such a
delight with Mr. Shepherd's letter and so exposed me to be teased by mamma
and you. As I read it, there rose up before me a vision of one sight of the
sea which I had when I was a young man, long before I saw your mamma. I had
gone out for a walk along some high downs. But I ought to tell you that I
had been working rather hard at Cambridge, and the life seemed to be all
gone out of me. Though my holidays had come, they did not feel quite like
holidays--not as holidays used to feel when I was a boy. Even when walking
along those downs with the scents of sixteen grasses or so in my brain,
like a melody with the odour of the earth for the accompaniment upon which
it floated, and with just enough of wind to stir them up and set them in
motion, I could not feel at all. I remembered something of what I had used
to feel in such places, but instead of believing in that, I doubted now
whether it had not been all a trick that I played myself--a fancied
pleasure only. I was walking along, then, with the sea behind me. It was
a warm, cloudy day--I had had no sunshine since I came out. All at once I
turned--I don't know why. There lay the gray sea, but not as I had seen
it last, not all gray. It was dotted, spotted, and splashed all over with
drops, pools, and lakes of light, of all shades of depth, from a light
shimmer of tremulous gray, through a half light that turned the prevailing
lead colour into translucent green that seemed to grow out of its depths--
through this, I say, to brilliant light, deepening and deepening till my
very soul was stung by the triumph of the intensity of its molten silver.
There was no sun upon me. But there were breaks in the clouds over the sea,
through which, the air being filled with vapour, I could see the long lines
of the sun-rays descending on the waters like rain--so like a rain of light
that the water seemed to plash up in light under their fall. I questioned
the past no more; the present seized upon me, and I knew that the past was
true, and that nature was more lovely, more awful in her loveliness than I
could grasp. It was a lonely place: I fell on my knees, and worshipped the
God that made the glory and my soul."

While I spoke Connie's tears had been flowing quietly.

"And mamma and I were making fun while you were seeing such things as
those!" she said pitifully.

"You didn't hurt them one bit, my darling--neither mamma nor you. If I had
been the least cross about it, as I should have been when I was as young
as at the time of which I was thinking, that would have ruined the vision
entirely. But your merriment only made me enjoy it more. And, my Connie, I
hope you will see the Atlantic before long; and if one vision should come
as brilliant as that, we shall be fortunate indeed, if we went all the way
to the west to see that only."

"O papa! I dare hardly think of it--it is too delightful. But do you think
we shall really go?"

"I do. Here comes your mamma--I am going to say to Shepherd, my dear, that
I will take his parish in hand, and if I cannot, after all, go myself, will
find some one, so that he need be in no anxiety from the uncertainty which
must hang over our movements even till the experiment itself is made."

"Very well, husband. I am quite satisfied."

And as I watched Connie, I saw that hope and expectation did much to
prepare her.






CHAPTER XI.

CONNIE'S DREAM.





Mr. Turner, being a good mechanic as well as surgeon, proceeded to invent,
and with his own hands in a great measure construct, a kind of litter,
which, with a water-bed laid upon it, could be placed in our own carriage
for Connie to lie upon, and from that lifted, without disturbing her, and
placed in a similar manner in the railway carriage. He had laid Connie
repeatedly upon it before he was satisfied that the arrangement of the
springs, &c., was successful. But at length she declared that it was
perfect, and that she would not mind being carried across the Arabian
desert on a camel's back with that under her.

As the season advanced, she continued to improve. I shall never forget the
first time she was carried out upon the lawn. If you can imagine an infant
coming into the world capable of the observation and delight of a child
of eight or ten, you will have some idea of how Connie received the new
impressions of everything around her. They were almost too much for her at
first, however. She who had been used to scamper about like a wild thing on
a pony, found the delight of a breath of wind almost more than she could
bear. After she was laid down she closed her eyes, and the smile that
flickered about her mouth was of a sort that harmonised entirely with the
two great tears that crept softly out from under her eyelids, and sank,
rather than ran, down her cheeks. She lay so that she faced a rich tract
of gently receding upland, plentifully wooded to the horizon's edge, and
through the wood peeped the white and red houses of a little hamlet, with
the square tower of its church just rising above the trees. A kind of frame
was made to the whole picture by the nearer trees of our own woods, through
an opening in which, evidently made or left for its sake, the distant
prospect was visible. It was a morning in early summer, when the leaves
were not quite full-grown but almost, and their green was shining and pure
as the blue of the sky, when the air had no touch of bitterness or of
lassitude, but was thoroughly warm, and yet filled the lungs with the
reviving as of a draught of cold water. We had fastened the carriage
umbrella to the sofa, so that it should shade her perfectly without
obscuring her prospect; and behind this we all crept, leaving her to come
to herself without being looked at, for emotion is a shy and sacred thing
and should be tenderly hidden by those who are near. The bees kept very
_beesy_ all about us. To see one huge fellow, as big as three ordinary ones
with pieces of red and yellow about him, as if he were the beadle of all
bee-dom, and overgrown in consequence--to see him, I say, down in a little
tuft of white clover, rolling about in it, hardly able to move for fatness,
yet bumming away as if his business was to express the delight of the whole
creation--was a sight! Then there were the butterflies, so light that they
seemed to tumble up into the air, and get down again with difficulty. They
bewildered me with their inscrutable variations of purpose. "If I could but
see once, for an hour, into the mind of a butterfly," I thought, "it would
be to me worth all the natural history I ever read. If I could but see why
he changes his mind so often and so suddenly--what he saw about that flower
to make him seek it--then why, on a nearer approach, he should decline
further acquaintance with it, and go rocking away through the air, to do
the same fifty times over again--it would give me an insight into all
animal and vegetable life that ages of study could not bring me up to." I
was thinking all this behind my daughter's umbrella, while a lark, whose
body had melted quite away in the heavenly spaces, was scattering bright
beads of ringing melody straight down upon our heads; while a cock was
crowing like a clarion from the home-farm, as if in defiance of the golden
glitter of his silent brother on the roof of the stable; while a little
stream that scampered down the same slope as the lawn lay upon, from a well
in the stable-yard, mingled its sweet undertone of contentment with the
jubilation of the lark and the business-like hum of the bees; and while
white clouds floated in the majesty of silence across the blue deeps of the
heavens. The air was so full of life and reviving, that it seemed like the
crude substance that God might take to make babies' souls of--only the very
simile smells of materialism, and therefore I do not like it.

"Papa," said Connie at length, and I was beside her in a moment. Her face
looked almost glorified with delight: there was a hush of that awe upon it
which is perhaps one of the deepest kinds of delight. She put out her thin
white hand, took hold of a button of my coat, drew me down towards her, and
said in a whisper:

"Don't you think God is here, papa?"

"Yes, I do, my darling," I answered.

"Doesn't _he_ enjoy this?"

"Yes, my dear. He wouldn't make us enjoy it if he did not enjoy it. It
would be to deceive us to make us glad and blessed, while our Father did
not care about it, or how it came to us. At least it would amount to making
us no longer his children."

"I am so glad you think so. I do. And I shall enjoy it so much more now."

She could hardly finish her sentence, but burst out sobbing so that I was
afraid she would hurt herself. I saw, however, that it was best to leave
her to quiet herself, and motioned to the rest to keep back and let her
recover as she could. The emotion passed off in a summer shower, and when I
went round once more, her face was shining just like a wet landscape after
the sun has come out and Nature has begun to make gentle game of her own
past sorrows. In a little while, she was merry--merrier, notwithstanding
her weakness, than I think I had ever seen her before.

"Look at that comical sparrow," she said. "Look how he cocks his head
first on one side and then on the other. Does he want us to see him? Is he
bumptious, or what?"

"I hardly know, my dear. I think sparrows are very like schoolboys; and
I suspect that if we understood the one class thoroughly, we should
understand the other. But I confess I do not yet understand either."

"Perhaps you will when Charlie and Harry are old enough to go to school,"
said Connie.

"It is my only chance of making any true acquaintance with the sparrows,"
I answered. "Look at them now," I exclaimed, as a little crowd of them
suddenly appeared where only one had stood a moment before, and exploded
in objurgation and general unintelligible excitement. After some obscure
fluttering of wings and pecking, they all vanished except two, which walked
about in a dignified manner, trying apparently to seem quite unconscious
each of the other's presence.

"I think it was a political meeting of some sort," said Connie, laughing
merrily.

"Well, they have this advantage over us," I answered, "that they get
through their business whatever it may be, with considerably greater
expedition than we get through ours."

A short silence followed, during which Connie lay contemplating everything.

"What do you think we girls are like, then, papa?" she asked at length.
"Don't say you don't know, now."

"I ought to know something more about you than I do about schoolboys. And
I think I do know a little about girls--not much though. They puzzle me a
good deal sometimes. I know what a great-hearted woman is, Connie."

"You can't help doing that, papa," interrupted Connie, adding with her old
roguishness, "You mustn't pass yourself off for very knowing for that. By
the time Wynnie is quite grown up, your skill will be tried."

"I hope I shall understand her then, and you too, Connie."

A shadow, just like the shadow of one of those white clouds above us,
passed over her face, and she said, trying to smile:

"I shall never grow up, papa. If I live, I shall only be a girl at best--a
creature you can't understand."

"On the contrary, Connie, I think I understand you almost as well as mamma.
But there isn't so much to understand yet, you know, as there will be."

Her merriment returned.

"Tell me what girls are like, then, or I shall sulk all day because you say
there isn't so much in me as in mamma."

"Well, I think, if the boys are like sparrows, the girls are like swallows.
Did you ever watch them before rain, Connie, skimming about over the lawn
as if it were water, low towards its surface, but never alighting? You
never see them grubbing after worms. Nothing less than things with wings
like themselves will satisfy them. They will be obliged to the earth only
for a little mud to build themselves nests with. For the rest, they live in
the air, and on the creatures of the air. And then, when they fancy the
air begins to be uncivil, sending little shoots of cold through their
warm feathers, they vanish. They won't stand it. They're off to a warmer
climate, and you never know till you find they're not there any more.
There, Connie!"

"I don't know, papa, whether you are making game of us or not. If you are
not, then I wish all you say were quite true of us. If you are then I think
it is not quite like you to be satirical."

"I am no believer in satire, Connie. And I didn't mean any. The swallows
are lovely creatures, and there would be no harm if the girls were a little
steadier than the swallows. Further satire than that I am innocent of."

"I don't mind that much, papa. Only I'm steady enough, and no thanks to me
for it," she added with a sigh.

"Connie," I said, "it's all for the sake of your wings that you're kept in
your nest."

She did not stay out long this first day, for the life the air gave her
soon tired her weak body. But the next morning she was brighter and better,
and longing to get up and go out again. When she was once more laid on her
couch on the lawn, in the midst of the world of light and busy-ness, in
which the light was the busiest of all, she said to me:

"Papa, I had such a strange dream last night: shall I tell it you?"

"If you please, my dear. I am very fond of dreams that have any sense in
them--or even of any that have good nonsense in them. I woke this morning,
saying to myself, 'Dante, the poet, must have been a respectable man, for
he was permitted by the council of Florence to carry the Nicene Creed and
the Multiplication Table in his coat of arms.' Now tell me your dream."

Connie laughed. All the household tried to make Connie laugh, and generally
succeeded. It was quite a triumph to Charlie or Harry, and was sure to be
recounted with glee at the next meal, when he succeeded in making Connie
laugh.

"Mine wasn't a dream to make me laugh. It was too dreadful at first, and
too delightful afterwards. I suppose it was getting out for the first time
yesterday that made me dream it. I thought I was lying quite still, without
breathing even, with my hands straight down by my sides and my eyes closed.
I did not choose to open them, for I knew that if I did I should see
nothing but the inside of the lid of my coffin. I did not mind it much
at first, for I was very quiet, and not uncomfortable. Everything was as
silent as it should be, for I was ten feet and a half under the surface of
the earth in the churchyard. Old Sogers was not far from me on one side,
and that was a comfort; only there was a thick wall of earth between.
But as the time went on, I began to get uncomfortable. I could not help
thinking how long I should have to wait for the resurrection. Somehow I
had forgotten all that you teach us about that. Perhaps it was a
punishment--the dream--for forgetting it."

"Silly child! Your dream is far better than your reflections."

"Well, I'll go on with my dream. I lay a long time till I got very tired,
and wanted to get up, O, so much! But still I lay, and although I tried, I
could not move hand or foot. At last I burst out crying. I was ashamed of
crying in my coffin, but I couldn't bear it any longer. I thought I was
quite disgraced, for everybody was expected to be perfectly quiet and
patient down there. But the moment I began to cry, I heard a sound. And
when I listened it was the sound of spades and pickaxes. It went on and on,
and came nearer and nearer. And then--it was so strange--I was dreadfully
frightened at the idea of the light and the wind, and of the people seeing
me in my coffin and my night-dress, and tried to persuade myself that it
was somebody else they were digging for, or that they were only going to
lay another coffin over mine. And I thought that if it was you, papa, I
shouldn't mind how long I lay there, for I shouldn't feel a bit lonely,
even though we could not speak a word to each other all the time. But the
sounds came on, nearer and nearer, and at last a pickaxe struck, with a
blow that jarred me all through, upon the lid of the coffin, right over my
head.

"'Here she is, poor thing!' I heard a sweet voice say.

"'I'm so glad we've found her,' said another voice.

"'She couldn't bear it any longer,' said a third more pitiful voice than
either of the others. 'I heard her first,' it went on. 'I was away up in
Orion, when I thought I heard a woman crying that oughtn't to be crying.
And I stopped and listened. And I heard her again. Then I knew that it was
one of the buried ones, and that she had been buried long enough, and was
ready for the resurrection. So as any business can wait except that, I flew
here and there till I fell in with the rest of you.'

"I think, papa, that this must have been because of what you were saying
the other evening about the mysticism of St. Paul; that while he defended
with all his might the actual resurrection of Christ and the resurrection
of those he came to save, he used it as meaning something more yet, as a
symbol for our coming out of the death of sin into the life of truth. Isn't
that right, papa?"

"Yes, my dear; I believe so. But I want to hear your dream first, and then
your way of accounting for it."

"There isn't much more of it now."

"There must be the best of it."

"Yes; I allow that. Well, while they spoke--it was a wonderfully clear
and connected dream: I never had one like it for that, or for anything
else--they were clearing away the earth and stones from the top of my
coffin. And I lay trembling and expecting to be looked at, like a thing in
a box as I was, every moment. But they lifted me, coffin and all, out of
the grave, for I felt the motion of it up. Then they set it down, and I
heard them taking the lid off. But after the lid was off, it did not seem
to make much difference to me. I could not open my eyes. I saw no light,
and felt no wind blowing upon me. But I heard whispering about me. Then I
felt warm, soft hands washing my face, and then I felt wafts of wind coming
on my face, and thought they came from the waving of wings. And when they
had washed my eyes, the air came upon them so sweet and cool! and I opened
them, I thought, and here I was lying on this couch, with butterflies and
bees flitting and buzzing about me, the brook singing somewhere near me,
and a lark up in the sky. But there were no angels--only plenty of light
and wind and living creatures. And I don't think I ever knew before what
happiness meant. Wasn't it a resurrection, papa, to come out of the grave
into such a world as this?"

"Indeed it was, my darling--and a very beautiful and true dream. There is
no need for me to moralise it to you, for you have done so for yourself
already. But not only do I think that the coming out of sin into goodness,
out of unbelief into faith in God, is like your dream; but I do expect that
no dream of such delight can come up to the sense of fresh life and being
that we shall have when we get on the higher body after this one won't
serve our purpose any longer, and is worn out and cast aside. The very
ability of the mind, whether of itself, or by some inspiration of the
Almighty, to dream such things, is a proof of our capacity for such things,
a proof, I think, that for such things we were made. Here comes in the
chance for faith in God--the confidence in his being and perfection that he
would not have made us capable without meaning to fill that capacity. If he
is able to make us capable, that is the harder half done already. The other
he can easily do. And if he is love he will do it. You should thank God for
that dream, Connie."

"I was afraid to do that, papa."

"That is as much as to fear that there is one place to which David
might have fled, where God would not find him--the most terrible of all
thoughts."

"Where do you mean, papa?"

"Dreamland, my dear. If it is right to thank God for a beautiful thought--I
mean a thought of strength and grace giving you fresh life and hope--why
should you be less bold to thank him when such thoughts arise in plainer
shape--take such vivid forms to your mind that they seem to come through
the doors of the eyes into the vestibule of the brain, and thence into the
inner chambers of the soul?"






CHAPTER XII.

THE JOURNEY.





For more than two months Charlie and Harry had been preparing for the
journey. The moment they heard of the prospect of it, they began to
prepare, accumulate, and pack stores both for the transit and the sojourn.
First of all there was an extensive preparation of ginger-beer, consisting,
as I was informed in confidence, of brown sugar, ground ginger, and cold
water. This store was, however, as near as I can judge, exhausted and
renewed about twelve times before the day of departure arrived; and when at
last the auspicious morning dawned, they remembered with dismay that they
had drunk the last drop two days before, and there was none in stock. Then
there was a wonderful and more successful hoarding of marbles, of a variety
so great that my memory refuses to bear the names of the different kinds,
which, I think, must have greatly increased since the time when I too was
a boy, when some marbles--one of real, white marble with red veins
especially--produced in my mind something of the delight that a work of art
produces now. These were carefully deposited in one of the many divisions
of a huge old hair-trunk, which they had got their uncle Weir, who could
use his father's tools with pleasure if not to profit, to fit up for them
with a multiplicity of boxes, and cupboards, and drawers, and trays, and
slides, that was quite bewildering. In this same box was stowed also a
quantity of hair, the gleanings of all the horse-tails upon the premises.
This was for making fishing-tackle, with a vague notion on the part of
Harry that it was to be employed in catching whales and crocodiles. Then
all their favourite books were stowed away in the same chest, in especial
a packet of a dozen penny books, of which I think I could give a complete
list now. For one afternoon as I searched about in the lumber-room after a
set of old library steps, which I wanted to get repaired, I came upon the
chest, and opening it, discovered my boys' hoard, and in it this packet of
books. I sat down on the top of the chest and read them all through, from
Jack the Giant-killer down to Hop o' my Thumb without rising, and this in
the broad daylight, with the yellow sunshine nestling beside me on the
rose-coloured silken seat, richly worked, of a large stately-looking chair
with three golden legs. Yes I could tell you all those stories, not to say
the names of them, over yet. Only I knew every one of them before; finding
now that they had fared like good vintages, for if they had lost something
in potency, they had gained much in flavour. Harry could not read these,
and Charlie not very well, but they put confidence in them notwithstanding,
in virtue of the red, blue, and yellow prints. Then there was a box of
sawdust, the design of which I have not yet discovered; a huge ball of
string; a rabbit's skin; a Noah's ark; an American clock, that refused to
go for all the variety of treatment they gave it; a box of lead-soldiers,
and twenty other things, amongst which was a huge gilt ball having an eagle
of brass with outspread wings on the top of it.

Great was their consternation and dismay when they found that this magazine
could not be taken in the post-chaise in which they were to follow us to
the station. A good part of our luggage had been sent on before us, but the
boys had intended the precious box to go with themselves. Knowing well,
however, how little they would miss it, and with what shouts of south-sea
discovery they would greet the forgotten treasure when they returned, I
insisted on the lumbering article being left in peace. So that, as man
goeth treasureless to his grave, whatever he may have accumulated before
the fatal moment, they had to set off for the far country without chest or
ginger-beer--not therefore altogether so desolate and unprovided for as
they imagined. The abandoned treasure was forgotten the moment the few
tears it had occasioned were wiped away.

It was the loveliest of mornings when we started upon our journey. The
sun shone, the wind was quiet, and everything was glad. The swallows were
twittering from the corbels they had added to the adornment of the dear old
house.

"I'm sorry to leave the swallows behind," said Wynnie, as she stepped into
the carriage after her mother. Connie, of course, was already there, eager
and strong-hearted for the journey.

We set off. Connie was in delight with everything, especially with all
forms of animal life and enjoyment that we saw on the road. She seemed to
enter into the spirit of the cows feeding on the rich green grass of the
meadows, of the donkeys eating by the roadside, of the horses we met
bravely diligent at their day's work, as they trudged along the road with
wagon or cart behind them. I sat by the coachman, but so that I could see
her face by the slightest turning of my head. I knew by its expression
that she gave a silent blessing to the little troop of a brown-faced gipsy
family, which came out of a dingy tent to look at the passing carriage. A
fleet of ducklings in a pool, paddling along under the convoy of the parent
duck, next attracted her.

"Look; look. Isn't that delicious?" she cried.

"I don't think I should like it though," said Wynnie.

"What shouldn't you like, Wynnie?" asked her mother.

"To be in the water and not feel it wet. Those feathers!"

"They feel it with their legs and their webby toes," said Connie.

"Yes, that is some consolation," answered Wynnie.

"And if you were a duck, you would feel the good of your feathers in
winter, when you got into your cold bath of a morning."

I give all this chat for the sake of showing how Connie's illness had not
in the least withdrawn her from nature and her sympathies--had rather, as
it were, made all the fibres of her being more delicate and sympathetic,
so that the things around her could enter her soul even more easily than
before, and what had seemed to shut her out had in reality brought her into
closer contact with the movements of all vitality.

We had to pass through the village to reach the railway station. Everybody
almost was out to bid us good-bye. I did not want, for Connie's sake
chiefly, to have any scene, but recalling something I had forgotten to
say to one of my people, I stopped the carriage to speak to him. The same
instant there was a crowd of women about us. But Connie was the centre of
all their regards. They hardly looked at her mother or sister. Had she been
a martyr who had stood the test and received her aureole, she could hardly
have been more regarded. The common use of the word martyr is a curious
instance of how words get degraded. The sufferings involved in martyrdom,
and not the pure will giving occasion to that suffering, is fixed upon by
the common mind as the martyrdom. The witness-bearing is lost sight of,
except we can suppose that "a martyr to the toothache" means a witness of
the fact of the toothache and its tortures. But while _martyrdom_ really
means a bearing for the sake of the truth, yet there is a way in which any
suffering, even that we have brought upon ourselves, may become martyrdom.
When it is so borne that the sufferer therein bears witness to the presence
and fatherhood of God, in quiet, hopeful submission to his will, in gentle
endurance, and that effort after cheerfulness which is not seldom to be
seen where the effort is hardest to make; more than all, perhaps, and
rarest of all, when it is accepted as the just and merciful consequence
of wrong-doing, and is endured humbly, and with righteous shame, as the
cleansing of the Father's hand, indicating that repentance unto life which
lifts the sinner out of his sins, and makes him such that the holiest men
of old would talk to him with gladness and respect, then indeed it may be
called a martyrdom. This latter could not be Connie's case, but the former
was hers, and so far she might be called a martyr, even as the old women of
the village designated her.

After we had again started, our ears were invaded with shouts from the
post-chaise behind us, in which Charlie and Harry, their grief at the
abandoned chest forgotten as if it had never been, were yelling in the
exuberance of their gladness. Dora, more staid as became her years, was
trying to act the matron with them in vain, and old nursie had enough to
do with Miss Connie's baby to heed what the young gentlemen were about, so
long as explosions of noise was all the mischief. Walter, the man-servant,
who had been with us ten years, and was the main prop of the establishment,
looking after everything and putting his hand to everything, with an
indefinite charge ranging from the nursery to the wine-cellar, and from
the corn-bin to the pig-trough, and who, as we could not possibly get on
without him, sat on the box of the post-chaise beside the driver from
the Griffin, rather connived, I fear, than otherwise at the noise of the
youngsters.

"Good-bye, Marshmallows," they were shouting at the top of their voices,
as if they had just been released from a prison, where they had spent a
wretched childhood; and, as it could hardly offend anybody's ears on the
open country road I allowed them to shout till they were tired, which
condition fortunately arrived before we reached the station, so that there
was no occasion for me to interfere. I always sought to give them as much
liberty as could be afforded them.

At the station we found Weir waiting to see us off, with my sister, now in
wonderful health. Turner was likewise there, and ready to accompany us a
good part of the way. But beyond the valuable assistance he lent us in
moving Connie, no occasion arose for the exercise of his professional
skill. She bore the journey wonderfully, slept not unfrequently, and only
at the end showed herself at length wearied. We stopped three times on the
way: first at Salisbury, where the streams running through the streets
delighted her. There we remained one whole day, but sent the children and
servants, all but my wife's maid, on before us, under the charge of Walter.
This left us more at our ease. At Exeter, we stopped only the night, for
Connie found herself quite able to go on the next morning. Here Turner left
us, and we missed him very much. Connie looked a little out of spirits
after his departure, but soon recovered herself. The next night we spent
at a small town on the borders of Devonshire, which was the limit of our
railway travelling. Here we remained for another whole day, for the remnant
of the journey across part of Devonshire and Cornwall to the shore must be
posted, and was a good five hours' work. We started about eleven o'clock,
full of spirits at the thought that we had all but accomplished the only
part of the undertaking about which we had had any uneasiness. Connie was
quite merry. The air was thoroughly warm. We had an open carriage with
a hood. Wynnie sat opposite her mother, Dora and Eliza the maid in the
rumble, and I by the coachman. The road being very hilly, we had
four horses; and with four horses, sunshine, a gentle wind, hope and
thankfulness, who would not be happy?

There is a strange delight in motion, which I am not sure that I altogether
understand. The hope of the end as bringing fresh enjoyment has something
to do with it, no doubt; the accompaniments of the motion, the change of
scene, the mystery that lies beyond the next hill or the next turn in
the road, the breath of the summer wind, the scent of the pine-trees
especially, and of all the earth, the tinkling jangle of the harness as you
pass the trees on the roadside, the life of the horses, the glitter and the
shadow, the cottages and the roses and the rosy faces, the scent of burning
wood or peat from the chimneys, these and a thousand other things combine
to make such a journey delightful. But I believe it needs something more
than this--something even closer to the human life--to account for the
pleasure that motion gives us. I suspect it is its living symbolism; the
hidden relations which it bears to the eternal soul in its aspirations and
longings--ever following after, ever attaining, never satisfied. Do not
misunderstand me, my reader. A man, you will allow, perhaps, may be content
although he is not and cannot be happy: I feel inclined to turn all this
the other way, saying that a man ought always to be happy, never to be
content. You will see I do not say _contented_; I say _content_. Here comes
in his faith: his life is hid with Christ in God, measureless, unbounded.
All things are his, to become his by blessed lovely gradations of gift, as
his being enlarges to receive; and if ever the shadow of his own necessary
incompleteness falls upon the man, he has only to remember that in God's
idea he is complete, only his life is hid from himself with Christ in God
the Infinite. If anyone accuses me here of mysticism, I plead guilty with
gladness: I only hope it may be of that true mysticism which, inasmuch as
he makes constant use of it, St. Paul would understand at once. I leave it,
however.

I think I must have been the very happiest of the party myself. No doubt I
was younger much than I am now, but then I was quite middle-aged, with full
confession thereof in gray hairs and wrinkles. Why should not a man be
happy when he is growing old, so long as his faith strengthens the feeble
knees which chiefly suffer in the process of going down the hill? True, the
fever heat is over, and the oil burns more slowly in the lamp of life; but
if there is less fervour, there is more pervading warmth; if less of fire,
more of sunshine; there is less smoke and more light. Verily, youth is
good, but old age is better--to the man who forsakes not his youth when his
youth forsakes him. The sweet visitings of nature do not depend upon youth
or romance, but upon that quiet spirit whose meekness inherits the earth.
The smell of that field of beans gives me more delight now than ever it
could have given me when I was a youth. And if I ask myself why I find it
is simply because I have more faith now than I had then. It came to me then
as an accident of nature--a passing pleasure flung to me only as the dogs'
share of the crumbs. Now I believe that God _means_ that odour of the
bean-field; that when Jesus smelled such a scent about Jerusalem or in
Galilee, he thought of his Father. And if God means it, it is mine, even if
I should never smell it again. The music of the spheres is mine if old age
should make me deaf as the adder. Am I mystical again, reader? Then I hope
you are too, or will be before you have done with this same beautiful
mystical life of ours. More and more nature becomes to me one of God's
books of poetry--not his grandest--that is history--but his loveliest,
perhaps.

And ought I not to have been happy when all who were with me were happy?
I will not run the risk of wearying even my contemplative reader by
describing to him the various reflexes of happiness that shone from the
countenances behind me in the carriage, but I will try to hit each off in a
word, or a single simile. My Ethelwyn's face was bright with the brightness
of a pale silvery moon that has done her harvest work, and, a little weary,
lifts herself again into the deeper heavens from stooping towards the
earth. Wynnie's face was bright with the brightness of the morning star,
ever growing pale and faint over the amber ocean that brightens at the
sun's approach; for life looked to Wynnie severe in its light, and somewhat
sad because severe. Connie's face was bright with the brightness of a lake
in the rosy evening, the sound of the river flowing in and the sound of the
river flowing forth just audible, but itself still, and content to be still
and mirror the sunset. Dora's was bright with the brightness of a marigold
that follows the sun without knowing it; and Eliza's was bright with the
brightness of a half-blown cabbage rose, radiating good-humour. This last
is not a good simile, but I cannot find a better. I confess failure, and go
on.

After stopping once to bait, during which operation Connie begged to be
carried into the parlour of the little inn that she might see the china
figures that were certain to be on the chimney-piece, as indeed they were,
where she drank a whole tumbler of new milk before we lifted her to carry
her back, we came upon a wide high moorland country the roads through which
were lined with gorse in full golden bloom, while patches of heather all
about were showing their bells, though not yet in their autumnal outburst
of purple fire. Here I began to be reminded of Scotland, in which I had
travelled a good deal between the ages of twenty and five-and-twenty. The
further I went the stronger I felt the resemblance. The look of the fields,
the stone fences that divided them, the shape and colour and materials of
the houses, the aspect of the people, the feeling of the air, and of the
earth and sky generally, made me imagine myself in a milder and more
favoured Scotland. The west wind was fresh, but had none of that sharp edge
which one can so often detect in otherwise warm winds blowing under a hot
sun. Though she had already travelled so many miles, Connie brightened up
within a few minutes after we got on this moor; and we had not gone much
farther before a shout from the rumble informed us that keen-eyed little
Dora had discovered the Atlantic: a dip in the high coast revealed it blue
and bright. We soon lost sight of it again, but in Connie's eyes it seemed
to linger still. As often as I looked round, the blue of them seemed the
reflection of the sea in their little convex mirrors. Ethelwyn's eyes, too,
were full of it, and a flush on her generally pale cheek showed that she
too expected the ocean. After a few miles along this breezy expanse, we
began to descend towards the sea-level. Down the winding of a gradual
slope, interrupted by steep descents, we approached this new chapter in our
history. We came again upon a few trees here and there, all with their tops
cut off in a plane inclined upwards away from the sea. For the sea-winds,
like a sweeping scythe, bend the trees all away towards the land, and keep
their tops mown with their sharp rushing, keen with salt spray off the
crests of the broken waves. Then we passed through some ancient villages,
with streets narrow, and steep and sharp-angled, that needed careful
driving and the frequent pressure of the break upon the wheel. And now the
sea shone upon us with nearer greeting, and we began to fancy we could hear
its talk with the shore. At length we descended a sharp hill, reached the
last level, drove over a bridge and down the line of the stream, saw
the land vanish in the sea--a wide bay; then drove over another wooden
drawbridge, and along the side of a canal in which lay half-a-dozen sloops
and schooners. Then came a row of pretty cottages; then a gate, and an
ascent, and ere we reached the rectory, we were aware of its proximity by
loud shouts, and the sight of Charlie and Harry scampering along the top
of a stone wall to meet us. This made their mother nervous, but she kept
quiet, knowing that unrestrained anxiety is always in danger of bringing
about the evil it fears. A moment after, we drew up at a long porch,
leading through the segment of a circle to the door of the house. The
journey was over. We got down in the little village of Kilkhaven, in the
county of Cornwall.






CHAPTER XIII.

WHAT WE DID WHEN WE ARRIVED.





We carried Connie in first of all, of course, and into the room which nurse
had fixed upon for her--the best in the house, of course, again. She did
seem tired now, and no wonder. She had a cup of tea at once, and in half an
hour dinner was ready, of which we were all very glad. After dinner I went
up to Connie's room. There I found her fast asleep on the sofa, and Wynnie
as fast asleep on the floor beside her. The drive and the sea air had
had the same effect on both of them. But pleased as I was to see Connie
sleeping so sweetly, I was even more pleased to see Wynnie asleep on the
floor. What a wonderful satisfaction it may give to a father and mother to
see this or that child asleep! It is when her kittens are asleep that the
cat creeps away to look after her own comforts. Our cat chose to have her
kittens in my study once, and as I would not have her further disturbed
than to give them another cushion to lie on in place of that which belonged
to my sofa, I had many opportunities of watching them as I wrote, or
prepared my sermons. But I must not talk about the cat and her kittens
now. When parents see their children asleep, especially if they have been
suffering in any way, they breathe more freely; a load is lifted off their
minds; their responsibility seems over; the children have gone back to
their Father, and he alone is looking after them for a while. Now, I had
not been comfortable about Wynnie for some time, and especially during our
journey, and still more especially during the last part of our journey.
There was something amiss with her. She seemed constantly more or less
dejected, as if she had something to think about that was too much for her,
although, to tell the truth, I really believe now that she had not quite
enough to think about. Some people can thrive tolerably without much
thought: at least, they both live comfortably without it, and do not seem
to be capable of effecting it if it were required of them; while for others
a large amount of mental and spiritual operation is necessary for the
health of both body and mind, and when the matter or occasion for so much
is not afforded them, the consequence is analogous to what follows when a
healthy physical system is not supplied with sufficient food: the oxygen,
the source of life, begins to consume the life itself; it tears up the
timbers of the house to burn against the cold. Or, to use a different
simile, when the Moses-rod of circumstance does not strike the rock and
make the waters flow, such a mind--one that must think to live--will go
digging into itself, and is in danger of injuring the very fountain of
thought, by drawing away its living water into ditches and stagnant pools.
This was, I say, the case in part with my Wynnie, although I did not
understand it at that moment. She did not look quite happy, did not always
meet a smile with a smile, looked almost reprovingly upon the frolics of
the little brother-imps, and though kindness itself when any real hurt or
grief befell them, had reverted to her old, somewhat dictatorial manner,
of which I have already spoken as interrupted by Connie's accident. To her
mother and me she was service itself, only service without the smile which
is as the flame of the sacrifice and makes it holy. So we were both a
little uneasy about her, for we did not understand her. On the journey she
had seemed almost annoyed at Connie's ecstasies, and said to Dora many
times: "Do be quiet, Dora;" although there was not a single creature but
ourselves within hearing, and poor Connie seemed only delighted with the
child's explosions. So I was--but although I say _so_, I hardly know why
I was pleased to see her thus, except it was from a vague belief in the
anodyne of slumber. But this pleasure did not last long; for as I stood
regarding my two treasures, even as if my eyes had made her uncomfortable,
she suddenly opened hers, and started to her feet, with the words, "I beg
your pardon, papa," looking almost guiltily round her, and putting up her
hair hurriedly, as if she had committed an impropriety in being caught
untidy. This was fresh sign of a condition of mind that was not healthy.

"My dear," I said, "what do you beg my pardon for? I was so pleased to see
you asleep! and you look as if you thought I were going to scold you."

"O papa," she said, laying her head on my shoulder, "I am afraid I must be
very naughty. I so often feel now as if I were doing something wrong, or
rather as if you would think I was doing something wrong. I am sure there
must be something wicked in me somewhere, though I do not clearly know what
it is. When I woke up now, I felt as if I had neglected something, and you
had come to find fault with me. _Is_ there anything, papa?"

"Nothing whatever, my child. But you cannot be well when you feel like
that."

"I am perfectly well, so far as I know. I was so cross to Dora to-day! Why
shouldn't I feel happy when everybody else is? I must be wicked, papa."

Here Connie woke up.

"There now! I've waked Connie," Wynnie resumed. "I'm always doing something
I ought not to do. Please go to sleep again, Connie, and take that sin off
my poor conscience."

"What nonsense is Wynnie talking about being wicked?" asked Connie.

"It isn't nonsense, Connie. You know I am."

"I know nothing of the sort, Wynnie. If it were me now! And yet I don't
_feel_ wicked."

"My dear children," I said, "we must all pray to God for his Spirit, and
then we shall feel just as we ought to feel. It is not for anyone to say to
himself how he ought to feel at any given moment; still less for one man to
say to another how he ought to feel; that is in the former case to do as
St. Paul says he had learned to give up doing--to judge our own selves,
which ought to be left to God; in the latter case it is to do what our Lord
has told us expressly we are not to do--to judge other people. You get
your bonnet, Wynnie, and come out with me. I am going to explore a little
of this desert island upon which we have been cast away. And you, Connie,
just to please Wynnie, must try and go to sleep again."

Wynnie ran for her bonnet, a little afraid perhaps that I was going to talk
seriously to her, but showing no reluctance anyhow to accompany me.

Now I wonder whether it will be better to tell what we saw, or only what we
talked about, and give what we saw in the shape in which we reported it to
Connie, when we came back into her room, bearing, like the spies who went
to search the land, our bunch of grapes, that is, of sweet news of nature,
to her who could not go to gather them for herself. It think it will be the
best plan to take part of both plans.

When we left the door of the house, we went up the few steps of a stair
leading on to the downs, against and amidst, and indeed _in_, the rocks,
buttressing the sea-edge of which our new abode was built. A life for a
big-winged angel seemed waiting us upon those downs. The wind still blew
from the west, both warm and strong--I mean strength-giving--and the wind
was the first thing we were aware of. The ground underfoot was green and
soft and springy, and sprinkled all over with the bright flowers, chiefly
yellow, that live amidst the short grasses of the downs, the shadows of
whose unequal surface were now beginning to be thrown east, for the sun was
going seawards. I stood up, stretched out my arms, threw back my shoulders
and my head, and filled my chest with a draught of the delicious wind,
feeling thereafter like a giant refreshed with wine. Wynnie stood
apparently unmoved amidst the life-nectar, thoughtful, and turning her eyes
hither and thither.

"That makes me feel young again," I said.

"I wish it would make me feel old then," said Wynnie.

"What do you mean, my child?"

"Because then I should have a chance of knowing what it is like to feel
young," she answered rather enigmatically. I did not reply. We were walking
up the brow which hid the sea from us. The smell of the down-turf was
indescribable in its homely delicacy; and by the time we had reached the
top, almost every sense was filled with its own delight. The top of the
hill was the edge of the great shore-cliff; and the sun was hanging on the
face of the mightier sky-cliff opposite, and the sea stretched for visible
miles and miles along the shore on either hand, its wide blue mantle
fringed with lovely white wherever it met the land, and scalloped into
all fantastic curves, according to the whim of the nether fires which had
formed its bed; and the rush of the waves, as they bore the rising tide up
on the shore, was the one music fit for the whole. Ear and eye, touch and
smell, were alike invaded with blessedness. I ought to have kept this to
give my reader in Connie's room; but he shall share with her presently. The
sense of space--of mighty room for life and growth--filled my soul, and I
thanked God in my heart. The wind seemed to bear that growth into my soul,
even as the wind of God first breathed into man's nostrils the breath of
life, and the sun was the pledge of the fulfilment of every aspiration. I
turned and looked at Wynnie. She stood pleased but listless amidst that
which lifted me into the heaven of the Presence.

"Don't you enjoy all this grandeur, Wynnie?"

"I told you I was very wicked, papa."

"And I told you not to say so, Wynnie."

"You see I cannot enjoy it, papa. I wonder why it is."

"I suspect it is because you haven't room, Wynnie."

"I know you mean something more than I know, papa."

"I mean, my dear, that it is not because you are wicked, but because you do
not know God well enough, and therefore your being, which can only live in
him, is 'cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in.' It is only in him that the
soul has room. In knowing him is life and its gladness. The secret of your
own heart you can never know; but you can know Him who knows its secret.
Look up, my darling; see the heavens and the earth. You do not feel them,
and I do not call upon you to feel them. It would be both useless and
absurd to do so. But just let them look at you for a moment, and then tell
me whether it must not be a blessed life that creates such a glory as this
All."

She stood silent for a moment, looked up at the sky, looked round on the
earth, looked far across the sea to the setting sun, and then turned her
eyes upon me. They were filled with tears, but whether from feeling, or
sorrow that she could not feel, I would not inquire. I made haste to speak
again.

"As this world of delight surrounds and enters your bodily frame, so does
God surround your soul and live in it. To be at home with the awful source
of your being, through the child-like faith which he not only permits, but
requires, and is ever teaching you, or rather seeking to rouse up in you,
is the only cure for such feelings as those that trouble you. Do not say it
is too high for you. God made you in his own image, therefore capable of
understanding him. For this final end he sent his Son, that the Father
might with him come into you, and dwell with you. Till he does so, the
temple of your soul is vacant; there is no light behind the veil, no cloudy
pillar over it; and the priests, your thoughts, feelings, loves, and
desires, moan, and are troubled--for where is the work of the priest when
the God is not there? When He comes to you, no mystery, no unknown feeling,
will any longer distress you. You will say, 'He knows, though I do not.'
And you will be at the secret of the things he has made. You will feel what
they are, and that which his will created in gladness you will receive
in joy. One glimmer of the present God in this glory would send you home
singing. But do not think I blame you, Wynnie, for feeling sad. I take it
rather as the sign of a large life in you, that will not be satisfied with
little things. I do not know when or how it may please God to give you the
quiet of mind that you need; but I tell you that I believe it is to be had;
and in the mean time, you must go on doing your work, trusting in God even
for this. Tell him to look at your sorrow, ask him to come and set it
right, making the joy go up in your heart by his presence. I do not know
when this may be, I say, but you must have patience, and till he lays his
hand on your head, you must be content to wash his feet with your tears.
Only he will be better pleased if your faith keep you from weeping and from
going about your duties mournful. Try to be brave and cheerful for the sake
of Christ, and for the sake of your confidence in the beautiful teaching of
God, whose course and scope you cannot yet understand. Trust, my daughter,
and let that give you courage and strength."

Now the sky and the sea and the earth must have made me able to say these
things to her; but I knew that, whatever the immediate occasion of her
sadness, such was its only real cure. Other things might, in virtue of the
will of God that was in them, give her occupation and interest enough for a
time, but nothing would do finally, but God himself. Here I was sure I was
safe; here I knew lay the hunger of humanity. Humanity may, like other
vital forms, diseased systems, fix on this or that as the object not merely
of its desire but of its need: it can never be stilled by less than the
bread of life--the very presence in the innermost nature of the Father and
the Son.

We walked on together. Wynnie made me no reply, but, weeping silently,
clung to my arm. We walked a long way by the edge of the cliffs, beheld
the sun go down, and then turned and went home. When we reached the house,
Wynnie left me, saying only, "Thank you, papa. I think it is all true. I
will try to be a better girl."

I went straight to Connie's room: she was lying as I saw her last, looking
out of her window.

"Connie," I said, "Wynnie and I have had such a treat--such a sunset!"

"I've seen a little of the light of it on the waves in the bay there, but
the high ground kept me from seeing the sunset itself. Did it set in the
sea?"

"You do want the General Gazetteer, after all, Connie. Is that water the
Atlantic, or is it not? And if it be, where on earth could the sun set but
in it?"

"Of course, papa. What a goose I am! But don't make game of me--_please_. I
am too deliciously happy to be made game of to-night."

"I won't make game of you, my darling. I will tell you about the
sunset--the colours of it, at least. This must be one of the best places in
the whole world to see sunsets."

"But you have had no tea, papa. I thought you would come and have your
tea with me. But you were so long, that mamma would not let me wait any
longer."

"O, never mind the tea, my dear. But Wynnie has had none. You've got a
tea-caddy of your own, haven't you?"

"Yes, and a teapot; and there's the kettle on the hob--for I can't do
without a little fire in the evenings."

"Then I'll make some tea for Wynnie and myself, and tell you at the same
time about the sunset. I never saw such colours. I cannot tell you what it
was like while the sun was yet going down, for the glory of it has burned
the memory of it out of me. But after the sun was down, the sky remained
thinking about him; and the thought of the sky was in delicate translucent
green on the horizon, just the colour of the earth etherealised and
glorified--a broad band; then came another broad band of pale rose-colour;
and above that came the sky's own eternal blue, pale likewise, but so sure
and changeless. I never saw the green and the blue divided and harmonised
by the rose-colour before. It was a wonderful sight. If it is warm enough
to-morrow, we will carry you out on the height, that you may see what the
evening will bring."

"There is one thing about sunsets," returned Connie--"two things, that make
me rather sad--about themselves, not about anything else. Shall I tell you
them?"

"Do, my love. There are few things more precious to learn than the effects
of Nature upon individual minds. And there is not a feeling of yours, my
child, that is not of value to me."

"You are so kind, papa! I am so glad of my accident. I think I should never
have known how good you are but for that. But my thoughts seem so little
worth after you say so much about them."

"Let me be judge of that, my dear."

"Well, one thing is, that we shall never, never, never, see the same sunset
again."

"That is true. But why should we? God does not care to do the same thing
over again. When it is once done, it is done, and he goes on doing
something new. For, to all eternity, he never will have done showing
himself by new, fresh things. It would be a loss to do the same thing
again."

"But that just brings me to my second trouble. The thing is lost. I forget
it. Do what I can, I cannot remember sunsets. I try to fix them fast in my
memory, that I may recall them when I want them; but just as they fade out
of the sky, all into blue or gray, so they fade out of my mind and leave it
as if they had never been there--except perhaps two or three. Now, though
I did not see this one, yet, after you have talked about it, I shall never
forget _it_."

"It is not, and never will be, as if they had never been. They have their
influence, and leave that far deeper than your memory--in your very being,
Connie. But I have more to say about it, although it is only an idea,
hardly an assurance. Our brain is necessarily an imperfect instrument. For
its right work, perhaps it is needful that it should forget in part. But
there are grounds for believing that nothing is ever really forgotten. I
think that, when we have a higher existence than we have now, when we are
clothed with that spiritual body of which St. Paul speaks, you will be able
to recall any sunset you have ever seen with an intensity proportioned to
the degree of regard and attention you gave it when it was present to you.
But here comes Wynnie to see how you are.--I've been making some tea for
you, Wynnie, my love."

"O, thank you, papa--I shall be so glad of some tea!" said Wynnie, the
paleness of whose face showed the red rims of her eyes the more plainly.
She had had what girls call a good cry, and was clearly the better for it.

The same moment my wife came in. "Why didn't you send for me, Harry, to get
your tea?" she said.

"I did not deserve any, seeing I had disregarded proper times and seasons.
But I knew you must be busy."

"I have been superintending the arrangement of bedrooms, and the unpacking,
and twenty different things," said Ethelwyn. "We shall be so comfortable!
It is such a curious house! Have you had a nice walk?"

"Mamma, I never had such a walk in my life," returned Wynnie. "You would
think the shore had been built for the sake of the show--just for a
platform to see sunsets from. And the sea! Only the cliffs will be rather
dangerous for the children."

"I have just been telling Connie about the sunset. She could see something
of the colours on the water, but not much more."

"O, Connie, it will be so delightful to get you out here! Everything is
so big! There is such room everywhere! But it must be awfully windy in
winter," said Wynnie, whose nature was always a little prospective, if not
apprehensive.

But I must not keep my reader longer upon mere family chat.






CHAPTER XIV.

MORE ABOUT KILKHAVEN.





Our dining-room was one story below the level at which we had entered the
parsonage; for, as I have said, the house was built into the face of the
cliff, just where it sunk nearly to the level of the shores of the bay.
While at dinner, on the evening of our arrival, I kept looking from the
window, of course, and I saw before me, first a little bit of garden,
mostly in turf, then a low stone wall; beyond, over the top of the wall,
the blue water of the bay; then beyond the water, all alive with light and
motion, the rocks and sand-hills of the opposite side of the little bay,
not a quarter of a mile across. I could likewise see where the shore went
sweeping out and away to the north, with rock after rock standing far into
the water, as if gazing over the awful wild, where there was nothing to
break the deathly waste between Cornwall and Newfoundland. But for the
moment I did not regard the huge power lying outside so much as the merry
blue bay between me and those rocks and sand-hills. If I moved my head a
little to the right, I saw, over the top of the low wall already mentioned,
and apparently quite close to it the slender yellow masts of a schooner,
her mainsail hanging loose from the gaff, whose peak was lowered. We must,
I thought, be on the very harbour-quay. When I went out for my walk with
Wynnie, I had turned from the bay, and gone to the brow of the cliffs
overhanging the open sea on our own side of it.

When I came down to breakfast in the same room next morning, I stared. The
blue had changed to yellow. The life of the water was gone. Nothing met my
eyes but a wide expanse of dead sand. You could walk straight across
the bay to the hills opposite. From the look of the rocks, from the
perpendicular cliffs on the coast, I had almost, without thinking,
concluded that we were on the shore of a deep-water bay. It was high-water,
or nearly so, then; and now, when I looked westward, it was over a long
reach of sands, on the far border of which the white fringe of the waves
was visible, as if there was their _hitherto_, and further towards us they
could not come. Beyond the fringe lay the low hill of the Atlantic. To add
to my confusion, when I looked to the right, that is, up the bay towards
the land, there was no schooner there. I went out at the window, which
opened from the room upon the little lawn, to look, and then saw in a
moment how it was.

"Do you know, my dear," I said to my wife, "we are just at the mouth of
that canal we saw as we came along? There are gates and a lock just outside
there. The schooner that was under this window last night must have gone in
with the tide. She is lying in the basin above now."

"O, yes, papa," Charlie and Harry broke in together. "We saw it go up
this morning. We've been out ever so long. It was so funny," Charlie
went on--everything was _funny_ with Charlie--"to see it rise up like a
Jack-in-the-box, and then slip into the quiet water through the other
gates!"

And when I thought about the waves tumbling and breaking away out there,
and the wide yellow sands between, it was wonderful--which was what Charlie
meant by funny--to see the little vessel lying so many feet above it all,
in a still plenty of repose, gathering strength, one might fancy to rush
out again, when its time was come, into the turmoil beyond, and dash its
way through the breasts of the billows.

After breakfast we had prayers, as usual, and after a visit to Connie, whom
I found tired, but wonderfully well, I went out for a walk by myself, to
explore the neighbourhood, find the church, and, in a word, do something to
shake myself into my new garments. The day was glorious. I wandered along
a green path, in the opposite direction from our walk the evening before,
with a fir-wood on my right hand, and a belt of feathery tamarisks on my
left, behind which lay gardens sloping steeply to a lower road, where stood
a few pretty cottages. Turning a corner, I came suddenly in sight of the
church, on the green down above me--a sheltered yet commanding situation;
for, while the hill rose above it, protecting it from the east, it looked
down the bay, and the Atlantic lay open before it. All the earth seemed to
lie behind it, and all its gaze to be fixed on the symbol of the infinite.
It stood as the church ought to stand, leading men up the mount of vision,
to the verge of the eternal, to send them back with their hearts full of
the strength that springs from hope, by which alone the true work of the
world can be done. And when I saw it I rejoiced to think that once more
I was favoured with a church that had a history. Of course it is a happy
thing to see new churches built wherever there is need of such; but to the
full idea of the building it is necessary that it should be one in which
the hopes and fears, the cares and consolations, the loves and desires of
our forefathers should have been roofed; where the hearts of those through
whom our country has become that which it is--from whom not merely the
life-blood of our bodies, but the life-blood of our spirits, has come down
to us, whose existence and whose efforts have made it possible for us to
be that which we are--have before us worshipped that Spirit from whose
fountain the whole torrent of being flows, who ever pours fresh streams
into the wearying waters of humanity, so ready to settle down into a
stagnant repose. Therefore I would far rather, when I may, worship in an
old church, whose very stones are a history of how men strove to realise
the infinite, compelling even the powers of nature into the task--as I
soon found on the very doorway of this church, where the ripples of the
outspread ocean, and grotesque imaginations of the monsters of its deeps,
fixed, as it might seem, for ever in stone, gave a distorted reflex, from
the little mirror of the artist's mind, of that mighty water, so awful, so
significant to the human eye, which yet lies in the hollow of the Father's
palm, like the handful that the weary traveller lifts from the brook by the
way. It is in virtue of the truth that went forth in such and such like
attempts that we are able to hold our portion of the infinite reality which
God only knows. They have founded our Church for us, and such a church as
this will stand for the symbol of it; for here we too can worship the
God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob--the God of Sidney, of Hooker, of
Herbert. This church of Kilkhaven, old and worn, rose before me a history
in stone--so beaten and swept about by the "wild west wind,"

  "For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
  Cleave themselves into chasms,"

and so streamed upon, and washed, and dissolved, by the waters lifted from
the sea and borne against it on the upper tide of the wind, that you could
almost fancy it one of those churches that have been buried for ages
beneath the encroaching waters, lifted again, by some mighty revulsion of
nature's heart, into the air of the sweet heavens, there to stand marked
for ever with the tide-flows of the nether world--scooped, and hollowed,
and worn like aeonian rocks that have slowly, but for ever, responded to
the swirl and eddy of the wearing waters. So, from the most troublous of
times, will the Church of our land arise, in virtue of what truth she
holds, and in spite, if she rises at all, of the worldliness of those who,
instead of seeking her service, have sought and gained the dignities which,
if it be good that she have it in her power to bestow them, need the
corrective of a sharply wholesome persecution which of late times she has
not known. But God knows, and the fire will come in its course--first in
the form of just indignation, it may be, against her professed servants,
and then in the form of the furnace seven times heated, in which the true
builders shall yet walk unhurt save as to their mortal part.

I looked about for some cottage where the sexton might be supposed to live,
and spied a slated roof, nearly on a level with the road, at a little
distance in front of me. I could at least inquire there. Before I reached
it, however, an elderly woman came out and approached me. She was dressed
in a white cap and a dark-coloured gown. On her face lay a certain repose
which attracted me. She looked as if she had suffered but had consented to
it, and therefore could smile. Her smile lay near the surface. A kind word
was enough to draw it up from the well where it lay shimmering: you could
always see the smile there, whether it was born or not. But even when she
smiled, in the very glimmering of that moonbeam, you could see the deep,
still, perhaps dark, waters under. O! if one could but understand what
goes on in the souls that have no words, perhaps no inclination, to set it
forth! What had she endured? How had she learned to have that smile always
near? What had consoled her, and yet left her her grief--turned it,
perhaps, into hope? Should I ever know?

She drew near me, as if she would have passed me, as she would have done,
had I not spoken. I think she came towards me to give me the opportunity of
speaking if I wished, but she would not address me.

"Good morning," I said. "Can you tell me where to find the sexton?"

"Well, sir," she answered, with a gleam of the smile brightening underneath
her old skin, as it were, "I be all the sexton you be likely to find this
mornin', sir. My husband, he be gone out to see one o' Squire Tregarva's
hounds as was took ill last night. So if you want to see the old church,
sir, you'll have to be content with an old woman to show you, sir."

"I shall be quite content, I assure you," I answered. "Will you go and get
the key?"

"I have the key in my pocket, sir; for I thought that would be what you'd
be after, sir. And by the time you come to my age, sir, you'll learn to
think of your old bones, sir. I beg your pardon for making so free. For
mayhap, says I to myself, he be the gentleman as be come to take Mr.
Shepherd's duty for him. Be ye now, sir?"

All this was said in a slow sweet subdued tone, nearly of one pitch. You
would have felt that she claimed the privilege of age with a kind of
mournful gaiety, but was careful, and anxious even, not to presume upon it,
and, therefore, gentle as a young girl.

"Yes," I answered. "My name is Walton I have come to take the place of my
friend Mr. Shepherd; and, of course, I want to see the church."

"Well, she be a bee-utiful old church. Some things, I think, sir, grows
more beautiful the older they grows. But it ain't us, sir."

"I'm not so sure of that," I said. "What do you mean?"

"Well, sir, there's my little grandson in the cottage there: he'll never be
so beautiful again. Them children du be the loves. But we all grows uglier
as we grows older. Churches don't seem to, sir."

"I'm not so sure about all that," I said again.

"They did say, sir, that I was a pretty girl once. I'm not much to look at
now."

And she smiled with such a gracious amusement, that I felt at once that if
there was any vanity left in this memory of her past loveliness, it was
sweet as the memory of their old fragrance left in the withered leaves of
the roses.

"But it du not matter, du it, sir? Beauty is only skin-deep."

"I don't believe that," I answered. "Beauty is as deep as the heart at
least."

"Well to be sure, my old husband du say I be as handsome in his eyes as
ever I be. But I beg your pardon, sir, for talkin' about myself. I believe
it was the old church--she set us on to it."

"The old church didn't lead you into any harm then," I answered. "The
beauty that is in the heart will shine out of the face again some day--be
sure of that. And after all, there is just the same kind of beauty in a
good old face that there is in an old church. You can't say the church is
so trim and neat as it was the day that the first blast of the organ filled
it as with, a living soul. The carving is not quite so sharp, the timbers
are not quite so clean. There is a good deal of mould and worm-eating and
cobwebs about the old place. Yet both you and I think it more beautiful now
than it was then. Well, I believe it is, as nearly as possible, the same
with an old face. It has got stained, and weather-beaten, and worn; but if
the organ of truth has been playing on inside the temple of the Lord, which
St. Paul says our bodies are, there is in the old face, though both form
and complexion are gone, just the beauty of the music inside. The wrinkles
and the brownness can't spoil it. A light shines through it all--that of
the indwelling spirit. I wish we all grew old like the old churches."

She did not reply, but I thought I saw in her face that she understood my
mysticism. We had been walking very slowly, had passed through the quaint
lych-gate, and now the old woman had got the key in the lock of the door,
whose archway was figured and fashioned as I have described above, with a
dozen mouldings or more, most of them "carved so curiously."






CHAPTER XV.

THE OLD CHURCH.





The awe that dwells in churches fell upon me as I crossed the threshold--an
awe I never fail to feel--heightened in many cases, no doubt, by the sense
of antiquity and of art, but an awe which I have felt all the same in
crossing the threshold of an old Puritan conventicle, as the place where
men worship and have worshipped the God of their fathers, although for art
there was only the science of common bricklaying, and for beauty staring
ugliness. To the involuntary fancy, the air of petition and of holy need
seems to linger in the place, and the uncovered head acknowledges the
sacred symbols of human inspiration and divine revealing. But this was no
ordinary church into which I followed the gentlewoman who was my guide. As
entering I turned my eyes eastward, a flush of subdued glory invaded them
from the chancel, all the windows of which were of richly stained glass,
and the roof of carved oak lavishly gilded. I had my thoughts about this
chancel, and thence about chancels generally which may appear in another
part of my story. Now I have to do only with the church, not with the
cogitations to which it gave rise. But I will not trouble my reader with
even what I could tell him of the blending and contradicting of styles
and modes of architectural thought in the edifice. Age is to the work of
contesting human hands a wonderful harmoniser of differences. As nature
brings into harmony all fractures of her frame, and even positive
intrusions upon her realm, clothes and discolours them, in the old sense of
the word, so that at length there is no immediate shock at sight of that
which in itself was crude, and is yet coarse, so the various architecture
of this building had been gone over after the builders by the musical hand
of Eld, with wonder of delicate transition and change of key, that one
could almost fancy the music of its exquisite organ had been at work
_informing_ the building, half melting the sutures, wearing the sharpness,
and blending the angles, until in some parts there was but the gentle
flickering of the original conception left, all its self-assertion vanished
under the file of the air and the gnawing of the worm. True, the hand of
the restorer had been busy, but it had wrought lovingly and gently, and
wherein it had erred, the same influences of nature, though as yet their
effects were invisible, were already at work--of the many making one. I
will not trouble my reader, I say, with any architectural description,
which, possibly even more than a detailed description of natural beauty
dissociated from human feeling, would only weary him, even if it were not
unintelligible. When we are reading a poem, we do not first of all examine
the construction and dwell on the rhymes and rhythms; all that comes after,
if we find that the poem itself is so good that its parts are therefore
worth examining, as being probably good in themselves, and elucidatory of
the main work. There were carvings on the ends of the benches all along
the aisle on both sides, well worth examination, and some of them even
of description; but I shall not linger on these. A word only about the
columns: they supported arches of different fashion on the opposite
sides, but they were themselves similar in matter and construction, both
remarkable. They were of coarse granite of the country, chiselled, but very
far from smooth, not to say polished. Each pillar was a single stone with
chamfered sides.

Walking softly through the ancient house, forgetting in the many thoughts
that arose within me that I had a companion, I came at length into the
tower, the basement of which was open, forming part of the body of the
church. There hung many ropes through holes in a ceiling above, for
bell-ringing was encouraged and indeed practised by my friend Shepherd. And
as I regarded them, I thought within myself how delightful it would be if
in these days as in those of Samuel, the word of God was precious; so that
when it came to the minister of his people--a fresh vision of his glory, a
discovery of his meaning--he might make haste to the church, and into the
tower, lay hold of the rope that hung from the deepest-toned bell of all,
and constrain it by the force of strong arms to utter its voice of call,
"Come hither, come hear, my people, for God hath spoken;" and from the
streets or the lanes would troop the eager folk; the plough be left in the
furrow, the cream in the churn; and the crowding people bring faces into
the church, all with one question upon them--"What hath the Lord spoken?"
But now it would be answer sufficient to such a call to say, "But what will
become of the butter?" or, "An hour's ploughing will be lost." And the
clergy--how would they bring about such a time? They do not even believe
that God has a word to his people through them. They think that his word is
petrified for use in the Bible and Prayer-book; that the wise men of old
heard so much of the word of God, and have so set it down, that there is
no need for any more words of the Lord coming to the prophets of a land;
therefore they look down upon the prophesying--that is, the preaching
of the word--make light of it, the best of them, say these prayers are
everything, or all but everything: _their_ hearts are not set upon hearing
what God the Lord will speak that they may speak it abroad to his people
again. Therefore it is no wonder if the church bells are obedient only to
the clock, are no longer subject to the spirit of the minister, and have
nothing to do in telegraphing between heaven and earth. They make little of
this part of their duty; and no wonder, if what is to be spoken must remain
such as they speak. They put the Church for God, and the prayers which are
the word of man to God, for the word of God to man. But when the prophets
see no vision, how should they have any word to speak?

These thoughts were passing through my mind when my eye fell upon my guide.
She was seated against the south wall of the tower, on a stool, I thought,
or small table. While I was wandering about the church she had taken her
stocking and wires out of her pocket, and was now knitting busily. How her
needles did go! Her eyes never regarded them, however, but, fixed on the
slabs that paved the tower at a yard or two from her feet, seemed to be
gazing far out to sea, for they had an infinite objectless outlook. To try
her, I took for the moment the position of an accuser.

"So you don't mind working in church?" I said.

When I spoke she instantly rose, her eyes turned as from the far sea-waves
to my face, and light came out of them. With a smile she answered--

"The church knows me, sir."

"But what has that to do with it?"

"I don't think she minds it. We are told to be diligent in business, you
know, sir."

"Yes, but it does not say in church and out of church. You could be
diligent somewhere else, couldn't you?"

As soon as I said this, I began to fear she would think I meant it. But she
only smiled and said, "It won't hurt she, sir; and my good man, who does
all he can to keep her tidy, is out at toes and heels, and if I don't keep
he warm he'll be laid up, and then the church won't be kep' nice, sir, till
he's up again."

I was tempted to go on.

"But you could have sat down outside--there are some nice gravestones
near--and waited till I came out."

"But what's the church for, sir? The sun's werry hot to-day, sir; and Mr.
Shepherd, he say, sir, that the church is like the shadow of a great rock
in a weary land. So, you see, if I was to sit out in the sun, instead of
comin' in here to the cool o' the shadow, I wouldn't be takin' the church
at her word. It does my heart good to sit in the old church, sir. There's
a something do seem to come out o' the old walls and settle down like the
cool o' the day upon my old heart that's nearly tired o' crying, and would
fain keep its eyes dry for the rest o' the journey. My old man's stockin'
won't hurt the church, sir, and, bein' a good deed as I suppose it is, it's
none the worse for the place. I think, if He was to come by wi' the whip o'
small cords, I wouldn't be afeared of his layin' it upo' my old back. Do
you think he would, sir?"

Thus driven to speak as I thought, I made haste to reply, more delighted
with the result of my experiment than I cared to let her know.

"Indeed I do not. I was only talking. It is but selfish, cheating, or
ill-done work that the church's Master drives away. All our work ought to
be done in the shadow of the church."

"I thought you be only having a talk about it, sir," she said, smiling her
sweet old smile. "Nobody knows what this old church is to me."

Now the old woman had a good husband, apparently: the sorrows which had
left their mark even upon her smile, must have come from her family, I
thought.

"You have had a family?" I said, interrogatively.

"I've had thirteen," she answered. "Six bys and seven maidens."

"Why, you are rich!" I returned. "And where are they all?"

"Four maidens be lying in the churchyard, sir; two be married, and one be
down in the mill, there."

"And your boys?"

"One of them be lyin' beside his sisters--drownded afore my eyes, sir.
Three o' them be at sea, and two o' them in it, sir."

At sea! I thought. What a wide _where_! As vague to the imagination,
almost, as _in the other world_. How a mother's thoughts must go roaming
about the waste, like birds that have lost their nest, to find them!

As this thought kept me silent for a few moments, she resumed.

"It be no wonder, be it, sir? that I like to creep into the church with my
knitting. Many's the stormy night, when my husband couldn't keep still, but
would be out on the cliffs or on the breakwater, for no good in life, but
just to hear the roar of the waves that he could only see by the white of
them, with the balls o' foam flying in his face in the dark--many's the
such a night that I have left the house after he was gone, with this
blessed key in my hand, and crept into the old church here, and sat down
where I'm sittin' now--leastways where I was sittin' when your reverence
spoke to me--and hearkened to the wind howling about the place. The church
windows never rattle, sir--like the cottage windows, as I suppose you know,
sir. Somehow, I feel safe in the church."

"But if you had sons at sea," said I, again wishing to draw her out, "it
would not he of much good to you to feel safe yourself, so long as they
were in danger."

"O! yes, it be, sir. What's the good of feeling safe yourself but it let
you know other people be safe too? It's when you don't feel safe yourself
that you feel other people ben't safe."

"But," I said--and such confidence I had from what she had already uttered,
that I was sure the experiment was not a cruel one--"some of your sons
_were_ drowned for all that you say about their safety."

"Well, sir," she answered, with a sigh, "I trust they're none the less safe
for that. It would be a strange thing for an old woman like me, well-nigh
threescore and ten, to suppose that safety lay in not being drownded. Why,
they might ha' been cast on a desert island, and wasted to skin an' bone,
and got home again wi' the loss of half the wits they set out with.
Wouldn't that ha' been worse than being drownded right off? And that
wouldn't ha' been the worst, either. The church she seem to tell me all the
time, that for all the roaring outside, there be really no danger after
all. What matter if they go to the bottom? What is the bottom of the sea,
sir? You bein' a clergyman can tell that, sir. I shouldn't ha' known it if
I hadn't had bys o' my own at sea, sir. But you can tell, sir, though you
ain't got none there."

And though she was putting her parson to his catechism, the smile that
returned on her face was as modest as if she had only been listening to his
instruction. I had not long to look for my answer.

"The hollow of his hand," I said, and said no more.

"I thought you would know it, sir," she returned, with a little glow of
triumph in her tone. "Well, then, that's just what the church tells me when
I come in here in the stormy nights. I bring my knitting then too, sir, for
I can knit in the dark as well as in the light almost; and when they come
home, if they do come home, they're none the worse that I went to the old
church to pray for them. There it goes roaring about them poor dears, all
out there; and their old mother sitting still as a stone almost in the
quiet old church, a caring for them. And then it do come across me, sir,
that God be a sitting in his own house at home, hearing all the noise
and all the roaring in which his children are tossed about in the world,
watching it all, letting it drown some o' them and take them back to him,
and keeping it from going too far with others of them that are not quite
ready for that same. I have my thoughts, you see, sir, though I be an old
woman; and not nice to look at."

I had come upon a genius. How nature laughs at our schools sometimes!
Education, so-called, is a fine thing, and might be a better thing; but
there is an education, that of life, which, when seconded by a pure will
to learn, leaves the schools behind, even as the horse of the desert would
leave behind the slow pomposity of the common-fed goose. For life is God's
school, and they that will listen to the Master there will learn at God's
speed. For one moment, I am ashamed to say, I was envious of Shepherd,
and repined that, now old Rogers was gone, I had no such glorious
old stained-glass window in my church to let in the eternal upon my
light-thirsty soul. I must say for myself that the feeling lasted but for a
moment, and that no sooner had the shadow of it passed and the true light
shined after it, than I was heartily ashamed of it. Why should not Shepherd
have the old woman as well as I? True, Shepherd was more of what would
now be called a ritualist than I; true, I thought my doctrine simpler and
therefore better than his; but was this any reason why I should have all
the grand people to minister to in my parish! Recovering myself, I found
her last words still in my ears.

"You are very nice to look at," I said. "You must not find fault with the
work of God, because you would like better to be young and pretty than to
be as you now are. Time and time's rents and furrows are all his making and
his doing. God makes nothing ugly."

"Are you quite sure of that, sir?"

I paused. Such a question from such a woman "must give us pause." And, as I
paused, the thought of certain animals flashed into my mind and I could not
insist that God had never made anything ugly.

"No. I am not sure of it," I answered. For of all things my soul recoiled
from, any professional pretence of knowing more than I did know seemed to
me the most repugnant to the spirit and mind of the Master, whose servants
we are, or but the servants of mere priestly delusion and self-seeking.
"But if he does," I went on to say, "it must be that we may see what it is
like, and therefore not like it."

Then, unwilling all at once to plunge with her into such an abyss as the
question opened, I turned the conversation to an object on which my eyes
had been for some time resting half-unconsciously. It was the sort of stool
or bench on which my guide had been sitting. I now thought it was some kind
of box or chest. It was curiously carved in old oak, very much like the
ends of the benches and book-boards.

"What is that you were sitting on?" I asked. "A chest or what?"

"It be there when we come to this place, and that be nigh fifty years
agone, sir. But what it be, you'll be better able to tell than I be, sir."

"Perhaps a chest for holding the communion-plate in old time," I said. "But
how should it then come to be banished to the tower?"

"No, sir; it can't be that. It be some sort of ancient musical piano, I be
thinking."

I stooped and saw that its lid was shaped like the cover of an organ. With
some difficulty I opened it; and there, to be sure, was a row of huge keys,
fit for the fingers of a Cyclops. I pressed upon them, one after another,
but no sound followed. They were stiff to the touch; and once down, so they
mostly remained until lifted again. I looked if there was any sign of a
bellows, thinking it must have been some primitive kind of reed-instrument,
like what we call a seraphine or harmonium now-a-days. But there was no
hole through which there could have been any communication with or from a
bellows, although there might have been a small one inside. There were,
however, a dozen little round holes in the fixed part of the top, which
might afford some clue to the mystery of its former life. I could not find
any way of reaching the inside of it, so strongly was it put together;
therefore I was left, I thought, to the efforts of my imagination alone
for any hope of discovery with regard to the instrument, seeing further
observation was impossible. But here I found that I was mistaken in two
important conclusions, the latter of which depended on the former. The
first of these was that it was an instrument: it was only one end of an
instrument; therefore, secondly, there might be room for observation
still. But I found this out by accident, which has had a share in most
discoveries, and which, meaning a something that falls into our hands
unlocked for, is so far an unobjectionable word even to the man who
does not believe in chance. I had for the time given up the question as
insoluble, and was gazing about the place, when, glancing up at the holes
in the ceiling through which the bell-ropes went, I spied two or three
thick wires hanging through the same ceiling close to the wall, and right
over the box with the keys. The vague suspicion of a discovery dawned upon
me.

"Have you got the key of the tower?" I asked.

"No, sir. But I'll run home for it at once," she answered. And rising, she
went out in haste.

"Run!" thought I, looking after her. "It is a word of the will and the
feeling, not of the body." But I was mistaken. The dear old creature had no
sooner got outside of the church-yard, within which, I presume, she felt
that she must be decorous, than she did run, and ran well too. I was on
the point of starting after her at full speed, to prevent her from hurting
herself, but reflecting that her own judgment ought to be as good as mine
in such a case, I returned, and sitting down on her seat, awaited her
reappearance, gazing at the ceiling. There I either saw or imagined I saw
signs of openings corresponding in number and position with those in the
lid under me. In about three minutes the old woman returned, panting but
not distressed, with a great crooked old key in her hand. Why are all the
keys of a church so crooked? I did not ask her that question, though. What
I said to her, was--

"You shouldn't run like that. I am in no hurry."

"Be you not, sir? I thought, by the way you spoke, you be taken with a
longing to get a-top o' the tower, and see all about you like. For you
see, sir, fond as I be of the old church, I du feel sometimes as if she'd
smother me; and then nothing will do but I must get at the top of the old
tower. And then, what with the sun, if there be any sun, and what with the
fresh air which there always be up there, sir,--it du always be fresh up
there, sir," she repeated, "I come back down again blessing the old church
for its tower."

As she spoke she was toiling up the winding staircase after me, where there
was just room enough for my shoulders to get through by turning themselves
a little across the lie of the steps. They were very high, but she kept
up with me bravely, bearing out her statement that she was no stranger to
them. As I ascended, however, I was not thinking of her, but of what she
had said. Strange to tell, the significance of the towers or spires of our
churches had never been clear to me before. True, I was quite awake to
their significance, at least to that of the spires, as fingers pointing
ever upwards to

  "regions mild of calm and serene air,
  Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot,
  Which men call Earth;"

but I had not thought of their symbolism as lifting one up above the
church itself into a region where no church is wanted because the Lord God
almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.

Happy church indeed, if it destroys the need of itself by lifting men up
into the eternal kingdom! Would that I and all her servants lived pervaded
with the sense of this her high end, her one high calling! We need the
church towers to remind us that the mephitic airs in the church below
are from the churchyard at its feet, which so many take for the church,
worshipping over the graves and believing in death--or at least in the
material substance over which alone death hath power. Thus the church, even
in her corruption, lifts us out of her corruption, sending us up her towers
and her spires to admonish us that she too lives in the air of truth: that
her form too must pass away, while the truth that is embodied in her lives
beyond forms and customs and prejudices, shining as the stars for ever and
ever. He whom the church does not lift up above the church is not worthy to
be a doorkeeper therein.

Such thoughts passed through me, satisfied me, and left me peaceful, so
that before I had reached the top, I was thanking the Lord--not for his
church-tower, but for his sexton's wife. The old woman was a jewel. If her
husband was like her, which was too much to expect--if he believed in her,
it would be enough, quite--then indeed the little child, who answered on
being questioned thereanent, as the Scotch would say, that the three orders
of ministers in the church were the parson, clerk, and sexton, might not be
so far wrong in respect of this individual case. So in the ascent, and the
thinking associated therewith, I forgot all about the special object for
which I had requested the key of the tower, and led the way myself up to
the summit, where stepping out of a little door, which being turned only
heavenwards had no pretence for, or claim upon a curiously crooked key,
but opened to the hand laid upon the latch, I thought of the words of the
judicious Hooker, that "the assembling of the church to learn" was "the
receiving of angels descended from above;" and in such a whimsical turn as
our thoughts will often take when we are not heeding them, I wondered for
a moment whether that was why the upper door was left on the latch,
forgetting that that could not be of much use, if the door in the basement
was kept locked with the crooked key. But the whole suggested something
true about my own heart and that of my fellows, if not about the church:
Revelation is not enough, the open trap-door is not enough, if the door of
the heart is not open likewise.

As soon, however, as I stepped out upon the roof of the tower, I forgot
again all that had thus passed through my mind, swift as a dream. For,
filling the west, lay the ocean beneath, with a dark curtain of storm
hanging in perpendicular lines over part of its horizon, and on the other
side was the peaceful solid land, with its numberless shades of green,
its heights and hollows, its farms and wooded vales--there was not much
wood--its scattered villages and country dwellings, lighted and shadowed by
the sun and the clouds. Beyond lay the blue heights of Dartmoor. And over
all, bathing us as it passed, moved the wind, the life-bearing spirit of
the whole, the servant of the sun. The old woman stood beside me, silently
enjoying my enjoyment, with a still smile that seemed to say in kindly
triumph, "Was I not right about the tower and the wind that dwells among
its pinnacles?" I drank deep of the universal flood, the outspread peace,
the glory of the sun, and the haunting shadow of the sea that lay beyond
like the visual image of the eternal silence--as it looks to us--that
rounds our little earthly life.

There were a good many trees in the church-yard, and as I looked down, the
tops of them in their richest foliage hid all the graves directly below me,
except a single flat stone looking up through an opening in the leaves,
which seemed to have been just made for it to let it see the top of the
tower. Upon the stone a child was seated playing with a few flowers she had
gathered, not once looking up to the gilded vanes that rose from the four
pinnacles at the corners of the tower. I turned to the eastern side, and
looked over upon the church roof. It lay far below--looking very narrow and
small, but long, with the four ridges of four steep roofs stretching away
to the eastern end. It was in excellent repair, for the parish was almost
all in one lord's possession, and he was proud of his church: between them
he and Mr. Shepherd had made it beautiful to behold and strong to endure.

When I turned to look again, the little child was gone. Some butterfly
fancy had seized her, and she was away. A little lamb was in her place,
nibbling at the grass that grew on the side of the next mound. And when I
looked seaward there was a sloop, like a white-winged sea-bird, rounding
the end of a high projecting rock from the south, to bear up the little
channel that led to the gates of the harbour canal. Out of the circling
waters it had flown home, not from a long voyage, but hardly the less
welcome therefore to those that waited and looked for her signal from the
barrier rock.

Reentering by the angels' door to descend the narrow cork-screw stair, so
dark and cool, I caught a glimpse, one turn down, by the feeble light that
came through its chinks after it was shut behind us, of a tiny maiden-hair
fern growing out of the wall. I stopped, and said to the old woman--

"I have a sick daughter at home, or I wouldn't rob your tower of this
lovely little thing."

"Well, sir, what eyes you have! I never saw the thing before. Do take it
home to miss. It'll do her good to see it. I be main sorry to hear you've
got a sick maiden. She ben't a bedlar, be she, sir?"

I was busy with my knife getting out all the roots I could without hurting
them, and before I had succeeded I had remembered Turner's using the word.

"Not quite that," I answered, "but she can't even sit up, and must be
carried everywhere."

"Poor dear! Everyone has their troubles, sir. The sea's been mine."

She continued talking and asking kind questions about Connie as we went
down the stair. Not till she opened a little door I had passed without
observing it as we came up, was I reminded of my first object in ascending
the tower. For this door revealed a number of bells hanging in silent power
in the brown twilight of the place. I entered carefully, for there were
only some planks laid upon the joists to keep one's feet from going through
the ceiling. In a few moments I had satisfied myself that my conjecture
about the keys below was correct. The small iron rods I had seen from
beneath hung down from this place. There were more of them hanging shorter
above, and there was yet enough of a further mechanism remaining to prove
that those keys, by means of the looped and cranked rods, had been in
connection with hammers, one of them indeed remaining also, which struck
the bells, so that a tune could be played upon them as upon any other keyed
instrument. This was the first contrivance of the kind I had ever seen,
though I have heard of it in other churches since.

"If I could find a clever blacksmith in the neighbourhood, now," I said to
myself, "I would get this all repaired, so that it should not interfere
with the bell-ringing when the ringers were to be had, and yet Shepherd
could play a psalm tune to his parish at large when he pleased." For
Shepherd was a very fair musician, and gave a good deal of time to the
organ. "It's a grand notion, to think of him sitting here in the gloom,
with that great musical instrument towering above him, whence he sends
forth the voice of gladness, almost of song to his people, while they are
mowing the grass, binding the sheaves, or gazing abroad over the stormy
ocean in doubt, anxiety, and fear. 'There's the parson at his bells,' they
would say, and stop and listen; and some phrase might sink into their
hearts, waking some memory, or giving birth to some hope or faint
aspiration. I will see what can be done." Having come to this conclusion, I
left the abode of the bells, descended to the church, bade my conductress
good morning, saying I would visit her soon in her own house, and bore home
to my child the spoil which, without kirk-rapine, I had torn from the wall
of the sanctuary. By this time the stormy veil had lifted from the horizon,
and the sun was shining in full power without one darkening cloud.

Ere I left the churchyard I would have a glance at the stone which ever
seemed to lie gazing up at the tower. I soon found it, because it was the
only one in that quarter from which I could see the top of the tower. It
recorded the life and death of an aged pair who had been married fifty
years, concluding with the couplet--

"A long time this may seem to be, But it did not seem long to we."

The whole story of a human life lay in that last verse. True, it was not
good grammar; but they had got through fifty years of wedded life probably
without any knowledge of grammar to harmonise or to shorten them, and I
daresay, had they been acquainted with the lesson he had put into their
dumb mouths, they would have been aware of no ground of quarrel with the
poetic stone-cutter, who most likely had thrown the verses in when he made
his claim for the stone and the cutting. Having learnt this one by heart, I
went about looking for anything more in the shape of sepulchral flora that
might interest or amuse my crippled darling; nor had I searched long before
I found one, the sole but triumphant recommendation of which was the
thorough "puzzle-headedness" of its construction. I quite reckoned on
seeing Connie trying to make it out, looking as bewildered over its
excellent grammar, as the poet of the other ought to have looked over his
rhymes, ere he gave in to the use of the nominative after a preposition.

  "If you could view the heavenly shore,
  Where heart's content you hope to find,
  You would not murmur were you gone before,
  But grieve that you are left behind."






CHAPTER XVI.

CONNIE'S WATCH-TOWER.





As I walked home, the rush of the rising tide was in my ears. To my fancy,
the ocean, awaking from a swoon in which its life had ebbed to its heart,
was sending that life abroad to its extremities, and waves breaking in
white were the beats of its reviving pulse, the flashes of returning light.
But so gentle was its motion, and so lovely its hue, that I could not help
contrasting it with its reflex in the mind of her who took refuge from the
tumult of its noises in the hollow of the old church. To her, let it look
as blue as the sky, as peaceful and as moveless, it was a wild, reckless,
false, devouring creature, a prey to its own moods, and to that of the
blind winds which, careless of consequences, urged it to raving fury. Only,
while the sea took this form to her imagination, she believed in that which
held the sea, and knew that, when it pleased God to part his confining
fingers, there would he no more sea.

When I reached home, I went straight to Connie's room. Now the house was
one of a class to every individual of which, whatever be its style or
shape, I instantly become attached almost as if it possessed a measure of
the life which it has sheltered. This class of human dwellings consists
of the houses that have _grown_. They have not been, built after a
straight-up-and-down model of uninteresting convenience or money-loving
pinchedness. They must have had some plan, good, bad, or indifferent, as
the case may be, at first, I suppose; but that plan they have left far
behind, having grown with the necessities or ambitions of succeeding
possessors, until the fact that they have a history is as plainly written
on their aspect as on that of any you or daughter of Adam. These are the
houses which the fairies used to haunt, and if there is any truth in
ghost-stories, the houses which ghosts will yet haunt; and hence perhaps
the sense of soothing comfort which pervades us when we cross their
thresholds. You do not know, the moment you have cast a glance about the
hall, where the dining-room, drawing-room, and best bedroom are. You have
got it all to find out, just as the character of a man; and thus had I to
find out this house of my friend Shepherd. It had formerly been a kind of
manor-house, though altogether unlike any other manor-house I ever saw; for
after exercising all my constructive ingenuity reversed in pulling it to
pieces in my mind, I came to the conclusion that the germ-cell of it was
a cottage of the simplest sort which had grown by the addition of other
cells, till it had reached the development in which we found it.

I have said that the dining-room was almost on the level of the shore.
Certainly some of the flat stones that coped the low wall in front of
it were thrown into the garden before the next winter by the waves. But
Connie's room looked out on a little flower-garden almost on the downs,
only sheltered a little by the rise of a short grassy slope above it. This,
however, left the prospect, from her window down the bay and out to sea,
almost open. To reach this room I had now to go up but one simple cottage
stair; for the door of the house entered on the first floor, that is, as
regards the building, midway between heaven and earth. It had a large
bay-window; and in this window Connie was lying on her couch, with the
lower sash wide open, through which the breeze entered, smelling of
sea-weed tempered with sweet grasses and the wall-flowers and stocks that
were in the little plot under it. I thought I could see an improvement in
her already. Certainly she looked very happy.

"O, papa!" she said, "isn't it delightful?"

"What is, my dear?"

"O, everything. The wind, and the sky, and the sea, and the smell of
the flowers. Do look at that sea-bird. His wings are like the barb of a
terrible arrow. How he goes undulating, neck and body, up and down as he
flies. I never felt before that a bird moves his wings. It always looked as
if the wings flew with the bird. But I see the effort in him."

"An easy effort, though, I should certainly think."

"No doubt. But I see that he chooses and means to fly, and so does it. It
makes one almost reconciled to the idea of wings. Do angels really have
wings, papa?"

"It is generally so represented, I think, in the Bible. But whether it is
meant as a natural fact about them, is more than I take upon me to decide.
For one thing, I should have to examine whether in simple narrative they
are ever represented with them, as, I think, in records of visions they are
never represented without them. But wings are very beautiful things, and I
do not exactly see why you should need reconciling to them."

Connie gave a little shrug of her shoulders.

"I don't like the notion of them growing out at my shoulder-blades. And
however would you get on your clothes? If you put them over your wings,
they would be of no use, and would, besides, make you hump-backed; and if
you did not, everything would have to be buttoned round the roots of them.
You could not do it yourself, and even on Wynnie I don't think I could bear
to touch the things--I don't mean the feathers, but the skinny, folding-up
bits of them."

I laughed at her fastidious fancy.

"You want to fly, I suppose?" I said.

"O, yes; I should like that."

"And you don't want to have wings?"

"Well, I shouldn't mind the wings exactly; but however would one be able to
keep them nice?"

"There you go; starting from one thing to another, like a real bird
already. When you can't answer one thing, off to another, and, from your
new perch on the hawthorn, talk as if you were still on the topmost branch
of the lilac!"

"O, yes, papa! That's what I've heard you say to mamma twenty times."

"And did I ever say to your mamma anything but the truth? or to you either,
you puss?"

I had not yet discovered that when I used this epithet to my Connie, she
always thought she had gone too far. She looked troubled. I hastened to
relieve her.

"When women have wings," I said, "their logic will be good."

"How do you make that out, papa?" she asked, a little re-assured.

"Because then every shadow of feeling that turns your speech aside from the
straight course will be recognised in that speech; the whole utterance will
be instinct not only with the meaning of what you are thinking, but with
the reflex of the forces in you that make the utterance take this or that
shape; just as to a perfect palate, the source and course of a stream would
be revealed in every draught of its water.

"I have just a glimmering of your meaning, papa. Would you like to have
wings?"

"I should like to fly like a bird, to swim like a fish, to gallop like a
horse, to creep like a serpent, but I suspect the good of all these is to
be got without doing any of them."

"I know what you mean now, but I can't put it in words."

"I mean by a perfect sympathy with the creatures that do these things: what
it may please God to give to ourselves, we can quite comfortably leave to
him. A higher stratum of the same kind is the need we feel of knowing our
fellow-creatures through and through, of walking into and out of their
worlds as if we were, because we are, perfectly at home in them.--But I am
talking what the people who do not understand such things lump all together
as mysticism, which is their name for a kind of spiritual ash-pit, whither
they consign dust and stones, never asking whether they may not be
gold-dust and rubies, all in a heap.--You had better begin to think about
getting out, Connie."

"Think about it, papa! I have been thinking about it ever since daylight."

"I will go and see what your mother is doing then, and if she is ready to
go out with us."

In a few moments all was arranged. Without killing more than a snail or
two, which we could not take time to beware of, Walter and I--finding that
the window did not open down to the ground in French fashion, for which
there were two good reasons, one the fierceness of the winds in winter, the
other, the fact that the means of egress were elsewise provided--lifted the
sofa, Connie and all, out over the window-sill, and then there was only a
little door in the garden-wall to get her through before we found ourselves
upon the down. I think the ascent of this hill was the first experience
I had--a little to my humiliation, nothing to my sorrow--that I was
descending another hill. I had to set down the precious burden rather
oftener before we reached the brow of the cliffs than would have
been necessary ten years before. But this was all right, and the
newly-discovered weakness then was strength to the power which carries me
about on my two legs now. It is all right still. I shall be stronger by and
by.

We carried her high enough for her to see the brilliant waters lying many
feet below her, with the sea-birds of which we had talked winging their
undulating way between heaven and ocean. It is when first you have a chance
of looking a bird in the face on the wing that you know what the marvel of
flight is. There it hangs or rests, which you please, borne up, as far as
eye or any of the senses can witness, by its own will alone. This Connie,
quicker than I in her observation of nature, had already observed. Seated
on the warm grass by her side, while neither talked, but both regarded the
blue spaces, I saw one of those same barb-winged birds rest over my head,
regarding me from above, as if doubtful whether I did not afford some claim
to his theory of treasure-trove. I knew at once that what Connie had been
saying to me just before was true.

She lay silent a long time. I too was silent. At length I spoke.

"Are you longing to be running about amongst the rocks, my Connie?"

"No, papa; not a bit. I don't know how it is, but I don't think I ever
wished much for anything I knew I could not have. I am enjoying everything
more than I can tell you. I wish Wynnie were as happy as I am."

"Why? Do you think she's not happy, my dear?"

"That doesn't want any thinking, papa. You can see that."

"I am afraid you're right, Connie. What do you think is the cause of it?"

"I think it is because she can't wait. She's always going out to meet
things; and then when they're not there waiting for her, she thinks they're
nowhere. But I always think her way is finer than mine. If everybody were
like me, there wouldn't be much done in the world, would there, papa?"

"At all events, my dear, your way is wise for you, and I am glad you do not
judge your sister."

"Judge Wynnie, papa! That would be cool impudence. She's worth ten of me.
Don't you think, papa," she added, after a pause, "that if Mary had said
the smallest word against Martha, as Martha did against Mary, Jesus would
have had a word to say on Martha's side next?"

"Indeed I do, my dear. And I think that did not sit very long without
asking Jesus if she mightn't go and help her sister. There is but one
thing needful--that is, the will of God; and when people love that above
everything, they soon come to see that to everything else there are two
sides, and that only the will of God gives fair play, as we call it, to
both of them."

Another silence followed. Then Connie spoke.

"Is it not strange, papa, that the only thine here that makes me want to
get up to look, is nothing of all the grand things round about me? I am
just lying like the convex mirror in the school-room at home, letting them
all paint themselves in me."

"What is it then that makes you wish to get up and go and see?" I asked
with real curiosity.

"Do you see down there--away across the bay--amongst the rocks at the
other side, a man sitting sketching?"

I looked for some time before I could discover him.

"Your sight is good, Connie: I see the man, but I could not tell what he
was doing."

"Don't you see him lifting his head every now and then for a moment, and
then keeping it down for a longer while?"

"I cannot distinguish that. But then I am shortsighted rather, you know."

"I wonder how you see so many little things that nobody else seems to
notice, then, papa."

"That is because I have trained myself to observe. The degree of power in
the sight is of less consequence than the habit of seeing. But you have not
yet told me what it is that makes you desirous of getting up."

"I want to look over his shoulder, and see what he is doing. Is it not
strange that in the midst of all this plenty of beautifulness, I should
want to rise to look at a few lines and scratches, or smears of colour,
upon a bit of paper?"

"No, my dear; I don't think it is strange. There a new element of interest
is introduced--the human. No doubt there is deep humanity in all this
around us. No doubt all the world, in all its moods, is human, as those for
whose abode and instruction it was made. No doubt, it would be void of both
beauty and significance to our eyes, were it not that it is one crowd of
pictures of the human mind, blended in one living fluctuating whole. But
these meanings are there in solution as it were. The individual is a centre
of crystallisation to this solution. Around him meanings gather, are
separated from other meanings; and if he be an artist, by which I mean true
painter, true poet, or true musician, as the case may be he so isolates and
represents them, that we see them--not what nature shows to us, but what
nature has shown, to him, determined by his nature and choice. With it is
mingled therefore so much of his own individuality, manifested both in this
choice and certain modifications determined by his way of working, that you
have not only a representation of an aspect of nature, as far as that may
be with limited powers and materials, but a revelation of the man's own
mind and nature. Consequently there is a human interest in every true
attempt to reproduce nature, an interest of individuality which does not
belong to nature herself, who is for all and every man. You have just been
saying that you were lying there like a convex mirror reflecting all nature
around you. Every man is such a convex mirror; and his drawing, if he can
make one, is an attempt to show what is in this little mirror of his,
kindled there by the grand world outside. And the human mirrors being all
differently formed, vary infinitely in what they would thus represent of
the same scene. I have been greatly interested in looking alternately over
the shoulders of two artists, both sketching in colour the same, absolutely
the same scene, both trying to represent it with all the truth in their
power. How different, notwithstanding, the two representations came out!"

"I think I understand you, papa. But look a little farther off. Don't you
see over the top of another rock a lady's bonnet. I do believe that's
Wynnie. I know she took her box of water-colours out with her this morning,
just before you came home. Dora went with her."

"Can't you tell by her ribbons, Connie? You seem sharp-sighted enough to
see her face if she would show it. I don't even see the bonnet. If I were
like some people I know, I should feel justified in denying its presence,
attributing the whole to your fancy, and refusing anything to superiority
of vision."

"That wouldn't be like you, papa."

"I hope not; for I have no fancy for being shut up in my own blindness,
when other people offer me their eyes to eke out the defects of my own
with. But here comes mamma at last."

Connie's face brightened as if she had not seen her mother for a fortnight.
My Ethelwyn always brought the home gladness that her name signified with
her. She was a centre of radiating peace.

"Mamma, don't you think that's Wynnie's bonnet over that black rock there,
just beyond where you see that man drawing?"

"You absurd child! How should I know Wynnie's bonnet at this distance?"

"Can't you see the little white feather you gave her out of your wardrobe
just before we left? She put it in this morning before she went out."

"I think I do see something white. But I want you to look out there,
towards what they call the Chapel Rock, at the other end of that long mound
they call the breakwater. You will soon see a boat appear full of the
coast-guard. I saw them going on board just as I left the house to come up
to you. Their officer came down with his sword, and each of the men had a
cutlass. I wonder what it can mean."

We looked. But before the boat made its appearance, Connie cried out--

"Look there! What a big boat that is rowing for the land, away northwards
there!"

I turned my eyes in the direction she indicated, and saw a long boat with
some half-dozen oars, full of men, rowing hard, apparently for some spot on
the shore at a considerable distance to the north of our bay.

"Ah!" I said, "that boat has something to do with the coast-guard and their
cutlasses. You'll see that, as soon as they get out of the bay, they will
row in the same direction."

So it was. Our boat appeared presently from under the concealment of the
heights on which we were, and made at full speed after the other boat.

"Surely they can't be smugglers," I said. "I thought all that was over and
done with."

In the course of another twenty minutes, during which we watched their
progress, both boats had disappeared behind the headland to the northward.
Then, thinking Connie had had nearly enough of the sea air for her first
experience of its influences, I went and fetched Walter, and we carried her
back as we had brought her. She had not been in the shadow of her own room
for five minutes before she was fast asleep.

It was now nearly time for our early dinner. We always dined early when we
could, that we might eat along with our children. We were both convinced
that the only way to make them behave like ladies and gentlemen was to have
them always with us at meals. We had seen very unpleasant results in the
children of those who allowed them to dine with no other supervision than
the nursery afforded: they were a constant anxiety and occasional horror
to those whom they visited--snatching like monkeys, and devouring like
jackals, as selfishly as if they were mere animals.

"O! we've seen such a nice gentleman!" said Dora, becoming lively under the
influence of her soup.

"Have you, Dora? Where?"

"Sitting on the rocks, taking a portrait of the sea."

"What makes you say he was a nice gentleman?"

"He had such beautiful boots!" answered Dora, at which there was a great
laugh about the table.

"O! we must run and tell Connie that," said Harry. "It will make her
laugh."

"What will you tell Connie, then, Harry?"

"O! what was it, Charlie? I've forgotten."

Another laugh followed at Harry's expense now, and we were all very merry,
when Dora, who sat opposite to the window, called out, clapping her hands--

"There's Niceboots again! There's Niceboots again!"

The same moment the head of a young man appeared over the wall that
separated the garden from the little beach that lay by the entrance of the
canal. I saw at once that he must be more than ordinarily tall to show his
face, for he was not close to the wall. It was a dark countenance, with
a long beard, which few at that time wore, though now it is getting not
uncommon, even in my own profession--a noble, handsome face, a little sad,
with downbent eyes, which, released from their more immediate duty towards
nature, had now bent themselves upon the earth.

"Counting the dewy pebbles, fixed in thought."

"I suppose he's contemplating his boots," said Wynnie, with apparent
maliciousness.

"That's too bad of you, Wynnie," I said, and the child blushed.

"I didn't mean anything, papa. It was only following up Dora's wise
discrimination," said Wynnie.

"He is a fine-looking fellow," said I, "and ought, with that face and head,
to be able to paint good pictures."

"I should like to see what he has done," said Wynnie; "for, by the way we
were sitting, I should think we were attempting the same thing."

"And what was that then, Wynnie?" I asked.

"A rock," she answered, "that you could not see from where you were
sitting. I saw you on the top of the cliff."

"Connie said it was you, by your bonnet. She, too, was wishing she could
look over the shoulder of the artist at work beside you."

"Not beside me. There were yards and yards of solid rock between us."

"Space, you see, in removing things from the beholder, seems always to
bring them nearer to each other, and the most differing things are classed
under one name by the man who knows nothing about them. But what sort of a
rock was it you were trying to draw?"

"A strange-looking, conical rock, that stands alone in front of one of the
ridges that project from the shore into the water. Three sea-birds, with
long white wings, were flying about it, and the little waves of the rising
tide were beating themselves against it and breaking in white plashes. So
the rock stood between the blue and white below and the blue and white
above; for, though there were no clouds, the birds gave the touches of
white to the upper sea."

"Now, Dora," I said, "I don't know if you are old enough to understand me;
but sometimes little people are long in understanding, just because the
older people think they can't, and don't try them.--Do you see, Dora, why I
want you to learn to draw? Look how Wynnie sees things. That is, in a great
measure, because she draws things, and has, by that, learned to watch in
order to find out. It is a great thing to have your eyes open."

Dora's eyes were large, and she opened them to their full width, as if she
would take in the universe at their little doors. Whether that indicated
that she did not in the least understand what I had been saying, or that
she was in sympathy with it, I cannot tell.

"Now let us go up to Connie, and tell her about the rock and everything
else you have seen since you went out. We are all her messengers sent out
to discover things, and bring back news of them."

After a little talk with Connie, I retired to the study, which was on the
same floor as her room completing, indeed, the whole of that part of the
house, which, seen from without, looked like a separate building; for it
had a roof of its own, and stood higher up the rock than the rest of the
dwelling. Here I began to glance over the books. To have the run of another
man's library, especially if it has all been gathered by himself, is like
having a pass-key into the chambers of his thought. Only, one must be wary,
when he opens them, what marks on the books he takes for those of the
present owner. A mistake here would breed considerable confusion and
falsehood in any judgment formed from the library. I found, however, one
thing plain enough, that Shepherd had kept up that love for an older
English literature, which had been one of the cords to draw us towards each
other when we were students together. There had been one point on which we
especially agreed--that a true knowledge of the present, in literature, as
in everything else, could only be founded upon a knowledge of what had gone
before; therefore, that any judgment, in regard to the literature of the
present day, was of no value which was not guided and influenced by a real
acquaintance with the best of what had gone before, being liable to be
dazzled and misled by novelty of form and other qualities which, whatever
might be the real worth of the substance, were, in themselves, purely
ephemeral. I had taken down a last-century edition of the poems of the
brothers Fletcher, and, having begun to read a lovely passage in "Christ's
Victory and Triumph," had gone into what I can only call an intellectual
rage, at the impudence of the editor, who had altered innumerable words and
phrases to suit the degenerate taste of his own time,--when a knock came to
the door, and Charlie entered, breathless with eagerness.

"There's the boat with the men with the swords in it, and another boat
behind them, twice as big."

I hurried out upon the road, and there, close under our windows, were the
two boats we had seen in the morning, landing their crews on the little
beach. The second boat was full of weather-beaten men, in all kinds of
attire, some in blue jerseys, some in red shirts, some in ragged coats. One
man, who looked their superior, was dressed in blue from head to foot.

"What's the matter?" I asked the officer of the coast-guard, a sedate,
thoughtful-looking man.

"Vessel foundered, sir," he answered. "Sprung a leak on Sunday morning. She
was laden with iron, and in a heavy ground swell it shifted and knocked a
hole in her. The poor fellows are worn out with the pump and rowing, upon
little or nothing to eat."

They were trooping past us by this time, looking rather dismal, though not
by any means abject.

"What are you going to do with them now?"

"They'll be taken in by the people. We'll get up a little subscription for
them, but they all belong to the society the sailors have for sending the
shipwrecked to their homes, or where they want to go."

"Well, here's something to help," I said.

"Thank you, sir. They'll be very glad of it."

"And if there's anything wanted that I can do for them, you must let me
know."

"I will, sir. But I don't think there will be any occasion to trouble you.
You are our new clergyman, I believe."

"Not exactly that. Only for a little while, till my friend Mr. Shepherd is
able to come back to you."

"We don't want to lose Mr. Shepherd, sir. He's what they call high in these
parts, but he's a great favourite with all the poor people, because you
see he understands them as if he was of the same flesh and blood with
themselves--as, for that matter, I suppose we all are."

"If we weren't there would be nothing to say at all. Will any of these men
be at church to-morrow, do you suppose? I am afraid sailors are not much in
the way of going to church?"

"I am afraid not. You see they are all anxious to get home. Most likely
they'll be all travelling to-morrow. It's a pity. It would be a good chance
for saying something to them that they might think of again. But I often
think that, perhaps--it's only my own fancy, and I don't set it up for
anything--that sailors won't be judged exactly like other people. They're
so knocked about, you see, sir."

"Of course not. Nobody will be judged like any other body. To his own
Master, who knows all about him, every man stands or falls. Depend upon it,
God likes fair play, to use a homely phrase, far better than any sailor of
them all. But that's not exactly the question. It seems to me the question
is this: shall we, who know what a blessed thing life is because we know
what God is like, who can trust in him with all our hearts because he is
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the friend of sinners, shall we not
try all we can to let them, too, know the blessedness of trusting in their
Father in heaven? If we could only get them to say the Lord's prayer,
_meaning_ it, think what that would be! Look here! This can't be called
bribery, for they are in want of it, and it will show them I am friendly.
Here's another sovereign. Give them my compliments, and say that if any
of them happen to be in Kilkhaven tomorrow, I shall be quite pleased to
welcome them to church. Tell them I will give them of my best there if they
will come. Make the invitation merrily, you know. No long faces and solemn
speech. I will give them the solemn speech when they come to church. But
even there I hope God will keep the long face far from me. That is fittest
for fear and suffering. And the house of God is the casket that holds the
antidote against all fear and most suffering. But I am preaching my sermon
on Saturday instead of Sunday, and keeping you from your ministration to
the poor fellows. Good-bye."

"I will give them your message as near as I can," he said, and we shook
hands and parted.

This was the first experience we had of the might and battle of the ocean.
To our eyes it lay quiet as a baby asleep. On that Sunday morning there had
been no commotion here. Yet now at last, on the Saturday morning, home come
the conquered and spoiled of the sea. As if with a mock she takes all they
have, and flings them on shore again, with her weeds, and her shells, and
her sand. Before the winter was over we had learned--how much more of that
awful power that surrounds the habitable earth! By slow degrees the sense
of its might grew upon us, first by the vision of its many aspects and
moods, and then by more awful things that followed; for there are few
coasts upon which the sea rages so wildly as upon this, the whole force of
the Atlantic breaking upon it. Even when there is no storm within perhaps
hundreds of miles, when all is still as a church on the land, the storm
that raves somewhere out upon the vast waste, will drive the waves in
upon the shore with such fury that not even a lifeboat could make its way
through their yawning hollows, and their fierce, shattered, and tumbling
crests.






CHAPTER XVII.

MY FIRST SERMON IN THE SEABOARD PARISH.





In the hope that some of the shipwrecked mariners might be present in the
church the next day, I proceeded to consider my morning's sermon for the
occasion. There was no difficulty in taking care at the same time that it
should be suitable to the congregation, whether those sailors were there or
not. I turned over in my mind several subjects. I thought, for instance,
of showing them how this ocean that lay watchful and ready all about our
island, all about the earth, was but a visible type or symbol of two other
oceans, one very still, the other very awful and fierce; in fact, that
three oceans surrounded us: one of the known world; one of the unseen
world, that is, of death; one of the spirit--the devouring ocean of
evil--and might I not have added yet another, encompassing and silencing
all the rest--that of truth! The visible ocean seemed to make war upon the
land, and the dwellers thereon. Restrained by the will of God and by him
made subject more and more to the advancing knowledge of those who were
created to rule over it, it was yet like a half-tamed beast ever ready to
break loose and devour its masters. Of course this would have been but one
aspect or appearance of it--for it was in truth all service; but this was
the aspect I knew it must bear to those, seafaring themselves or not, to
whom I had to speak. Then I thought I might show, that its power, like that
of all things that man is ready to fear, had one barrier over which no
commotion, no might of driving wind, could carry it, beyond which its
loudest waves were dumb--the barrier of death. Hitherto and no further
could its power reach. It could kill the body. It could dash in pieces the
last little cock-boat to which the man clung, but thus it swept the man
beyond its own region into the second sea of stillness, which we call
death, out upon which the thoughts of those that are left behind can follow
him only in great longings, vague conjectures, and mighty faith. Then I
thought I could show them how, raving in fear, or lying still in calm
deceit, there lay about the life of man a far more fearful ocean than that
which threatened his body; for this would cast, could it but get a hold of
him, both body and soul into hell--the sea of evil, of vice, of sin, of
wrong-doing--they might call it by what name they pleased. This made war
against the very essence of life, against God who is the truth, against
love, against fairness, against fatherhood, motherhood, sisterhood,
brotherhood, manhood, womanhood, against tenderness and grace and beauty,
gathering into one pulp of festering death all that is noble, lovely,
worshipful in the human nature made so divine that the one fearless man,
the Lord Jesus Christ, shared it with us. This, I thought I might make them
understand, was the only terrible sea, the only hopeless ocean from whose
awful shore we must shrink and flee, the end of every voyage upon whose
bosom was the bottom of its filthy waters, beyond the reach of all that is
thought or spoken in the light, beyond life itself, but for the hand that
reaches down from the upper ocean of truth, the hand of the Redeemer of
men. I thought, I say, for a while, that I could make this, not definite,
but very real to them. But I did not feel quite confident about it. Might
they not in the symbolism forget the thing symbolised? And would not the
symbol itself be ready to fade quite from their memory, or to return
only in the vaguest shadow? And with the thought I perceived a far more
excellent way. For the power of the truth lies of course in its revelation
to the mind, and while for this there are a thousand means, none are so
mighty as its embodiment in human beings and human life. There it is itself
alive and active. And amongst these, what embodiment comes near to that in
him who was perfect man in virtue of being at the root of the secret of
humanity, in virtue of being the eternal Son of God? We are his sons in
time: he is his Son in eternity, of whose sea time is but the broken
sparkle. Therefore, I would talk to them about--but I will treat my reader
now as if he were not my reader, but one of my congregation on that bright
Sunday, my first in the Seaboard Parish, with the sea outside the church,
flashing in the sunlight.

While I stood at the lectern, which was in front of the altar-screen, I
could see little of my congregation, partly from my being on a level with
them, partly from the necessity for keeping my eyes and thoughts upon that
which I read. When, however, I rose from prayer in the pulpit; then I felt,
as usual with me, that I was personally present for personal influence with
my people, and then I saw, to my great pleasure, that one long bench nearly
in the middle of the church was full of such sunburnt men as could not be
mistaken for any but mariners, even if their torn and worn garments had
not revealed that they must be the very men about whom we had been so much
interested. Not only were they behaving with perfect decorum, but their
rough faces wore an aspect of solemnity which I do not suppose was by any
means their usual aspect.

I gave them no text. I had one myself, which was the necessary thing. They
should have it by and by.

"Once upon a time," I said, "a man went up a mountain, and stayed there
till it was dark, and stayed on. Now, a man who finds himself on a mountain
as the sun is going down, especially if he is alone, makes haste to get
down before it is dark. But this man went up when the sun was going down,
and, as I say, continued there for a good long while after it was dark. You
will want to know why. I will tell you. He wished to be alone. He hadn't a
house of his own. He never had all the time he lived. He hadn't even a room
of his own into which he could go, and bolt the door of it. True, he had
kind friends, who gave him a bed: but they were all poor people, and their
houses were small, and very likely they had large families, and he could
not always find a quiet place to go into. And I dare say, if he had had a
room, he would have been a little troubled with the children constantly
coming to find him; for however much he loved them--and no man was ever so
fond of children as he was--he needed to be left quiet sometimes. So, upon
this occasion, he went up the mountain just to be quiet. He had been all
day with a crowd of people, and he felt that it was time to be alone. For
he had been talking with men all day, which tires and sometimes confuses a
man's thoughts, and now he wanted to talk with God--for that makes a man
strong, and puts all the confusion in order again, and lets a man know
what he is about. So he went to the top of the hill. That was his secret
chamber. It had no door; but that did not matter--no one could see him
but God. There he stayed for hours--sometimes, I suppose, kneeling in his
prayer to God; sometimes sitting, tired with his own thinking, on a stone;
sometimes walking about, looking forward to what would come next--not
anxious about it, but contemplating it. For just before he came up here,
some of the people who had been with him wanted to make him a king; and
this would not do--this was not what God wanted of him, and therefore he
got rid of them, and came up here to talk to God. It was so quiet up here!
The earth had almost vanished. He could see just the bare hilltop beneath
him, a glimmer below, and the sky and the stars over his head. The people
had all gone away to their own homes, and perhaps next day would hardly
think about him at all, busy catching fish, or digging their gardens, or
making things for their houses. But he knew that God would not forget him
the next day any more than this day, and that God had sent him not to be
the king that these people wanted him to be, but their servant. So, to make
his heart strong, I say, he went up into the mountain alone to have a talk
with his Father. How quiet it all was up here, I say, and how noisy it had
been down there a little while ago! But God had been in the noise then as
much as he was in the quiet now--the only difference being that he could
not then be alone with him. I need not tell you who this man was--it was
the king of men, the servant of men, the Lord Jesus Christ, the everlasting
son of our Father in heaven.

"Now this mountain on which he was praying had a small lake at the foot of
it--that is, about thirteen miles long, and five miles broad. Not wanting
even his usual companions to be with him this evening--partly, I presume,
because they were of the same mind as those who desired to take him by
force and make him a king--he had sent them away in their boat, to go
across this water to the other side, where were their homes and their
families. Now, it was not pitch dark either on the mountain-top or on the
water down below; yet I doubt if any other man than he would have been
keen-eyed enough to discover that little boat down in the middle of the
lake, much distressed by the west wind that blew right in their teeth. But
he loved every man in it so much, that I think even as he was talking
to his Father, his eyes would now and then go looking for and finding
it--watching it on its way across to the other side. You must remember that
it was a little boat; and there are often tremendous storms upon these
small lakes with great mountains about them. For the wind will come all
at once, rushing down through the clefts in as sudden a squall as ever
overtook a sailor at sea. And then, you know, there is no sea-room. If
the wind get the better of them, they are on the shore in a few minutes,
whichever way the wind may blow. He saw them worn out at the oar, toiling
in rowing, for the wind was contrary unto them. So the time for loneliness
and prayer was over, and the time to go down out of his secret chamber and
help his brethren was come. He did not need to turn and say good-bye to
his Father, as if he dwelt on that mountain-top alone: his Father was down
there on the lake as well. He went straight down. Could not his Father, if
he too was down on the lake, help them without him? Yes. But he wanted him
to do it, that they might see that he did it. Otherwise they would only
have thought that the wind fell and the waves lay down, without supposing
for a moment that their Master or his Father had had anything to do with
it. They would have done just as people do now-a-days: they think that the
help comes of itself, instead of by the will of him who determined from the
first that men should be helped. So the Master went down the hill. When he
reached the border of the lake, the wind being from the other side, he must
have found the waves breaking furiously upon the rocks. But that made no
difference to him. He looked out as he stood alone on the edge amidst the
rushing wind and the noise of the water, out over the waves under the
clear, starry sky, saw where the tiny boat was tossed about like a
nutshell, and set out."

The mariners had been staring at me up to this point, leaning forward on
their benches, for sailors are nearly as fond of a good yarn as they are of
tobacco; and I heard afterwards that they had voted parson's yarn a good
one. Now, however, I saw one of them, probably more ignorant than the
others, cast a questioning glance at his neighbour. It was not returned,
and he fell again into a listening attitude. He had no idea of what was
coming. He probably thought parson had forgotten to say how Jesus had come
by a boat.

"The companions of our Lord had not been willing to go away and leave him
behind. Now, I dare say, they wished more than ever that he had been with
them--not that they thought he could do anything with a storm, only that
somehow they would have been less afraid with his face to look at. They had
seen him cure men of dreadful diseases; they had seen him turn water into
wine--some of them; they had seen him feed five thousand people the day
before with five loaves and two small fishes; but had one of their number
suggested that if he had been with them, they would have been safe from the
storm, they would not have talked any nonsense about the laws of nature,
not having learned that kind of nonsense, but they would have said that was
quite a different thing--altogether too much to expect or believe: _nobody_
could make the wind mind what it was about, or keep the water from
drowning you if you fell into it and couldn't swim; or such-like.

"At length, when they were nearly worn out, taking feebler and feebler
strokes, sometimes missing the water altogether, at other times burying
their oars in it up to the handles--as they rose on the crest of a huge
wave, one of them gave a cry, and they all stopped rowing and stared,
leaning forward to peer through the darkness. And through the spray which
the wind tore from the tops of the waves and scattered before it like dust,
they saw, perhaps a hundred yards or so from the boat, something standing
up from the surface of the water. It seemed to move towards them. It was a
shape like a man. They all cried out with fear, as was natural, for they
thought it must be a ghost."

How the faces of the sailors strained towards me at this part of the story!
I was afraid one of them especially was on the point of getting up to
speak, as we have heard of sailors doing in church. I went on.

"But then, over the noise of the wind and the waters came the voice they
knew so well. It said, 'Be of good cheer: it is I. Be not afraid.' I should
think, between wonder and gladness, they hardly knew for some moments where
they were or what they were about. Peter was the first to recover himself
apparently. In the first flush of his delight he felt strong and full of
courage. 'Lord, if it be thou,' he said, 'bid me come unto thee on the
water.' Jesus just said, 'Come;' and Peter unshipped his oar, and scrambled
over the gunwale on to the sea. But when he let go his hold of the boat,
and began to look about him, and saw how the wind was tearing the water,
and how it tossed and raved between him and Jesus, he began to be afraid.
And as soon as he began to be afraid he began to sink; but he had,
notwithstanding his fear, just sense enough to do the one sensible thing;
he cried out, 'Lord, save me.' And Jesus put out his hand, and took hold of
him, and lifted him up out of the water, and said to him, 'O thou of little
faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? And then they got into the boat, and the
wind fell all at once, and altogether.

"Now, you will not think that Peter was a coward, will you? It wasn't that
he hadn't courage, but that he hadn't enough of it. And why was it that he
hadn't enough of it? Because he hadn't faith enough. Peter was always very
easily impressed with the look of things. It wasn't at all likely that
a man should be able to walk on the water; and yet Peter found himself
standing on the water: you would have thought that when once he found
himself standing on the water, he need not be afraid of the wind and the
waves that lay between him and Jesus. But they looked so ugly that the
fearfulness of them took hold of his heart, and his courage went. You would
have thought that the greatest trial of his courage was over when he got
out of the boat, and that there was comparatively little more ahead of him.
Yet the sight of the waves and the blast of the boisterous wind were too
much for him. I will tell you how I fancy it was; and I think there are
several instances of the same kind of thing in Peter's life. When he got
out of the boat, and found himself standing on the water, he began to think
much of himself for being able to do so, and fancy himself better and
greater than his companions, and an especial favourite of God above them.
Now, there is nothing that kills faith sooner than pride. The two are
directly against each other. The moment that Peter grew proud, and began
to think about himself instead of about his Master, he began to lose his
faith, and then he grew afraid, and then he began to sink--and that brought
him to his senses. Then he forgot himself and remembered his Master, and
then the hand of the Lord caught him, and the voice of the Lord gently
rebuked him for the smallness of his faith, asking, 'Wherefore didst thou
doubt?' I wonder if Peter was able to read his own heart sufficiently well
to answer that _wherefore_. I do not think it likely at this period of his
history. But God has immeasurable patience, and before he had done teaching
Peter, even in this life, he had made him know quite well that pride and
conceit were at the root of all his failures. Jesus did not point it out to
him now. Faith was the only thing that would reveal that to him, as well as
cure him of it; and was, therefore, the only thing he required of him in
his rebuke. I suspect Peter was helped back into the boat by the eager
hands of his companions already in a humbler state of mind than when he
left it; but before his pride would be quite overcome, it would need that
same voice of loving-kindness to call him Satan, and the voice of the cock
to bring to his mind his loud boast, and his sneaking denial; nay, even the
voice of one who had never seen the Lord till after his death, but was yet
a readier disciple than he--the voice of St. Paul, to rebuke him because he
dissembled, and was not downright honest. But at the last even he gained
the crown of martyrdom, enduring all extremes, nailed to the cross like
his Master, rather than deny his name. This should teach us to distrust
ourselves, and yet have great hope for ourselves, and endless patience with
other people. But to return to the story and what the story itself teaches
us.

"If the disciples had known that Jesus saw them from the top of the
mountain, and was watching them all the time, would they have been
frightened at the storm, as I have little doubt they were, for they were
only fresh-water fishermen, you know? Well, to answer my own question"--I
went on in haste, for I saw one or two of the sailors with an audible
answer hovering on their lips--"I don't know that, as they then were, it
would have made so much difference to them; for none of them had risen much
above the look of the things nearest them yet. But supposing you, who know
something about him, were alone on the sea, and expecting your boat to be
swamped every moment--if you found out all at once, that he was looking
down at you from some lofty hilltop, and seeing all round about you in time
and space too, would you be afraid? He might mean you to go to the bottom,
you know. Would you mind going to the bottom with him looking at you? I do
not think I should mind it myself. But I must take care lest I be boastful
like Peter.

"Why should we be afraid of anything with him looking at us who is the
Saviour of men? But we are afraid of him instead, because we do not believe
that he is what he says he is--the Saviour of men. We do not believe what
he offers us is salvation. We think it is slavery, and therefore continue
slaves. Friends, I will speak to you who think you do believe in him. I am
not going to say that you do not believe in him; but I hope I am going to
make you say to yourselves that you too deserve to have those words of the
Saviour spoken to you that were spoken to Peter, 'O ye of little faith!'
Floating on the sea of your troubles, all kinds of fears and anxieties
assailing you, is He not on the mountain-top? Sees he not the little boat
of your fortunes tossed with the waves and the contrary wind? Assuredly he
will come to you walking on the waters. It may not be in the way you wish,
but if not, you will say at last, 'This is better.' It may be that he will
come in a form that will make you cry out for fear in the weakness of your
faith, as the disciples cried out--not believing any more than they did,
that it can be he. But will not each of you arouse his courage that to you
also he may say, as to the woman with the sick daughter whose confidence he
so sorely tried, 'Great is thy faith'? Will you not rouse yourself, I say,
that you may do him justice, and cast off the slavery of your own dread?
O ye of little faith, wherefore will ye doubt? Do not think that the Lord
sees and will not come. Down the mountain assuredly he will come, and you
are now as safe in your troubles as the disciples were in theirs with Jesus
looking on. They did not know it, but it was so: the Lord was watching
them. And when you look back upon your past lives, cannot you see some
instances of the same kind--when you felt and acted as if the Lord had
forgotten you, and found afterwards that he had been watching you all the
time?

"But the reason why you do not trust him more is that you obey him so
little. If you would only, ask what God would have you to do, you would
soon find your confidence growing. It is because you are proud, and
envious, and greedy after gain, that you do not trust him more. Ah! trust
him if it were only to get rid of these evil things, and be clean and
beautiful in heart.

"O sailors with me on the ocean of life, will you, knowing that he is
watching you from his mountain-top, do and say the things that hurt, and
wrong, and disappoint him? Sailors on the waters that surround this globe,
though there be no great mountain that overlooks the little lake on which
you float, not the less does he behold you, and care for you, and watch
over you. Will you do that which is unpleasing, distressful to him? Will
you be irreverent, cruel, coarse? Will you say evil things, lie, and
delight in vile stories and reports, with his eye on you, watching your
ship on its watery ways, ever ready to come over the waves to help you? It
is a fine thing, sailors, to fear nothing; but it would be far finer to
fear nothing _because_ he is above all, and over all, and in you all. For
his sake and for his love, give up everything bad, and take him for your
captain. He will be both captain and pilot to you, and steer you safe into
the port of glory. Now to God the Father," &c.

This is very nearly the sermon I preached that first Sunday morning. I
followed it up with a short enforcement in the afternoon.

END OF VOL. I.






THE SEABOARD PARISH

BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, LL.D.

VOL. II.






CONTENTS OF VOL. II.





   I. ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING
  II. NICEBOOTS
 III. THE BLACKSMITH
  IV. THE LIFE-BOAT
   V. MR. PERCIVALE
  VI. THE SHADOW OF DEATH
 VII. AT THE FARM
VIII. THE KEEVE
  IX. THE WALK TO CHURCH
   X. THE OLD CASTLE
  XI. JOE AND HIS TROUBLE
 XII. A SMALL ADVENTURE
XIII. THE HARVEST






CHAPTER I.

ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING.





In the evening we met in Connie's room, as usual, to have our talk. And
this is what came out of it.

The window was open. The sun was in the west. We sat a little aside out
of the course of his radiance, and let him look full into the room. Only
Wynnie sat back in a dark corner, as if she would get out of his way. Below
him the sea lay bluer than you could believe even when you saw it--blue
with a delicate yet deep silky blue, the exquisiteness of which was thrown
up by the brilliant white lines of its lapping on the high coast, to the
northward. We had just sat down, when Dora broke out with--

"I saw Niceboots at church. He did stare at you, papa, as if he had never
heard a sermon before."

"I daresay he never heard such a sermon before!" said Connie, with the
perfect confidence of inexperience and partiality--not to say ignorance,
seeing she had not heard the sermon herself.

Here Wynnie spoke from her dark corner, apparently forcing herself to
speak, and thereby giving what seemed an unpleasant tone to what she said.

"Well, papa, I don't know what to think. You are always telling us to trust
in Him; but how can we, if we are not good?"

"The first good thing you can do is to look up to him. That is the
beginning of trust in him, and the most sensible thing that it is possible
for us to do. That is faith."

"But it's no use sometimes."

"How do you know that?"

"Because you--I mean I--can't feel good, or care about it at all."

"But is that any ground for saying that it is no use--that he does not heed
you? that he disregards the look cast up to him? that, till the heart goes
with the will, he who made himself strong to be the helper of the weak, who
pities most those who are most destitute--and who so destitute as those who
do not love what they want to love--except, indeed, those who don't want to
love?--that, till you are well on towards all right by earnestly
seeking it, he won't help you? You are to judge him from yourself, are
you?--forgetting that all the misery in you is just because you have not
got his grand presence with you?"

I spoke so earnestly as to be somewhat incoherent in words. But my reader
will understand. Wynnie was silent. Connie, as if partly to help her
sister, followed on the same side.

"I don't know exactly how to say what I mean, papa, but I wish I could get
this lovely afternoon, all full of sunshine and blue, into unity with all
that you teach us about Jesus Christ. I wish this beautiful day came in
with my thought of him, like the frame--gold and red and blue--that you
have to that picture of him at home. Why doesn't it?"

"Just because you have not enough of faith in him, my dear. You do not know
him well enough yet. You do not yet believe that he means you all gladness,
heartily, honestly, thoroughly."

"And no suffering, papa?"

"I did not say that, my dear. There you are on your couch and can't move.
But he does mean you such gladness, such a full sunny air and blue sea of
blessedness that this suffering shall count for little in it; nay more,
shall be taken in for part, and, like the rocks that interfere with the
roll of the sea, flash out the white that glorifies and intensifies the
whole--to pass away by and by, I trust, none the less. What a chance you
have, my Connie, of believing in him, of offering upon his altar!"

"But," said my wife, "are not these feelings in a great measure dependent
upon the state of one's health? I find it so different when the sunshine is
inside me as well as outside me."

"Not a doubt of it, my dear. But that is only the more reason for rising
above all that. From the way some people speak of physical difficulties--I
don't mean you, wife--you would think that they were not merely the
inevitable which they are, but the insurmountable which they are not. That
they are physical and not spiritual is not only a great consolation, but a
strong argument for overcoming them. For all that is physical is put, or
is in the process of being put, under the feet of the spiritual. Do not
mistake me. I do not say you can make yourself feel merry or happy when you
are in a physical condition which is contrary to such mental condition. But
you can withdraw from it--not all at once; but by practice and effort you
can learn to withdraw from it, refusing to allow your judgments and actions
to be ruled by it. You can climb up out of the fogs, and sit quiet in the
sunlight on the hillside of faith. You cannot be merry down below in the
fog, for there is the fog; but you can every now and then fly with the
dove-wings of the soul up into the clear, to remind yourself that all this
passes away, is but an accident, and that the sun shines always, although
it may not at any given moment be shining on you. 'What does that matter?'
you will learn to say. 'It is enough for me to know that the sun does
shine, and that this is only a weary fog that is round about me for
the moment. I shall come out into the light beyond presently.' This is
faith--faith in God, who is the light, and is all in all. I believe that
the most glorious instances of calmness in suffering are thus achieved;
that the sufferers really do not suffer what one of us would if thrown into
their physical condition without the refuge of their spiritual condition as
well; for they have taken refuge in the inner chamber. Out of the spring of
their life a power goes forth that quenches the flames of the furnace of
their suffering, so far at least that it does not touch the deep life,
cannot make them miserable, does not drive them from the possession of
their soul in patience, which is the divine citadel of the suffering. Do
you understand me, Connie?"

"I do, papa. I think perfectly."

"Still less, then, is the fact that the difficulty is physical to be used
as an excuse for giving way to ill-temper, and, in fact, leaving ourselves
to be tossed and shaken by every tremble of our nerves. That is as if a
man should give himself into the hands and will and caprice of an
organ-grinder, to work upon him, not with the music of the spheres, but
with the wretched growling of the streets."

"But," said Wynnie, "I have heard you yourself, papa, make excuse for
people's ill-temper on this very ground, that they were out of health.
Indeed," she went on, half-crying, "I have heard you do so for myself, when
you did not know that I was within hearing."

"Yes, my dear, most assuredly. It is no fiction, but a real difference that
lies between excusing ourselves and excusing other people. No doubt the
same excuse is just for ourselves that is just for other people. But we can
do something to put ourselves right upon a higher principle, and therefore
we should not waste our time in excusing, or even in condemning ourselves,
but make haste up the hill. Where we cannot work--that is, in the life of
another--we have time to make all the excuse we can. Nay more; it is only
justice there. We are not bound to insist on our own rights, even of
excuse; the wisest thing often is to forego them. But we are bound by
heaven, earth, and hell to give them to other people. And, besides, what
a comfort to ourselves to be able to say, 'It is true So-and-so was cross
to-day. But it wasn't in the least that he wasn't friendly, or didn't like
me; it was only that he had eaten something that hadn't agreed with him.
I could see it in his eye. He had one of his headaches.' Thus, you see,
justice to our neighbour, and comfort to ourselves, is one and the same
thing. But it would be a sad thing to have to think that when we found
ourselves in the same ungracious condition, from whatever cause, we had
only to submit to it, saying, 'It is a law of nature,' as even those who
talk most about laws will not do, when those laws come between them and
their own comfort. They are ready enough then to call in the aid of higher
laws, which, so far from being contradictory, overrule the lower to get
things into something like habitable, endurable condition. It may be a law
of nature; but what has the Law of the Spirit of Life to _propound anent_
it? as the Scotch lawyers would say."

A little pause followed, during which I hope some of us were thinking. That
Wynnie, at least, was, her next question made evident.

"What you say about a law of nature and a law of the Spirit makes me think
again how that walking on the water has always been a puzzle to me."

"It could hardly be other, seeing that we cannot possibly understand it," I
answered.

"But I find it so hard to believe. Can't you say something, papa, to help
me to believe it?"

"I think if you admit what goes before, you will find there is nothing
against reason in the story."

"Tell me, please, what you mean."

"If all things were made by Jesus, the Word of God, would it be reasonable
that the water that he had created should be able to drown him?"

"It might drown his body."

"It would if he had not the power over it still, to prevent it from laying
hold of him. But just think for a moment. God is a Spirit. Spirit is
greater than matter. Spirit makes matter. Think what it was for a human
body to have such a divine creative power dwelling in it as that which
dwelt in the human form of Jesus! What power, and influence, and utter rule
that spirit must have over the body in which it dwells! We cannot imagine
how much; but if we have so much power over our bodies, how much more must
the pure, divine Jesus, have had over his! I suspect this miracle was
wrought, not through anything done to the water, but through the power of
the spirit over the body of Jesus, which was all obedient thereto. I am not
explaining the miracle, for that I cannot do. One day I think it will be
plain common sense to us. But now I am only showing you what seems to me to
bring us a step nearer to the essential region of the miracle, and so far
make it easier to believe. If we look at the history of our Lord, we shall
find that, true real human body as his was, it was yet used by his spirit
after a fashion in which we cannot yet use our bodies. And this is only
reasonable. Let me give you an instance. You remember how, on the Mount of
Transfiguration, that body shone so that the light of it illuminated
all his garments. You do not surely suppose that this shine was
external--physical light, as we say, _merely?_ No doubt it was physical
light, for how else would their eyes have seen it? But where did it come
from? What was its source? I think it was a natural outburst of glory from
the mind of Jesus, filled with the perfect life of communion with his
Father--the light of his divine blessedness taking form in physical
radiance that permeated and glorified all that surrounded him. As the
body is the expression of the soul, as the face of Jesus himself was the
expression of the being, the thought, the love of Jesus in like manner this
radiance was the natural expression of his gladness, even in the face of
that of which they had been talking--Moses, Elias, and he--namely,
the decease that he should accomplish at Jerusalem. Again, after his
resurrection, he convinced the hands, as well as eyes, of doubting Thomas,
that he was indeed there in the body; and yet that body could appear and
disappear as the Lord willed. All this is full of marvel, I grant you; but
probably far more intelligible to us in a further state of existence than
some of the most simple facts with regard to our own bodies are to us now,
only that we are so used to them that we never think how unintelligible
they really are."

"But then about Peter, papa? What you have been saying will not apply to
Peter's body, you know."

"I confess there is more difficulty there. But if you can suppose that such
power were indwelling in Jesus, you cannot limit the sphere of its action.
As he is the head of the body, his church, in all spiritual things, so I
firmly believe, however little we can understand about it, is he in all
natural things as well. Peter's faith in him brought even Peter's body
within the sphere of the outgoing power of the Master. Do you suppose that
because Peter ceased to be brave and trusting, therefore Jesus withdrew
from him some sustaining power, and allowed him to sink? I do not believe
it. I believe Peter's sinking followed naturally upon his loss of
confidence. Thus he fell away from the life of the Master; was no longer,
in that way I mean, connected with the Head, was instantly under the
dominion of the natural law of gravitation, as we call it, and began to
sink. Therefore the Lord must take other means to save him. He must draw
nigh to him in a bodily manner. The pride of Peter had withdrawn him from
the immediate spiritual influence of Christ, conquering his matter; and
therefore the Lord must come over the stormy space between, come nearer to
him in the body, and from his own height of safety above the sphere of the
natural law, stretch out to him the arm of physical aid, lift him up, lead
him to the boat. The whole salvation of the human race is figured in this
story. It is all Christ, my love.--Does this help you to believe at all?"

"I think it does, papa. But it wants thinking over a good deal. I always
find as I think, that lighter bits shine out here and there in a thing I
have no hope of understanding altogether. That always helps me to believe
that the rest might be understood too, if I were only clever enough."

"Simple enough, not clever enough, my dear."

"But there's one thing," said my wife, "that is more interesting to me than
what you have been talking about. It is the other instances in the life of
St. Peter in which you said he failed in a similar manner from pride or
self-satisfaction."

"One, at least, seems to me very clear. You have often remarked to me,
Ethel, how little praise servants can stand; how almost invariably after
you have commended the diligence or skill of any of your household, as you
felt bound to do, one of the first visible results was either a falling
away in the performance by which she had gained the praise, or a more
or less violent access, according to the nature of the individual, of
self-conceit, soon breaking out in bad temper or impertinence. Now you will
see precisely the same kind of thing in Peter."

Here I opened my New Testament, and read fragmentarily, "'But whom say ye
that I am?... Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.... Blessed
art thou, Simon.... My Father hath revealed that unto thee. I will give
unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.... I must suffer many things,
and be killed, and be raised again the third day.... Be it far from thee,
Lord. This shall not be unto thee.... Get thee behind me, Satan. Thou art
an offence unto me.' Just contemplate the change here in the words of our
Lord. 'Blessed art thou.' 'Thou art an offence unto me.' Think what change
has passed on Peter's mood before the second of these words could be
addressed to him to whom the first had just been spoken. The Lord had
praised him. Peter grew self-sufficient, even to the rebuking of him whose
praise had so uplifted him. But it is ever so. A man will gain a great
moral victory: glad first, then uplifted, he will fall before a paltry
temptation. I have sometimes wondered, too, whether his denial of our Lord
had anything to do with his satisfaction with himself for making that
onslaught upon the high priest's servant. It was a brave thing and a
faithful to draw a single sword against a multitude. In his fiery eagerness
and inexperience, the blow, well meant to cleave Malchus's head, missed,
and only cut off his ear; but Peter had herein justified his confident
saying that he would not deny him. He was not one to deny his Lord who had
been the first to confess him! Yet ere the cock had crowed, ere the morning
had dawned, the vulgar grandeur of the palace of the high priest (for let
it be art itself, it was vulgar grandeur beside that grandeur which it
caused Peter to deny), and the accusing tone of a maid-servant, were enough
to make him quail whom the crowd with lanterns, and torches, and weapons,
had only roused to fight. True, he was excited then, and now he was cold in
the middle of the night, with Jesus gone from his sight a prisoner, and for
the faces of friends that had there surrounded him and strengthened him
with their sympathy, now only the faces of those who were, or whom at least
Peter thought to be on the other side, looking at him curiously, as a
strange intruder into their domains. Alas, that the courage which led him
to follow the Lord should have thus led him, not to deny him, but into the
denial of him! Yet why should I say _alas?_ If the denial of our Lord
lay in his heart a possible thing, only prevented by his being kept in
favourable circumstances for confessing him, it was a thousand times better
that he should deny him, and thus know what a poor weak thing that heart of
his was, trust it no more, and give it up to the Master to make it strong,
and pure, and grand. For such an end the Lord was willing to bear all the
pain of Peter's denial. O, the love of that Son of Man, who in the midst of
all the wretched weaknesses of those who surrounded him, loved the best in
them, and looked forward to his own victory for them that they might become
all that they were meant to be--like him; that the lovely glimmerings of
truth and love that were in them now--the breakings forth of the light that
lighteneth every man--might grow into the perfect human day; loving them
even the more that they were so helpless, so oppressed, so far from that
ideal which was their life, and which all their dim desires were reaching
after!"

Here I ceased, and a little overcome with the great picture in my soul
to which I had been able only to give the poorest expression, rose, and
retired to my own room. There I could only fall on my knees and pray that
the Lord Christ, who had died for me, might have his own way with me--that
it might be worth his while to have done what he did and what he was doing
now for me. To my Elder Brother, my Lord, and my God, I gave myself yet
again, confidently, because he cared to have me, and my very breath was
his. I _would_ be what he wanted, who knew all about it, and had done
everything that I might be a son of God--a living glory of gladness.






CHAPTER II.

NICEBOOTS.





The next morning the captain of the lost vessel called upon me early to
thank me for himself and his men. He was a fine honest-looking burly
fellow, dressed in blue from head to heel. He might have sat for a portrait
of Chaucer's shipman, as far as his hue and the first look of him went. It
was clear that "in many a tempest had his beard be shake," and certainly
"the hote somer had made his hew all broun;" but farther the likeness would
hardly go, for the "good fellow" which Chaucer applies with such irony to
the shipman of his time, who would filch wine, and drown all the captives
he made in a sea-fight, was clearly applicable in good earnest to this
shipman. Still, I thought I had something to bring against him, and
therefore before we parted I said to him--

"They tell me, captain, that your vessel was not seaworthy, and that you
could not but have known that."

"She was my own craft, sir, and I judged her fit for several voyages more.
If she had been A 1 she couldn't have been mine; and a man must do what he
can for his family."

"But you were risking your life, you know."

"A few chances more or less don't much signify to a sailor, sir. There
ain't nothing to be done without risk. You'll find an old tub go voyage
after voyage, and she beyond bail, and a clipper fresh off the stocks go
down in the harbour. It's all in the luck, sir, I assure you."

"Well, if it were your own life I should have nothing to say, seeing you
have a family to look after; but what about the poor fellows who made the
voyage with you? Did they know what kind of a vessel they were embarking
in?"

"Wherever the captain's ready to go he'll always find men ready to follow
him. Bless you, sir, they never asks no questions. If a sailor was always
to be thinking of the chances, he'd never set his foot off shore."

"Still, I don't think it's right they shouldn't know."

"I daresay they knowed all about the old brig as well as I did myself. You
gets to know all about a craft just as you do about her captain. She's got
a character of her own, and she can't hide it long, any more than you can
hide yours, sir, begging your pardon."

"I daresay that's all correct, but still I shouldn't like anyone to say to
me, 'You ought to have told me, captain.' Therefore, you see, I'm telling
you, captain, and now I'm clear.--Have a glass of wine before you go," I
concluded, ringing the bell.

"Thank you, sir. I'll turn over what you've been saying, and anyhow I take
it kind of you."

So we parted. I have never seen him since, and shall not, most likely,
in this world. But he looked like a man that could understand why and
wherefore I spoke as I did. And I had the advantage of having had a chance
of doing something for him first of all. Let no man who wants to do
anything for the soul of a man lose a chance of doing something for his
body. He ought to be willing, and ready, which is more than willing, to do
that whether or not; but there are those who need this reminder. Of many a
soul Jesus laid hold by healing the suffering the body brought upon it. No
one but himself can tell how much the nucleus of the church was composed of
and by those who had received health from his hands, loving-kindness from
the word of his mouth. My own opinion is that herein lay the very germ of
the kernel of what is now the ancient, was then the infant church; that
from them, next to the disciples themselves, went forth the chief power of
life in love, for they too had seen the Lord, and in their own humble way
could preach and teach concerning him. What memories of him theirs must
have been!

Things went on very quietly, that is, as I mean now, from the view-point of
a historian, without much to record bearing notably upon after events,
for the greater part of the next week. I wandered about my parish, making
acquaintance with different people in an outside sort of way, only now
and then finding an opportunity of seeing into their souls except by
conclusion. But I enjoyed endlessly the aspects of the country. It was not
picturesque except in parts. There was little wood and there were no
hills, only undulations, though many of them were steep enough even from a
pedestrian's point of view. Neither, however, were there any plains except
high moorland tracts. But the impression of the whole country was large,
airy, sunshiny, and it was clasped in the arms of the infinite, awful, yet
how bountiful sea--if one will look at the ocean in its world-wide, not to
say its eternal aspects, and not out of the fears of a hidebound love of
life! The sea and the sky, I must confess, dwarfed the earth, made it of
small account beside them; but who could complain of such an influence? At
least, not I.

My children bathed in this sea every day, and gathered strength and
knowledge from it. It was, as I have indicated, a dangerous coast to bathe
upon. The sweep of the tides varied with the varying sands that were cast
up. There was now in one place, now in another, a strong _undertow_, as
they called it--a reflux, that is, of the inflowing waters, which was quite
sufficient to carry those who could not swim out into the great deep, and
rendered much exertion necessary, even in those who could, to regain the
shore. But there was a fine strong Cornish woman to take charge of the
ladies and the little boys, and she, watching the ways of the wild monster,
knew the when and the where, and all about it.

Connie got out upon the downs every day. She improved in health certainly,
and we thought a little even in her powers of motion. The weather continued
superb. What rain there was fell at night, just enough for Nature to wash
her face with and so look quite fresh in the morning. We contrived a dinner
on the sands on the other side of the bay, for the Friday of this same
week.

The morning rose gloriously. Harry and Charlie were turning the house
upside down, to judge by their noise, long before I was in the humour to
get up, for I had been reading late the night before. I never made much
objection to mere noise, knowing that I could stop it the moment I pleased,
and knowing, which was of more consequence, that so far from there being
anything wrong in making a noise, the sea would make noise enough in our
ears before we left Kilkhaven. The moment, however, that I heard a
thread of whining or a burst of anger in the noise, I would interfere at
once--treating these just as things that must be dismissed at once. Harry
and Charlie were, I say, to use their own form of speech, making such a row
that morning, however, that I was afraid of some injury to the house or
furniture, which were not our own. So I opened my door and called out--

"Harry! Charlie! What on earth are you about?"

"Nothing, papa," answered Charlie. "Only it's so jolly!"

"What is jolly, my boy?" I asked.

"O, I don't know, papa! It's _so_ jolly!"

"Is it the sunshine?" thought I; "and the wind? God's world all over? The
God of gladness in the hearts of the lads? Is it that? No wonder, then,
that they cannot tell yet what it is!"

I withdrew into my room; and so far from seeking to put an end to the
noise--I knew Connie did not mind it--listened to it with a kind of
reverence, as the outcome of a gladness which the God of joy had kindled
in their hearts. Soon after, however, I heard certain dim growls of
expostulation from Harry, and having, from experience, ground for believing
that the elder was tyrannising over the younger, I stopped that and the
noise together, sending Charlie to find out where the tide would be between
one and two o'clock, and Harry to run to the top of the hill, and find out
the direction of the wind. Before I was dressed, Charlie was knocking at my
door with the news that it would he half-tide about one; and Harry speedily
followed with the discovery that the wind was north-east by south-west,
which of course determined that the sun would shine all day.

As the dinner-hour drew near, the servants went over, with Walter at their
head, to choose a rock convenient for a table, under the shelter of the
rocks on the sands across the bay. Thither, when Walter returned, we bore
our Connie, carrying her litter close by the edge of the retreating tide,
which sometimes broke in a ripple of music under her, wetting our feet with
innocuous rush. The child's delight was extreme, as she thus skimmed the
edge of the ocean, with the little ones gambolling about her, and her mamma
and Wynnie walking quietly on the landward side, for she wished to have no
one between her and the sea.

After scrambling with difficulty over some rocky ledges, and stopping at
Connie's request, to let her look into a deep pool in the sand, which
somehow or other retained the water after the rest had retreated, we set
her down near the mouth of a cave, in the shadow of a rock. And there was
our dinner nicely laid for us on a flat rock in front of the cave. The
cliffs rose behind us, with curiously curved and variously angled strata.
The sun in his full splendour threw dark shadows on the brilliant yellow
sand, more and more of which appeared as the bright blue water withdrew
itself, now rippling over it as if it meant to hide it all up again, now
uncovering more as it withdrew for another rush. Before we had finished our
dinner, the foremost wavelets appeared so far away over the plain of the
sand, that it seemed a long walk to the edge that had been almost at
our feet a little while ago. Between us and it lay a lovely desert of
glittering sand.

When even Charlie and Harry had arrived at the conclusion that it was time
to stop eating, we left the shadow and went out into the sun, carrying
Connie and laying her down in the midst of "the ribbed sea-sand," which
was very ribby to-day. On a shawl a little way off from her lay her baby,
crowing and kicking with the same jollity that had possessed the boys ever
since the morning. I wandered about with Wynnie on the sands, picking
up amongst other things strange creatures in thin shells ending in
vegetable-like tufts, if I remember rightly. My wife sat on the end of
Connie's litter, and Dora and the boys, a little way off, were trying how
far the full force of three wooden spades could, in digging a hole, keep
ahead of the water which was ever tumbling in the sand from the sides of
the same. Behind, the servants were busy washing the plates in a pool, and
burying the fragments of the feast; for I made it a rule wherever we went
that the fair face of nature was not to be defiled. I have always taken the
part of excursionists in these latter days of running to and fro, against
those who complain that the loveliest places are being destroyed by their
inroads. But there is one most offensive, even disgusting habit amongst
them--that of leaving bones, fragments of meat pies, and worse than all,
pieces of greasy paper about the place, which I cannot excuse, or at least
defend. Even the surface of Cumberland and Westmoreland lakes will be
defiled with these floating abominations--not abominations at all if they
are decently burned or buried when done with, but certainly abominations
when left to be cast hither and thither in the wind, over the grass, or on
the eddy and ripple of the pure water, for days after those who have thus
left their shame behind them have returned to their shops or factories. I
forgive them for trampling down the grass and the ferns. That cannot be
helped, and in comparison of the good they get, is not to be considered at
all. But why should they leave such a savage trail behind them as this,
forgetting too that though they have done with the spot, there are others
coming after them to whom these remnants must be an offence?

At length in our roaming, Wynnie and I approached a long low ridge of rock,
rising towards the sea into which it ran. Crossing this, we came suddenly
upon the painter whom Dora had called Niceboots, sitting with a small easel
before him. We were right above him ere we knew. He had his back towards
us, so that we saw at once what he was painting.

"O, papa!" cried Wynnie involuntarily, and the painter looked round.

"I beg your pardon," I said. "We came over from the other side, and did not
see you before. I hope we have not disturbed you much."

"Not in the least," he answered courteously, and rose as he spoke.

I saw that the subject on his easel suggested that of which Wynnie had been
making a sketch at the same time, on the day when Connie first lay on
the top of the opposite cliff. But he was not even looking in the same
direction now.

"Do you mind having your work seen before it is finished?"

"Not in the least, if the spectators will do me the favour to remember that
most processes have to go through a seemingly chaotic stage," he answered.

I was struck with the mode and tone of the remark.

"Here is no common man," I said to myself, and responded to him in
something of a similar style.

"I wish we could always keep that in mind with regard to human beings
themselves, as well as their works," I said aloud.

The painter looked at me, and I looked at him.

"We speak each from the experience of his own profession, I presume," he
said.

"But," I returned, glancing at the little picture in oils upon his easel,
"your work here, though my knowledge of painting is next to nothing--
perhaps I ought to say nothing at all--this picture must have long ago
passed the chaotic stage."

"It is nearly as much finished as I care to make it," he returned. "I
hardly count this work at all. I am chiefly amusing, or rather pleasing, my
own fancy at present."

"Apparently," I remarked, "you had the conical rock outside the hay for
your model, and now you are finishing it with your back turned towards it.
How is that?"

"I will soon explain," he answered. "The moment I saw this rock, it
reminded me of Dante's Purgatory."

"Ah, you are a reader of Dante?" I said. "In the original, I hope."

"Yes. A friend of mine, a brother painter, an Italian, set me going with
that, and once going with Dante, nobody could well stop. I never knew what
intensity _per se_ was till I began to read Dante."

"That is quite my own feeling. Now, to return to your picture."

"Without departing at all from natural forms, I thought to make it suggest
the Purgatorio to anyone who remembered the description given of the place
_ab extra_ by Ulysses, in the end of the twenty-sixth canto of the Inferno.
Of course, that thing there is a mere rock, yet it has certain mountain
forms about it. I have put it at a much greater distance, you see, and have
sought to make it look a solitary mountain in the midst of a great water.
You will discover even now that the circles of the Purgatory are suggested
without any approach, I think, to artificial structure; and there are
occasional hints at figures, which you cannot definitely detach from the
rocks--which, by the way, you must remember, were in one part full of
sculptures. I have kept the mountain near enough, however, to indicate
the great expanse of wild flowers on the top, which Matilda was so busy
gathering. I want to indicate too the wind up there in the terrestrial
paradise, ever and always blowing one way. You remember, Mr. Walton?"--
for the young man, getting animated, began to talk as if we had known each
other for some time--and here he repeated the purport of Dante's words in
English:

  "An air of sweetness, changeless in its flow,
  With no more strength than in a soft wind lies,
  Smote peacefully against me on the brow.
  By which the leaves all trembling, level-wise,
  Did every one bend thitherward to where
  The high mount throws its shadow at sunrise."

"I thought you said you did not use translations?"

"I thought it possible that--Miss Walton (?)" interrogatively this--"might
not follow the Italian so easily, and I feared to seem pedantic."

"She won't lag far behind, I flatter myself," I returned. "Whose
translation do you quote?"

He hesitated a moment; then said carelessly:

"I have cobbled a few passages after that fashion myself."

"It has the merit of being near the original at least," I returned; "and
that seems to me one of the chief merits a translation can possess."

"Then," the painter resumed, rather hastily, as if to avoid any further
remark upon his verses, "you see those white things in the air above?" Here
he turned to Wynnie. "Miss Walton will remember--I think she was making a
drawing of the rock at the same time I was--how the seagulls, or some such
birds--only two or three of them--kept flitting about the top of it?"

"I remember quite well," answered Wynnie, with a look of appeal to me.

"Yes," I interposed; "my daughter, in describing what she had been
attempting to draw, spoke especially of the birds over the rock. For she
said the white lapping of the waves looked like spirits trying to get
loose, and the white birds like foam that had broken its chains, and risen
in triumph into the air."

Here Mr. Niceboots, for as yet I did not know what else to call him, looked
at Wynnie almost with a start.

"How wonderfully that falls in with my fancy about the rock!" he said.
"Purgatory indeed! with imprisoned souls lapping at its foot, and the free
souls winging their way aloft in ether. Well, this world is a kind of
purgatory anyhow--is it not, Mr. Walton?"

"Certainly it is. We are here tried as by fire, to see what our work
is--whether wood, hay, and stubble, or gold and silver and precious
stones."

"You see," resumed the painter, "if anybody only glanced at my little
picture, he would take those for sea-birds; but if he looked into it, and
began to suspect me, he would find out that they were Dante and Beatrice on
their way to the sphere of the moon."

"In one respect at least, then, your picture has the merit of corresponding
to fact; for what thing is there in the world, or what group of things, in
which the natural man will not see merely the things of nature, but the
spiritual man the things of the spirit?"

"I am no theologian," said the painter, turning away, I thought somewhat
coldly.

But I could see that Wynnie was greatly interested in him. Perhaps she
thought that here was some enlightenment of the riddle of the world for
her, if she could but get at what he was thinking. She was used to my way
of it: here might be something new.

"If I can be of any service to Miss Walton with her drawing, I shall be
happy," he said, turning again towards me.

But his last gesture had made me a little distrustful of him, and I
received his advances on this point with a coldness which I did not wish to
make more marked than his own towards my last observation.

"You are very kind," I said; "but Miss Walton does not presume to be an
artist."

I saw a slight shade pass over Wynnie's countenance. When I turned to
Mr. Niceboots, a shade of a different sort was on his. Surely I had said
something wrong to cast a gloom on two young faces. I made haste to make
amends.

"We are just going to have some coffee," I said, "for my servants, I see,
have managed to kindle a fire. Will you come and allow me to introduce you
to Mrs. Walton?"

"With much pleasure," he answered, rising from the rock whereon, as he
spoke about his picture, he had again seated himself. He was a fine-built,
black-bearded, sunburnt fellow, with clear gray eyes notwithstanding, a
rather Roman nose, and good features generally. But there was an air of
suppression, if not of sadness, about him, however, did not in the least
interfere with the manliness of his countenance, or of its expression.

"But," I said, "how am I to effect an introduction, seeing I do not yet
know your name."

I had had to keep a sharp look-out on myself lest I should call him Mr.
Niceboots. He smiled very graciously and replied,

"My name is Percivale--Charles Percivale."

"A descendant of Sir Percivale of King Arthur's Round Table?"

"I cannot count quite so far back," he answered, "as that--not quite to the
Conquest," he added, with a slight deepening of his sunburnt hue. "I do
come of a fighting race, but I cannot claim Sir Percivale."

We were now walking along the edge of the still retreating waves towards
the group upon the sands, Mr. Percivale and I foremost, and Wynnie
lingering behind.

"O, do look here papa!" she cried, from some little distance.

We turned and saw her gazing at something on the sand at her feet.
Hastening back, we found it to be a little narrow line of foam-bubbles,
which the water had left behind it on the sand, slowly breaking and passing
out of sight. Why there should be foam-bubbles there then, and not always,
I do not know. But there they were--and such colours! deep rose and grassy
green and ultramarine blue; and, above all, one dark, yet brilliant and
intensely-burnished, metallic gold. All of them were of a solid-looking
burnished colour, like opaque body-colour laid on behind translucent
crystal. Those little ocean bubbles were well worth turning to see; and so
I said to Wynnie. But, as we gazed, they went on vanishing, one by one.
Every moment a heavenly glory of hue burst, and was nowhere.

We walked away again towards the rest of our party.

"Don't you think those bubbles more beautiful than any precious stones you
ever saw, papa?"

"Yes, my love, I think they are, except it be the opal. In the opal, God
seems to have fixed the evanescent and made the vanishing eternal."

"And flowers are more beautiful things than jewels?' she said
interrogatively.

"Many--perhaps most flowers are," I granted. "And did you ever see such
curves and delicate textures anywhere else as in the clouds, papa?"

"I think not--in the cirrhous clouds at least--the frozen ones. But what
are you putting me to my catechism for in this way, my child?"

"O, papa, I could go on a long time with that catechism; but I will end
with one question more, which you will perhaps find a little harder to
answer. Only I daresay you have had an answer ready for years lest one of
us should ask you some day."

"No, my love. I never got an answer ready for anything lest one of my
children should ask me. But it is not surprising either that children
should be puzzled about the things that have puzzled their father, or that
by the time they are able to put the questions, he should have found out
some sort of an answer to most of them. Go on with your catechism, Wynnie.
Now for your puzzle!"

"It's not a funny question, papa; it's a very serious one. I can't think
why the unchanging God should have made all the most beautiful things
wither and grow ugly, or burst and vanish, or die somehow and be no more.
Mamma is not so beautiful as she once was, is she?"

"In one way, no; but in another and better way, much more so. But we will
not talk about her kind of beauty just now; we will keep to the more
material loveliness of which you have been speaking--though, in truth, no
loveliness can be only material. Well, then, for my answer; it is, I think,
because God loves the beauty so much that he makes all beautiful things
vanish quickly."

"I do not understand you, papa."

"I daresay not, my dear. But I will explain to you a little, if Mr.
Percivale will excuse me."

"On the contrary, I am greatly interested, both in the question and the
answer."

"Well, then, Wynnie; everything has a soul and a body, or something like
them. By the body we know the soul. But we are always ready to love the
body instead of the soul. Therefore, God makes the body die continually,
that we may learn to love the soul indeed. The world is full of beautiful
things, but God has saved many men from loving the mere bodies of them, by
making them poor; and more still by reminding them that if they be as rich
as Croesus all their lives, they will be as poor as Diogenes--poorer,
without even a tub--when this world, with all its pictures, scenery, books,
and--alas for some Christians!--bibles even, shall have vanished away."

"Why do you say _alas_, papa--if they are Christians especially?"

"I say _alas_ only from their point of view, not from mine. I mean such as
are always talking and arguing from the Bible, and never giving themselves
any trouble to do what it tells them. They insist on the anise and cummin,
and forget the judgment, mercy, and faith. These worship the body of the
truth, and forget the soul of it. If the flowers were not perishable, we
should cease to contemplate their beauty, either blinded by the passion for
hoarding the bodies of them, or dulled by the hebetude of commonplaceness
that the constant presence of them would occasion. To compare great things
with small, the flowers wither, the bubbles break, the clouds and sunsets
pass, for the very same holy reason, in the degree of its application to
them, for which the Lord withdrew from his disciples and ascended again to
his Father--that the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, the Soul of things,
might come to them and abide with them, and so the Son return, and the
Father be revealed. The flower is not its loveliness, and its loveliness
we must love, else we shall only treat them as flower-greedy children,
who gather and gather, and fill hands and baskets, from a mere desire
of acquisition, excusable enough in them, but the same in kind, however
harmless in mode, and degree, and object, as the avarice of the miser.
Therefore God, that we may always have them, and ever learn to love their
beauty, and yet more their truth, sends the beneficent winter that we may
think about what we have lost, and welcome them when they come again with
greater tenderness and love, with clearer eyes to see, and purer hearts
to understand, the spirit that dwells in them. We cannot do without the
'winter of our discontent.' Shakspere surely saw that when he makes Titania
say, in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_:

  'The human mortals want their winter here'--

namely, to set things right; and none of those editors who would alter the
line seem to have been capable of understanding its import."

"I think I understand you a little," answered Wynnie. Then, changing her
tone, "I told you, papa, you would have an answer ready; didn't I?"

"Yes, my child; but with this difference--I found the answer to meet my own
necessities, not yours."

"And so you had it ready for me when I wanted it."

"Just so. That is the only certainty you have in regard to what you give
away. No one who has not tasted it and found it good has a right to offer
any spiritual dish to his neighbour."

Mr. Percivale took no part in our conversation. The moment I had presented
him to Mrs. Walton and Connie, and he had paid his respects by a somewhat
stately old-world obeisance, he merged the salutation into a farewell, and,
either forgetting my offer of coffee, or having changed his mind, withdrew,
a little to my disappointment, for, notwithstanding his lack of response
where some things he said would have led me to expect it, I had begun to
feel much interested in him.

He was scarcely beyond hearing, when Dora came up to me from her digging,
with an eager look on her sunny face.

"Hasn't he got nice boots, papa?"

"Indeed, my dear, I am unable to support you in that assertion, for I never
saw his boots."

"I did, then," returned the child; "and I never saw such nice boots."

"I accept the statement willingly," I replied; and we heard no more of the
boots, for his name was now substituted for his nickname. Nor did I see
himself again for some days--not in fact till next Sunday--though why he
should come to church at all was something of a puzzle to me, especially
when I knew him better.






CHAPTER III.

THE BLACKSMITH.





The next day I set out after breakfast to inquire about a blacksmith. It
was not every or any blacksmith that would do. I must not fix on the first
to do my work because he was the first. There was one in the village, I
soon learned; but I found him an ordinary man, who, I have no doubt, could
shoe a horse and avoid the quick, but from whom any greater delicacy of
touch was not to be expected. Inquiring further, I heard of a young smith
who had lately settled in a hamlet a couple of miles distant, but still
within the parish. In the afternoon I set out to find him. To my surprise,
he was a pale-faced, thoughtful-looking man, with a huge frame, which
appeared worn rather than naturally thin, and large eyes that looked at the
anvil as if it was the horizon of the world. He had got a horse-shoe in his
tongs when I entered. Notwithstanding the fire that glowed on the hearth,
and the sparks that flew like a nimbus in eruption from about his person,
the place looked very dark to me entering from the glorious blaze of the
almost noontide sun, and felt cool after the deep lane through which I had
come, and which had seemed a very reservoir of sunbeams. I could see the
smith by the glow of his horse-shoe; but all between me and the shoe was
dark.

"Good-morning," I said. "It is a good thing to find a man by his work. I
heard you half a mile off or so, and now I see you, but only by the glow of
your work. It is a grand thing to work in fire."

He lifted his hammered hand to his forehead courteously, and as lightly as
if the hammer had been the butt-end of a whip.

"I don't know if you would say the same if you had to work at it in weather
like this," he answered.

"If I did not," I returned, "that would be the fault of my weakness, and
would not affect the assertion I have just made, that it is a fine thing to
work in fire."

"Well, you may be right," he rejoined with a sigh, as, throwing the
horse-shoe he had been fashioning from the tongs on the ground, he next let
the hammer drop beside the anvil, and leaning against it held his head
for a moment between his hands, and regarded the floor. "It does not much
matter to me," he went on, "if I only get through my work and have done
with it. No man shall say I shirked what I'd got to do. And then when it's
over there won't be a word to say agen me, or--"

He did not finish the sentence. And now I could see the sunlight lying in a
somewhat dreary patch, if the word _dreary_ can be truly used with respect
to any manifestation of sunlight, on the dark clay floor.

"I hope you are not ill," I said.

He made no answer, but taking up his tongs caught with it from a beam one
of a number of roughly-finished horse-shoes which hung there, and put it on
the fire to be fashioned to a certain fit. While he turned it in the fire,
and blew the bellows, I stood regarding him. "This man will do for my
work," I said to myself; "though I should not wonder from the look of him
if it was the last piece of work he ever did under the New Jerusalem." The
smith's words broke in on my meditations.

"When I was a little boy," he said, "I once wanted to stay at home from
school. I had, I believe, a little headache, but nothing worth minding. I
told my mother that I had a headache, and she kept me, and I helped her at
her spinning, which was what I liked best of anything. But in the afternoon
the Methodist preacher came in to see my mother, and he asked me what was
the matter with me, and my mother answered for me that I had a bad head,
and he looked at me; and as my head was quite well by this time, I could
not help feeling guilty. And he saw my look, I suppose, sir, for I can't
account for what he said any other way; and he turned to me, and he said to
me, solemn-like, 'Is your head bad enough to send you to the Lord Jesus
to make you whole?' I could not speak a word, partly from bashfulness, I
suppose, for I was but ten years old. So he followed it up, as they say:
'Then you ought to be at school,' says he. I said nothing, because I
couldn't. But never since then have I given in as long as I could stand.
And I can stand now, and lift my hammer, too," he said, as he took the
horse-shoe from the forge, laid it on the anvil, and again made a nimbus of
coruscating iron.

"You are just the man I want," I said. "I've got a job for you, down to
Kilkhaven, as you say in these parts."

"What is it, sir? Something about the church? I should ha' thought the
church was all spick and span by this time."

"I see you know who I am," I said.

"Of course I do," he answered. "I don't go to church myself, being brought
up a Methodist; but anything that happens in the parish is known the next
day all over it."

"You won't mind doing my job though you are a Methodist, will you?" I
asked.

"Not I, sir. If I've read right, it's the fault of the Church that we don't
pull all alongside. You turned us out, sir; we didn't go out of ourselves.
At least, if all they say is true, which I can't be sure of, you know, in
this world."

"You are quite right there though," I answered. "And in doing so, the
Church had the worst of it--as all that judge and punish their neighbours
have. But you have been the worse for it, too: all of which is to be laid
to the charge of the Church. For there is not one clergyman I know--mind, I
say, that I know--who would have made such a cruel speech to a boy as that
the Methodist parson made to you."

"But it did me good, sir?"

"Are you sure of that? I am not. Are you sure, first of all, it did
not make you proud? Are you sure it has not made you work beyond your
strength--I don't mean your strength of arm, for clearly that is all that
could be wished, but of your chest, your lungs? Is there not some danger of
your leaving someone who is dependent on you too soon unprovided for? Is
there not some danger of your having worked as if God were a hard master?
--of your having worked fiercely, indignantly, as if he wronged you by not
caring for you, not understanding you?"

He returned me no answer, but hammered momently on his anvil. Whether he
felt what I meant, or was offended at my remark, I could not then tell. I
thought it best to conclude the interview with business.

"I have a delicate little job that wants nice handling, and I fancy you are
just the man to do it to my mind," I said.

"What is it, sir?" he asked, in a friendly manner enough.

"If you will excuse me, I would rather show it to you than talk about it,"
I returned.

"As you please, sir. When do you want me?"

"The first hour you can come."

"To-morrow morning?"

"If you feel inclined."

"For that matter, I'd rather go to bed."

"Come to me instead: it's light work."

"I will, sir--at ten o'clock."

"If you please."

And so it was arranged.






CHAPTER IV.

THE LIFE-BOAT.





The next day rose glorious. Indeed, early as the sun rose, I saw him
rise--saw him, from the down above the house, over the land to the east and
north, ascend triumphant into his own light, which had prepared the way for
him; while the clouds that hung over the sea glowed out with a faint flush,
as anticipating the hour when the west should clasp the declining glory in
a richer though less dazzling splendour, and shine out the bride of the
bridegroom east, which behold each other from afar across the intervening
world, and never mingle but in the sight of the eyes. The clear pure light
of the morning made me long for the truth in my heart, which alone could
make me pure and clear as the morning, tune me up to the concert-pitch of
the nature around me. And the wind that blew from the sunrise made me hope
in the God who had first breathed into my nostrils the breath of life, that
he would at length so fill me with his breath, his wind, his spirit, that
I should think only his thoughts and live his life, finding therein my own
life, only glorified infinitely.

After breakfast and prayers, I would go to the church to await the arrival
of my new acquaintance the smith. In order to obtain entrance, I had,
however, to go to the cottage of the sexton. This was not my first visit
there, so that I may now venture to take my reader with me. To reach the
door, I had to cross a hollow by a bridge, built, for the sake of the
road, over what had once been the course of a rivulet from the heights
above. Now it was a kind of little glen, or what would in Scotland be
called a den, I think, grown with grass and wild flowers and ferns, some
of them, rare and fine. The roof of the cottage came down to the road,
and, until you came quite near, you could not but wonder where the body
that supported this head could be. But you soon saw that the ground fell
suddenly away, leaving a bank against which the cottage was built.
Crossing a garden of the smallest, the principal flowers of which were the
stonecrop on its walls, by a flag-paved path, you entered the building,
and, to your surprise, found yourself, not in a little cottage kitchen, as
you expected, but in a waste-looking space, that seemed to have forgotten
the use for which it had been built. There was a sort of loft along one
side of it, and it was heaped with indescribable lumber-looking stuff with
here and there a hint at possible machinery. The place had been a mill for
grinding corn, and its wheel had been driven by the stream which had run
for ages in the hollow of which I have already spoken. But when the canal
came to be constructed, the stream had to be turned aside from its former
course, and indeed was now employed upon occasion to feed the canal; so
that the mill of necessity had fallen into disuse and decay. Crossing this
floor, you entered another door, and turning sharp to the left, went down
a few steps of a ladder-sort of stair, and after knocking your hat against
a beam, emerged in the comfortable quaint little cottage kitchen you had
expected earlier. A cheerful though small fire burns in the grate--for
even here the hearth-fire has vanished from the records of cottage-life--
and is pleasant here even in the height of summer, though it is counted
needful only for cooking purposes. The ceiling, which consists only of the
joists and the boards that floor the bedroom above, is so low, that
necessity, if not politeness, would compel you to take off your already-
bruised hat. Some of these joists, you will find, are made further useful
by supporting each a shelf, before which hangs a little curtain of printed
cotton, concealing the few stores and postponed eatables of the house--
forming, in fact, both store-room and larder of the family. On the walls
hang several coloured prints, and within a deep glazed frame the figure of
a ship in full dress, carved in rather high relief in sycamore.

As I now entered, Mrs. Coombes rose from a high-backed settle near the
fire, and bade me good-morning with a courtesy.

"What a lovely day it is, Mrs. Coombes! It is so bright over the sea,"
I said, going to the one little window which looked out on the great
Atlantic, "that one almost expects a great merchant navy to come sailing
into Kilkhaven--sunk to the water's edge with silks, and ivory, and spices,
and apes, and peacocks, like the ships of Solomon that we read about--just
as the sun gets up to the noonstead."

Before I record her answer, I turn to my reader, who in the spirit
accompanies me, and have a little talk with him. I always make it a rule to
speak freely with the less as with the more educated of my friends. I never
_talk down_ to them, except I be expressly explaining something to them.
The law of the world is as the law of the family. Those children grow much
the faster who hear all that is going on in the house. Reaching ever above
themselves, they arrive at an understanding at fifteen, which, in the usual
way of things, they would not reach before five-and-twenty or thirty; and
this in a natural way, and without any necessary priggishness, except such
as may belong to their parents. Therefore I always spoke to the poor and
uneducated as to my own people,--freely, not much caring whether I should
be quite understood or not; for I believed in influences not to be measured
by the measure of the understanding.

But what was the old woman's answer? It was this:

"I know, sir. And when I was as young as you"--I was not so very young,
my reader may well think--"I thought like that about the sea myself.
Everything come from the sea. For my boy Willie he du bring me home the
beautifullest parrot and the talkingest you ever see, and the red shawl all
worked over with flowers: I'll show it to you some day, sir, when you have
time. He made that ship you see in the frame there, sir, all with his own
knife, out on a bit o' wood that he got at the Marishes, as they calls it,
sir--a bit of an island somewheres in the great sea. But the parrot's
gone dead like the rest of them, sir.--Where am I? and what am I talking
about?" she added, looking down at her knitting as if she had dropped
a stitch, or rather as if she had forgotten what she was making, and
therefore what was to come next.

"You were telling me how you used to think of the sea--"

"When I was as young as you. I remember, sir. Well, that lasted a long
time--lasted till my third boy fell asleep in the wide water; for it du
call it falling asleep, don't it, sir?"

"The Bible certainly does," I answered.

"It's the Bible I be meaning, of course," she returned. "Well, after that,
but I don't know what began it, only I did begin to think about the sea as
something that took away things and didn't bring them no more. And somehow
or other she never look so blue after that, and she give me the shivers.
But now, sir, she always looks to me like one o' the shining ones that come
to fetch the pilgrims. You've heard tell of the _Pilgrim's Progress_, I
daresay, sir, among the poor people; for they du say it was written by
a tinker, though there be a power o' good things in it that I think the
gentlefolk would like if they knowed it."

"I do know the book--nearly as well as I know the Bible," I answered; "and
the shining ones are very beautiful in it. I am glad you can think of the
sea that way."

"It's looking in at the window all day as I go about the house," she
answered, "and all night too when I'm asleep; and if I hadn't learned to
think of it that way, it would have driven me mad, I du believe. I was
forced to think that way about it, or not think at all. And that wouldn't
be easy, with the sound of it in your ears the last thing at night and the
first thing in the morning."

"The truth of things is indeed the only refuge from the look of things," I
replied. "But now I want the key of the church, if you will trust me with
it, for I have something to do there this morning; and the key of the tower
as well, if you please."

With her old smile, ripened only by age, she reached the ponderous keys
from the nail where they hung, and gave them into my hand. I left her in
the shadow of her dwelling, and stepped forth into the sunlight. The first
thing I observed was the blacksmith waiting for me at the church door.

Now that I saw him in the full light of day, and now that he wore his
morning face upon which the blackness of labour had not yet gathered, I
could see more plainly how far he was from well. There was a flush on his
thin cheek by which the less used exercise of walking revealed his inward
weakness, and the light in his eyes had something of the far-country in
them--"the light that never was on sea or shore." But his speech was
cheerful, for he had been walking in the light of this world, and that had
done something to make the light within him shine a little more freely.

"How do you find yourself to-day?" I asked.

"Quite well, sir, I thank you," he answered. "A day like this does a man
good. But," he added, and his countenance fell, "the heart knoweth its own
bitterness."

"It may know it too much," I returned, "just because it refuses to let a
stranger intermeddle therewith."

He made no reply. I turned the key in the great lock, and the iron-studded
oak opened and let us into the solemn gloom.

It did not require many minutes to make the man understand what I wanted of
him.

"We must begin at the bells and work down," he said.

So we went up into the tower, where, with the help of a candle I fetched
for him from the cottage, he made a good many minute measurements; found
that carpenter's work was necessary for the adjustment of the hammers and
cranks and the leading of the rods, undertook the management of the whole,
and in the course of an hour and a half went home to do what had to be done
before any fixing could be commenced, assuring me that he had no doubt of
bringing the job to a satisfactory conclusion, although the force of
the blow on the bell would doubtless have to be regulated afterwards by
repeated trials.

"In a fortnight, I hope you will be able to play a tune to the parish,
sir," he added, as he took his leave.

I resolved, if possible, to know more of the man, and find out his trouble,
if haply I might be able to give him any comfort, for I was all but certain
that there was a deeper cause for his gloom than the state of his health.

When he was gone I stood with the key of the church in my hand, and looked
about me. Nature at least was in glorious health--sunshine in her eyes,
light fantastic cloud-images passing through her brain, her breath coming
and going in soft breezes perfumed with the scents of meadows and wild
flowers, and her green robe shining in the motions of her gladness. I
turned to lock the church door, though in my heart I greatly disapproved of
locking the doors of churches, and only did so now because it was not my
church, and I had no business to force my opinions upon other customs. But
when I turned I received a kind of questioning shock. There was the fallen
world, as men call it, shining in glory and gladness, because God was
there; here was the way into the lost Paradise, yea, the door into an
infinitely higher Eden than that ever had or ever could have been,
iron-clamped and riveted, gloomy and low-browed like the entrance to a
sepulchre, and surrounded with the grim heads of grotesque monsters of the
deep. What did it mean? Here was contrast enough to require harmonising,
or if that might not be, then accounting for. Perhaps it was enough to say
that although God made both the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of grace,
yet the symbol of the latter was the work of man, and might not altogether
correspond to God's idea of the matter. I turned away thoughtful, and went
through the churchyard with my eye on the graves.

As I left the churchyard, still looking to the earth, the sound of voices
reached my ear. I looked up. There, down below me, at the foot of the high
bank on which I stood, lay a gorgeous shining thing upon the bosom of the
canal, full of men, and surrounded by men, women, and children, delighting
in its beauty. I had never seen such a thing before, but I knew at once,
as by instinct, which of course it could not have been, that it was the
life-boat. But in its gorgeous colours, red and white and green, it looked
more like the galley that bore Cleopatra to Actium. Nor, floating so light
on the top of the water, and broad in the beam withal, curved upward and
ornamented at stern and stem, did it look at all like a creature formed to
battle with the fierce elements. A pleasure-boat for floating between river
banks it seemed, drawn by swans mayhap, and regarded in its course by
fair eyes from green terrace-walks, or oriel windows of ancient houses on
verdant lawns. Ten men sat on the thwarts, and one in the stern by the yet
useless rudder, while men and boys drew the showy thing by a rope downward
to the lock-gates. The men in the boat, wore blue jerseys, but you could
see little of the colour for strange unshapely things that they wore above
them, like an armour cut out of a row of organ pipes. They were their
cork-jackets; for every man had to be made into a life-boat himself. I
descended the bank, and stood on the edge of the canal as it drew near.
Then I saw that every oar was loosely but firmly fastened to the rowlock,
so that it could be dropped and caught again in a moment; and that the gay
sides of the unwieldy-looking creature were festooned with ropes from the
gunwale, for the men to lay hold of when she capsized, for the earlier
custom of fastening the men to their seats had been quite given up, because
their weight under the water might prevent the boat from righting itself
again, and the men could not come to the surface. Now they had a better
chance in their freedom, though why they should not be loosely attached to
the boat, I do not quite see.

They towed the shining thing through the upper gate of the lock, and slowly
she sank from my sight, and for some moments was no more to be seen, for I
had remained standing where first she passed me. All at once there she was
beyond the covert of the lock-head, abroad and free, fleeting from the
strokes of ten swift oars over the still waters of the bay towards the
waves that roared further out where the ground-swell was broken by the rise
of the sandy coast. There was no vessel in danger now, as the talk of the
spectators informed me; it was only for exercise and show that they went
out. It seemed all child's play for a time; but when they got among the
broken waves, then it looked quite another thing. The motion of the waters
laid hold upon her, and soon tossed her fearfully, now revealing the whole
of her capacity on the near side of one of their slopes, now hiding her
whole bulk in one of their hollows beyond. She, careless as a child in the
troubles of the world, floated about amongst them with what appeared too
much buoyancy for the promise of a safe return. Again and again she was
driven from her course towards the low rocks on the other side of the bay,
and again and again, returned to disport herself, like a sea-animal, as it
seemed, upon the backs of the wild, rolling, and bursting billows.

"Can she go no further?" I asked of the captain of the coastguard, whom I
found standing by my side.

"Not without some danger," he answered.

"What, then, must it be in a storm!" I remarked.

"Then of course," he returned, "they must take their chance. But there
is no good in running risks for nothing. That swell is quite enough for
exercise."

"But is it enough to accustom them to face the danger that will come?" I
asked.

"With danger comes courage," said the old sailor.

"Were you ever afraid?"

"No, sir. I don't think I ever was afraid. Yes, I believe I was once for
one moment, no more, when I fell from the maintop-gallant yard, and felt
myself falling. But it was soon over, for I only fell into the maintop.
I was expecting the smash on deck when I was brought up there. But," he
resumed, "I don't care much about the life-boat. My rockets are worth a
good deal more, as you may see, sir, before the winter is over; for seldom
does a winter pass without at least two or three wrecks close by here on
this coast. The full force of the Atlantic breaks here, sir. I _have_ seen
a life-boat--not that one--_she's_ done nothing yet--pitched stern over
stem; not capsized, you know, sir, in the ordinary way, but struck by a
wave behind while she was just hanging in the balance on the knife-edge of
a wave, and flung a somerset, as I say, stern over stem, and four of her
men lost."

While we spoke I saw on the pier-head the tall figure of the painter
looking earnestly at the boat. I thought he was regarding it chiefly from
an artistic point of view, but I became aware before long that that would
not have been consistent with the character of Charles Percivale. He had
been, I learned afterwards, a crack oarsman at Oxford, and had belonged to
the University boat, so that he had some almost class-sympathy with the
doings of the crew.

In a little while the boat sped swiftly back, entered the lock, was lifted
above the level of the storm-heaved ocean, and floated up the smooth canal
calmly as if she had never known what trouble was. Away up to the pretty
little Tudor-fashioned house in which she lay--one could almost fancy
dreaming of storms to come--she went, as softly as if moved only by her
"own sweet will," in the calm consolation for her imprisonment of having
tried her strength, and found therein good hope of success for the time
when she should rush to the rescue of men from that to which, as a monster
that begets monsters, she a watching Perseis, lay ready to offer battle.
The poor little boat lying in her little house watching the ocean, was
something signified in my eyes, and not less so after what came in the
course of changing seasons and gathered storms.

All this time I had the keys in my hand, and now went back to the cottage
to restore them to their place upon the wall. When I entered there was a
young woman of a sweet interesting countenance talking to Mrs. Coombes. Now
as it happened, I had never yet seen the daughter who lived with her, and
thought this was she.

"I've found your daughter at last then?" I said, approaching them.

"Not yet, sir. She goes out to work, and her hands be pretty full at
present. But this be almost my daughter, sir," she added. "This is my next
daughter, Mary Trehern, from the south. She's got a place near by, to be
near her mother that is to be, that's me."

Mary was hanging her head and blushing, as the old woman spoke.

"I understand," I said. "And when are you going to get your new mother,
Mary? Soon I hope."

But she gave me no reply--only hung her head lower and blushed deeper.

Mrs. Coombes spoke for her.

"She's shy, you see, sir. But if she was to speak her mind, she would ask
you whether you wouldn't marry her and Willie when he comes home from his
next voyage."

Mary's hands were trembling now, and she turned half away.

"With all my heart," I said.

The girl tried to turn towards me, but could not. I looked at her face a
little more closely. Through all its tremor, there was a look of constancy
that greatly pleased me. I tried to make her speak.

"When do you expect Willie home?" I said.

She made a little gasp and murmur, but no articulate words came.

"Don't be frightened, Mary," said her mother, as I found she always called
her. "The gentleman won't be sharp with you."

She lifted a pair of soft brown eyes with one glance and a smile, and then
sank them again.

"He'll be home in about a month, we think," answered the mother. "She's a
good ship he's aboard of, and makes good voyages."

"It is time to think about the bans, then," I said.

"If you please, sir," said the mother.

"Just come to me about it, and I will attend to it--when you think proper."

I thought I could hear a murmured "Thank you, sir," from the girl, but I
could not be certain that she spoke. I shook hands with them, and went for
a stroll on the other side of the bay.






CHAPTER V.

MR. PERCIVALE.





When I reached home I found that Connie was already on her watch-tower.
For while I was away, they had carried her out that she might see the
life-boat. I followed her, and found the whole family about her couch, and
with them Mr. Percivale, who was showing her some sketches that he had made
in the neighbourhood. Connie knew nothing of drawing; but she seemed to
me always to catch the feeling of a thing. Her remarks therefore were
generally worth listening to, and Mr. Percivale was evidently interested in
them. Wynnie stood behind Connie, looking over her shoulder at the drawing
in her hand.

"How do you get that shade of green?" I heard her ask as I came up.

And then Mr. Percivale proceeded to tell her; from which beginning they
went on to other things, till Mr. Percivale said--

"But it is hardly fair, Miss Walton; to criticise my work while you keep
your own under cover."

"I wasn't criticising, Mr. Percivale; was I, Connie?"

"I didn't hear her make a single remark, Mr. Percivale," said Connie,
taking her sister's side.

To my surprise they were talking away with the young man as if they had
known him for years, and my wife was seated at the foot of the couch,
apparently taking no exception to the suddenness of the intimacy. I am
afraid, when I think of it, that a good many springs would be missing from
the world's history if they might not flow till the papas gave their wise
consideration to everything about the course they were to take.

"I think, though," added Connie, "it is only fair that Mr. Percivale
_should_ see your work, Wynnie."

"Then I will fetch my portfolio, if Mr. Percivale will promise to remember
that I have no opinion of it. At the same time, if I could do what I wanted
to do, I think I should not be ashamed of showing my drawings even to him."

And now I was surprised to find how like grown women my daughters could
talk. To me they always spoke like the children they were; but when I
heard them now it seemed as if they had started all at once into ladies
experienced in the ways of society. There they were chatting lightly,
airily, and yet decidedly, a slight tone of badinage interwoven, with a
young man of grace and dignity, whom they had only seen once before, and
who had advanced no farther, with Connie at least, than a stately bow. They
had, however, been a whole hour together before I arrived, and their mother
had been with them all the while, which gives great courage to good girls,
while, I am told, it shuts the mouths of those who are sly. But then it
must be remembered that there are as great differences in mothers as in
girls. And besides, I believe wise girls have an instinct about men that
all the experience of other men cannot overtake. But yet again, there are
many girls foolish enough to mistake a mere impulse for instinct, and
vanity for insight.

As Wynnie spoke, she turned and went back to the house to fetch some of her
work. Now, had she been going a message for me, she would have gone like
the wind; but on this occasion she stepped along in a stately manner, far
from devoid of grace, but equally free from frolic or eagerness. And I
could not help noting as well that Mr. Percivale's eyes followed her. What
I felt or fancied is of no consequence to anybody. I do not think, even if
I were writing an autobiography, I should be forced to tell _all_ about
myself. But an autobiography is further from my fancy, however much I may
have trenched upon its limits, than any other form of literature with which
I am acquainted.

She was not long in returning, however, though she came back with the same
dignified motion.

"There is nothing really worth either showing or concealing," she said to
Mr. Percivale, as she handed him the portfolio, to help himself, as it
were. She then turned away, as if a little feeling of shyness had come over
her, and began to look for something to do about Connie. I could see that,
although she had hitherto been almost indifferent about the merit of her
drawings, she had a new-born wish that they might not appear altogether
contemptible in the eyes of Mr. Percivale. And I saw, too, that Connie's
wide eyes were taking in everything. It was wonderful how Connie's
deprivations had made her keen in observing. Now she hastened to her
sister's rescue even from such a slight inconvenience as the shadow of
embarrassment in which she found herself--perhaps from having seen some
unusual expression in my face, of which I was unconscious, though conscious
enough of what might have occasioned such.

"Give me your hand, Wynnie," said Connie, "and help me to move one inch
further on my side.--I may move just that much on my side, mayn't I, papa?"

"I think you had better not, my dear, if you can do without it," I
answered; for the doctor's injunctions had been strong.

"Very well, papa; but I feel as if it would do me good."

"Mr. Turner will be here next week, you know; and you must try to stick
to his rules till he comes to see you. Perhaps he will let you relax a
little."

Connie smiled very sweetly and lay still, while Wynnie stood holding her
hand.

Meantime Mr. Percivale, having received the drawings, had walked away with
them towards what they called the storm tower--a little building standing
square to the points of the compass, from little windows, in which the
coastguard could see with their telescopes along the coast on both sides
and far out to sea. This tower stood on the very edge of the cliff, but
behind it there was a steep descent, to reach which apparently he went
round the tower and disappeared. He evidently wanted to make a leisurely
examination of the drawings--somewhat formidable for Wynnie, I thought. At
the same time, it impressed me favourably with regard to the young man
that he was not inclined to pay a set of stupid and untrue compliments the
instant the portfolio was opened, but, on the contrary, in order to speak
what was real about them, would take the trouble to make himself in some
adequate measure acquainted with them. I therefore, to Wynnie's relief, I
fear, strolled after him, seeing no harm in taking a peep at his person,
while he was taking a peep at my daughter's mind. I went round the tower
to the other side, and there saw him at a little distance below me, but
further out on a great rock that overhung the sea, connected with the cliff
by a long narrow isthmus, a few yards lower than the cliff itself, only
just broad enough to admit of a footpath along its top, and on one side
going sheer down with a smooth hard rock-face to the sands below. The other
side was less steep, and had some grass upon it. But the path was too
narrow, and the precipice too steep, for me to trust my head with the
business of guiding my feet along it. So I stood and saw him from the
mainland--saw his head at least bent over the drawings; saw how slowly he
turned from one to the other; saw how, after having gone over them once,
he turned to the beginning and went over them again, even more slowly than
before; saw how he turned the third time to the first. Then, getting tired,
I went back to the group on the down; caught sight of Charlie and Harry
turning heels over head down the slope toward the house; found that my wife
had gone home--in fact, that only Connie and Wynnie were left. The sun
had disappeared under a cloud, and the sea had turned a little slaty; the
yellow flowers in the short down-grass no longer caught the eye with their
gold, and the wind that bent their tops had just the suspicion of an edge
in it. And Wynnie's face looked a little cloudy too, I thought, and I
feared that it was my fault. I fancied there was just a tinge of beseeching
in Connie's eye, as I looked at her, thinking there might be danger for her
in the sunlessness of the wind. But I do not know that all this, even the
clouding of the sun, may not have come out of my own mind, the result of my
not being quite satisfied with myself because of the mood I had been in. My
feeling had altered considerably in the mean time.

"Run, Wynnie, and ask Mr. Percivale, with my compliments, to come and lunch
with us," I said--more to let her see I was not displeased, however I might
have looked, than for any other reason. She went--sedately as before.

Almost as soon as she was gone, I saw that I had put her in a difficulty.
For I had discovered, very soon after coming into these parts, that her
head was no more steady than my own on high places, for she up had never
been used to such in our own level country, except, indeed, on the stair
that led down to the old quarry and the well, where, I can remember now,
she always laid her hand on the balustrade with some degree of tremor,
although she had been in the way of going up and down from childhood. But
if she could not cross that narrow and really dangerous isthmus, still less
could she call to a man she had never seen but once, across the intervening
chasm. I therefore set off after her, leaving Connie lying there in
loneliness, between the sea and the sky. But when I got to the other side
of the little tower, instead of finding her standing hesitating on the
brink of action, there she was on the rock beyond. Mr. Percivale had risen,
and was evidently giving an answer to my invitation; at least, the next
moment she turned to come back, and he followed. I stood trembling almost
to see her cross the knife-back of that ledge. If I had not been almost
fascinated, I should have turned and left them to come together, lest the
evil fancy should cross her mind that I was watching them, for it was one
thing to watch him with her drawings, and quite another to watch him with
herself. But I stood and stared as she crossed. In the middle of the path,
however--up to which point she had been walking with perfect steadiness and
composure--she lifted her eyes--by what influence I cannot tell--saw me,
looked as if she saw ghost, half lifted her arms, swayed as if she would
fall, and, indeed, was falling over the precipice when Percivale, who was
close behind her caught her in his arms, almost too late for both of them.
So nearly down was she already, that her weight bent him over the rocky
side, till it seemed as if he must yield, or his body snap. For he bent
from the waist, and looked as if his feet only kept a hold on the ground.
It was all over in a moment, but in that moment it made a sun-picture on my
brain, which returns, ever and again, with such vivid agony that I cannot
hope to get rid of it till I get rid of the brain itself in which lies the
impress. In another moment they were at my side--she with a wan, terrified
smile, he in a ruddy alarm. I was unable to speak, and could only, with
trembling steps, lead the way from the dreadful spot. I reproached myself
afterwards for my want of faith in God; but I had not had time to correct
myself yet. Without a word on their side either, they followed me. Before
we reached Connie, I recovered myself sufficiently to say, "Not a word to
Connie," and they understood me. I told Wynnie to run to the house, and
send Walter to help me to carry Connie home. She went, and, until Walter
came, I talked to Mr. Percivale as if nothing had happened. And what made
me feel yet more friendly towards him was, that he did not do as some young
men wishing to ingratiate themselves would have done: he did not offer to
help me to carry Connie home. I saw that the offer rose in his mind, and
that he repressed it. He understood that I must consider such a permission
as a privilege not to be accorded to the acquaintance of a day; that I must
know him better before I could allow the weight of my child to rest on his
strength. I was even grateful to him for this knowledge of human nature.
But he responded cordially to my invitation to lunch with us, and walked by
my side as Walter and I bore the precious burden home.

During our meal, he made himself quite agreeable; talked well on the topics
of the day, not altogether as a, man who had made up his mind, but not the
less, rather the more, as a man who had thought about them, and one who did
not find it so easy to come to a conclusion as most people do--or possibly
as not feeling the necessity of coming to a conclusion, and therefore
preferring to allow the conclusion to grow instead of constructing one for
immediate use. This I rather liked than otherwise. His behaviour, I need
hardly say, after what I have told of him already, was entirely that of a
gentleman; and his education was good. But what I did not like was, that
as often as the conversation made a bend in the direction of religious
matters, he was sure to bend it away in some other direction as soon as
ever he laid his next hold upon it. This, however, might have various
reasons to account for it, and I would wait.

After lunch, as we rose from the table, he took Wynnie's portfolio from the
side-table where he had laid it, and with no more than a bow and thanks
returned it to her. She, I thought, looked a little disappointed, though
she said as lightly as she could:

"I am afraid you have not found anything worthy of criticism in my poor
attempts, Mr. Percivale?"

"On the contrary, I shall be most happy to tell you what I think of them if
you would like to hear the impression they have made upon me," he replied,
holding out his hand to take the portfolio again.

"I shall be greatly obliged to you," she said, returning it, "for I have
had no one to help me since I left school, except a book called _Modern
Painters_, which I think has the most beautiful things in it I ever read,
but which I lay down every now and then with a kind of despair, as if I
never could do anything worth doing. How long the next volume is in coming!
Do you know the author, Mr. Percivale?"

"I wish I did. He has given me much help. I do not say I can agree with
everything he writes; but when I do not, I have such a respect for him that
I always feel as if he must be right whether he seems to me to be right or
not. And if he is severe, it is with the severity of love that will speak
only the truth."

This last speech fell on my ear like the tone of a church bell. "That will
do, my friend" thought I. But I said nothing to interrupt.

By this time he had laid the portfolio open on the side-table, and placed a
chair in front of it for my daughter. Then seating himself by her side, but
without the least approach to familiarity, he began to talk to her about
her drawings, praising, in general, the feeling, but finding fault with the
want of nicety in the execution--at least so it appeared to me from what I
could understand of the conversation.

"But," said my daughter, "it seems to me that if you get the feeling right,
that is the main thing."

"No doubt," returned Mr. Percivale; "so much the main thing that any
imperfection or coarseness or untruth which interferes with it becomes of
the greatest consequence."

"But can it really interfere with the feeling?"

"Perhaps not with most people, simply because most people observe so
badly that their recollections of nature are all blurred and blotted and
indistinct, and therefore the imperfections we are speaking of do not
affect them. But with the more cultivated it is otherwise. It is for them
you ought to work, for you do not thereby lose the others. Besides, the
feeling is always intensified by the finish, for that belongs to the
feeling too, and must, I should think, have some influence even where it is
not noted."

"But is it not a hopeless thing to attempt the finish of nature?"

"Not at all; to the degree, that is, in which you can represent anything
else of nature. But in this drawing now you have no representative of,
nothing to hint at or recall the feeling of the exquisiteness of nature's
finish. Why should you not at least have drawn a true horizon-line there?
Has the absolute truth of the meeting of sea and sky nothing to do with the
feeling which such a landscape produces? I should have thought you would
have learned that, if anything, from Mr. Ruskin."

Mr. Percivale spoke earnestly. Wynnie, either from disappointment or
despair, probably from a mixture of both, apparently fancied that, or
rather felt as if, he was scolding her, and got cross. This was anything
but dignified, especially with a stranger, and one who was doing his
best to help her. And yet, somehow, I must with shame confess I was not
altogether sorry to see it. In fact, my reader, I must just uncover my sin,
and say that I felt a little jealous of Mr. Percivale. The negative reason
was that I had not yet learned to love him. The only cure for jealousy is
love. But I was ashamed too of Wynnie's behaving so childishly. Her face
flushed, the tears came in her eyes, and she rose, saying, with a little
choke in her voice--

"I see it's no use trying. I won't intrude any more into things I am
incapable of. I am much obliged to you, Mr. Percivale, for showing me how
presumptuous I have been."

The painter rose as she rose, looking greatly concerned. But he did not
attempt to answer her. Indeed she gave him no time. He could only spring
after her to open the door for her. A more than respectful bow as she left
the room was his only adieu. But when he turned his face again towards me,
it expressed even a degree of consternation.

"I fear," he said, approaching me with an almost military step, much at
variance with the shadow upon his countenance, "I fear I have been rude to
Miss Walton, but nothing was farther--"

"You mistake entirely, Mr. Percivale. I heard all you were saying, and you
were not in the least rude. On the contrary, I consider you were very kind
to take the trouble with her you did. Allow me to make the apology for my
daughter which I am sure she will wish made when she recovers from the
disappointment of finding more obstacles in the way of her favourite
pursuit than she had previously supposed. She is only too ready to lose
heart, and she paid too little attention to your approbation and too
much--in proportion, I mean--to your--criticism. She felt discouraged and
lost her temper, but more with herself and her poor attempts, I venture
to assure you, than with your remarks upon them. She is too much given to
despising her own efforts."

"But I must have been to blame if I caused any such feeling with regard to
those drawings, for I assure you they contain great promise."

"I am glad you think so. That I should myself be of the same opinion can be
of no consequence."

"Miss Walton at least sees what ought to be represented. All she needs is
greater severity in the quality of representation. And that would have
grown without any remark from onlookers. Only a friendly criticism is
sometimes a great help. It opens the eyes a little sooner than they would
have opened of themselves. And time," he added, with a half sigh and with
an appeal in his tone, as if he would justify himself to my conscience, "is
half the battle in this world. It is over so soon."

"No sooner than it ought to be," I rejoined.

"So it may appear to you," he returned; "for you, I presume to
conjecture, have worked hard and done much. I may or may not have worked
hard--sometimes I think I have, sometimes I think I have not--but I
certainly have done little. Here I am nearly thirty, and have made no mark
on the world yet."

"I don't know that that is of so much consequence," I said. "I have never
hoped for more than to rub out a few of the marks already made."

"Perhaps you are right," he returned. "Every man has something he can do,
and more, I suppose, that he can't do. But I have no right to turn a visit
into a visitation. Will you please tell Miss Walton that I am very sorry I
presumed on the privileges of a drawing-master, and gave her pain. It was
so far from my intention that it will be a lesson to me for the future."

With these words he took his leave, and I could not help being greatly
pleased both with them and with his bearing. He was clearly anything but a
common man.






CHAPTER VI.

THE SHADOW OP DEATH.





When Wynnie appeared at dinner she looked ashamed of herself, and her face
betrayed that she had been crying. But I said nothing, for I had confidence
that all she needed was time to come to herself, that the voice that speaks
louder than any thunder might make its stillness heard. And when I came
home from my walk the next morning I found Mr. Percivale once more in the
group about Connie, and evidently on the best possible terms with all. The
same afternoon Wynnie went out sketching with Dora. I had no doubt that
she had made some sort of apology to Mr. Percivale; but I did not make the
slightest attempt to discover what had passed between them, for though it
is of all things desirable that children should be quite open with their
parents, I was most anxious to lay upon them no burden of obligation. For
such burden lies against the door of utterance, and makes it the more
difficult to open. It paralyses the speech of the soul. What I desired was
that they should trust me so that faith should overcome all difficulty that
might lie in the way of their being open with me. That end is not to he
gained by any urging of admonition. Against such, growing years at least,
if nothing else, will bring a strong reaction. Nor even, if so gained would
the gain be at all of the right sort. The openness would not be faith.
Besides, a parent must respect the spiritual person of his child, and
approach it with reverence, for that too looks the Father in the face, and
has an audience with him into which no earthly parent can enter even if he
dared to desire it. Therefore I trusted my child. And when I saw that she
looked at me a little shyly when we next met, I only sought to show her the
more tenderness and confidence, telling her all about my plans with the
bells, and my talks with the smith and Mrs. Coombes. She listened with just
such interest as I had always been accustomed to see in her, asking such
questions, and making such remarks as I might have expected, but I still
felt that there was the thread of a little uneasiness through the web of
our intercourse,--such a thread of a false colour as one may sometimes find
wandering through the labour of the loom, and seek with pains to draw from
the woven stuff. But it was for Wynnie to take it out, not for me. And she
did not leave it long. For as she bade me good-night in my study, she said
suddenly, yet with hesitating openness,

"Papa, I told Mr. Percivale that I was sorry I had behaved so badly about
the drawings."

"You did right, my child," I replied. At the same moment a pang of anxiety
passed through me lest under the influence of her repentance she should
have said anything more than becoming. But I banished the doubt instantly
as faithlessness in the womanly instincts of my child. For we men are
always so ready and anxious to keep women right, like the wretched
creature, Laertes, in _Hamlet_, who reads his sister such a lesson on her
maidenly duties, but declines almost with contempt to listen to a word from
her as to any co-relative obligation on his side!

And here I may remark in regard to one of the vexed questions of the
day--the rights of women--that what women demand it is not for men to
withhold. It is not their business to lay the law for women. That women
must lay down for themselves. I confess that, although I must herein seem
to many of my readers old-fashioned and conservative, I should not like to
see any woman I cared much for either in parliament or in an anatomical
class-room; but on the other hand I feel that women must be left free to
settle that matter. If it is not good, good women will find it out and
recoil from it. If it is good then God give them good speed. One thing they
_have_ a right to--a far wider and more valuable education than they
have been in the way of receiving. When the mothers are well taught the
generations will grow in knowledge at a fourfold rate. But still the
teaching of life is better than all the schools, and common sense than all
learning. This common sense is a rare gift, scantier in none than in those
who lay claim to it on the ground of following commonplace, worldly, and
prudential maxims. But I must return to my Wynnie.

"And what did Mr. Percivale say?" I resumed, for she was silent.

"He took the blame all on himself, papa."

"Like a gentleman," I said.

"But I could not leave it so, you know, papa, because that was not the
truth."

"Well?"

"I told him that I had lost my temper from disappointment; that I had
thought I did not care for my drawings because I was so far from satisfied
with them, but when he made me feel that they were worth nothing, then I
found from the vexation I felt that I had cared for them. But I do think,
papa, I was more ashamed of having shown them, and vexed with myself, than
cross with him. But I was very silly."

"Well, and what did he say?"

"He began to praise them then. But you know I could not take much of that,
for what could he do?"

"You might give him credit for a little honesty, at least."

"Yes; but things may be true in a way, you know, and not mean much."

"He seems to have succeeded in reconciling you to the prosecution of your
efforts, however; for I saw you go out with your sketching apparatus this
afternoon."

"Yes," she answered shyly. "He was so kind that somehow I got heart to try
again. He's very nice, isn't he?"

My answer was not quite ready.

"Don't you like him, papa?"

"Well--I like him--yes. But we must not be in haste with our judgments, you
know. I have had very little opportunity of seeing into him. There is much
in him that I like, but--"

"But what? please, papa."

"To tell the truth then, Wynnie, for I can speak my mind to you, my child,
there is a certain shyness of approaching the subject of religion; so that
I have my fears lest he should belong to any of these new schools of
a fragmentary philosophy which acknowledge no source of truth but
the testimony of the senses and the deductions made therefrom by the
intellect."

"But is not that a hasty conclusion, papa?"

"That is a hasty question, my dear. I have come to no conclusion. I was
only speaking confidentially about my fears."

"Perhaps, papa, it's only that he's not sure enough, and is afraid of
appearing to profess more than he believes. I'm sure, if that's it, I have
the greatest sympathy with him."

I looked at her, and saw the tears gathering fast in her eyes.

"Pray to God on the chance of his hearing you, my darling, and go to
sleep," I said. "I will not think hardly of you because you cannot be so
sure as I am. How could you be? You have not had my experience. Perhaps you
are right about Mr. Percivale too. But it would be an awkward thing to get
intimate with him, you know, and then find out that we did not like him
after all. You couldn't like a man much, could you, who did not believe
in anything greater than himself, anything marvellous, grand, beyond our
understanding--who thought that he had come out of the dirt and was going
back to the dirt?"

"I could, papa, if he tried to do his duty notwithstanding--for I'm sure I
couldn't. I should cry myself to death."

"You are right, my child. I should honour him too. But I should be very
sorry for him. For he would be so disappointed in himself."

I do not know whether this was the best answer to make, but I had little
time to think.

"But you don't know that he's like that."

"I do not, my dear. And more, I will not associate the idea with him till I
know for certain. We will leave it to ignorant old ladies who lay claim to
an instinct for theology to jump at conclusions, and reserve ours--as even
such a man as we have been supposing might well teach us--till we have
sufficient facts from which to draw them. Now go to bed, my child."

"Good-night then, dear papa," she said, and left me with a kiss.

I was not altogether comfortable after this conversation. I had tried to be
fair to the young man both in word and thought, but I could not relish the
idea of my daughter falling in love with him, which looked likely enough,
before I knew more about him, and found that _more_ good and hope-giving.
There was but one rational thing left to do, and that was to cast my care
on him that careth for us--on the Father who loved my child more than even
I could love her--and loved the young man too, and regarded my anxiety, and
would take its cause upon himself. After I had lifted up my heart to him I
was at ease, read a canto of Dante's _Paradise_, and then went to bed. The
prematurity of a conversation with my wife, in which I found that she was
very favourably impressed with Mr. Percivale, must be pardoned to the
forecasting hearts of fathers and mothers.

As I went out for my walk the next morning, I caught sight of the sexton,
with whom as yet I had had but little communication, busily trimming some
of the newer graves in the churchyard. I turned in through the nearer gate,
which was fashioned like a lych-gate, with seats on the sides and a stone
table in the centre, but had no roof. The one on the other side of the
church was roofed, but probably they had found that here no roof could
resist the sea-blasts in winter. The top of the wall where the roof should
have rested, was simply covered with flat slates to protect it from the
rain.

"Good-morning, Coombes," I said.

He turned up a wizened, humorous old face, the very type of a
gravedigger's, and with one hand leaning on the edge of the green mound,
upon which he had been cropping with a pair of shears the too long and
too thin grass, touched his cap with the other, and bade me a cheerful
good-morning in return.

"You're making things tidy," I said.

"It take time to make them all comfortable, you see, sir," he returned,
taking up his shears again and clipping away at the top and sides of the
mound.

"You mean the dead, Coombes?"

"Yes, sir; to be sure, sir."

"You don't think it makes much difference to their comfort, do you, whether
the grass is one length or another upon their graves?"

"Well no, sir. I don't suppose it makes _much_ difference to them. But it
look more comfortable, you know. And I like things to look comfortable.
Don't you, sir?"

"To be sure I do, Coombes. And you are quite right. The resting-place
of the body, although the person it belonged to be far away, should be
respected."

"That's what I think, though I don't get no credit for it. I du believe the
people hereabouts thinks me only a single hair better than a Jack Ketch.
But I'm sure I du my best to make the poor things comfortable."

He seemed unable to rid his mind of the idea that the comfort of the
departed was dependent upon his ministrations.

"The trouble I have with them sometimes! There's now this same one as lies
here, old Jonathan Giles. He have the gout so bad! and just as I come
within a couple o' inches o' the right depth, out come the edge of a great
stone in the near corner at the foot of the bed. Thinks I, he'll never lie
comfortable with that same under his gouty toe. But the trouble I had
to get out that stone! I du assure you, sir, it took me nigh half the
day.--But this be one of the nicest places to lie in all up and down the
coast--a nice gravelly soil, you see, sir; dry, and warm, and comfortable.
Them poor things as comes out of the sea must quite enjoy the change, sir."

There was something grotesque in the man's persistence in regarding the
objects of his interest from this point of view. It was a curious way for
the humanity that was in him to find expression; but I did not like to let
him go on thus. It was so much opposed to all that I believed and felt
about the change from this world to the next!

"But, Coombes," I said, "why will you go on talking as if it made an atom
of difference to the dead bodies where they were buried? They care no more
about it than your old coat would care where it was thrown after you had
done with it."

He turned and regarded his coat where it hung beside him on the headstone
of the same grave at which he was working, shook his head with a smile that
seemed to hint a doubt whether the said old coat would be altogether so
indifferent to its treatment when, it was past use as I had implied. Then
he turned again to his work, and after a moment's silence began to approach
me from another side. I confess he had the better of me before I was aware
of what he was about.

"The church of Boscastle stands high on the cliff. You've been to
Boscastle, sir?"

I told him I had not yet, but hoped to go before the summer was over.

"Ah, you should see Boscastle, sir. It's a wonderful place. That's where I
was born, sir. When I was a by that church was haunted, sir. It's a damp
place, and the wind in it awful. I du believe it stand higher than any
church in the country, and have got more wind in it of a stormy night than
any church whatsomever. Well, they said it was haunted; and sure enough
every now and then there was a knocking heard down below. And this always
took place of a stormy night, as if there was some poor thing down in the
low wouts (_vaults_), and he wasn't comfortable and wanted to get out.
Well, one night it was so plain and so fearful it was that the sexton he
went and took the blacksmith and a ship's carpenter down to the harbour,
and they go up together, and they hearken all over the floor, and they open
one of the old family wouts that belongs to the Penhaligans, and they go
down with a light. Now the wind it was a-blowing all as usual, only worse
than common. And there to be sure what do they see but the wout half-full
of sea-water, and nows and thens a great spout coming in through a hole in
the rock; for it was high-water and a wind off the sea, as I tell you.
And there was a coffin afloat on the water, and every time the spout come
through, it set it knocking agen the side o' the wout, and that was the
ghost."

"What a horrible idea!" I said, with a half-shudder at the unrest of the
dead.

The old man uttered a queer long-drawn sound,--neither a chuckle, a crow,
nor a laugh, but a mixture of all three,--and turned himself yet again
to the work which, as he approached the end of his narration, he had
suspended, that he might make his story _tell_, I suppose, by looking me
in the face. And as he turned he said, "I thought you would like to be
comfortable then as well as other people, sir."

I could not help laughing to see how the cunning old fellow had caught me.
I have not yet been able to find out how much of truth there was in his
story. From the twinkle of his eye I cannot help suspecting that if he did
not invent the tale, he embellished it, at least, in order to produce the
effect which he certainly did produce. Humour was clearly his predominant
disposition, the reflex of which was to be seen, after a mild lunar
fashion, on the countenance of his wife. Neither could I help thinking
with pleasure, as I turned away, how the merry little old man would enjoy
telling his companions how he had posed the new parson. Very welcome was
he to his laugh for my part. Yet I gladly left the churchyard, with its
sunshine above and its darkness below. Indeed I had to look up to the
glittering vanes on the four pinnacles of the church-tower, dwelling aloft
in the clean sunny air, to get the feeling of the dark vault, and the
floating coffin, and the knocking heard in the windy church, out of my
brain. But the thing that did free me was the reflection with what
supreme disregard the disincarcerated spirit would look upon any possible
vicissitudes of its abandoned vault. For in proportion as the body of man's
revelation ceases to be in harmony with the spirit that dwells therein,
it becomes a vault, a prison, from which it must be freedom to escape at
length. The house we like best would be a prison of awful sort if doors and
windows were built up. Man's abode, as age begins to draw nigh, fares thus.
Age is in fact the mason that builds up the doors and the windows, and
death is the angel that breaks the prison-house and lets the captives free.
Thus I got something out of the sexton's horrible story.

But before the week was over, death came near indeed--in far other fashion
than any funereal tale could have brought it.

One day, after lunch, I had retired to my study, and was dozing in my
chair, for the day was hot, when I was waked by Charlie rushing into the
room with the cry, "Papa, papa, there's a man drowning."

I started up, and hurried down to the drawing-room, which looked out over
the bay. I could see nothing but people running about on the edge of the
quiet waves. No sign of human being was on--the water. But the one boat
belonging to the pilot was coming out from the shelter of the lock of the
canal where it usually lay, and my friend of the coastguard was running
down from the tower on the cliff with ropes in his hand. He would not stop
the boat even for the moment it would need to take him on board, but threw
them in and urged to haste. I stood at the window and watched. Every now
and then I fancied I saw something white heaved up on the swell of a wave,
and as often was satisfied that I had but fancied it. The boat seemed to be
floating about lazily, if not idly. The eagerness to help made it appear as
if nothing was going on. Could it, after all, have been a false alarm? Was
there, after all, no insensible form swinging about in the sweep of those
waves, with life gradually oozing away? Long, long as it seemed to me, I
watched, and still the boat kept moving from place to place, so far out
that I could see nothing distinctly of the motions of its crew. At length I
saw something. Yes; a long white thing rose from the water slowly, and was
drawn into the boat. It rowed swiftly to the shore. There was but one place
fit to land upon,--a little patch of sand, nearly covered at high-water,
but now lying yellow in the sun, under the window at which I stood, and
immediately under our garden-wall. Thither the boat shot along; and there
my friend of the coastguard, earnest and sad, was waiting to use, though
without hope, every appliance so well known to him from the frequent
occurrence of such necessity in the course of his watchful duties along
miles and miles of stormy coast.

I will not linger over the sad details of vain endeavour. The honoured head
of a family, he had departed and left a good name behind him. But even in
the midst of my poor attentions to the quiet, speechless, pale-faced wife,
who sat at the head of the corpse, I could not help feeling anxious about
the effect on my Connie. It was impossible to keep the matter concealed
from her. The undoubted concern on the faces of the two boys was enough to
reveal that something serious and painful had occurred; while my wife and
Wynnie, and indeed the whole household, were busy in attending to every
remotest suggestion of aid that reached them from the little crowd gathered
about the body. At length it was concluded, on the verdict of the medical
man who had been sent for, that all further effort was useless. The body
was borne away, and I led the poor lady to her lodging, and remained there
with her till I found that, as she lay on the sofa, the sleep that so
often dogs the steps of sorrow had at length thrown its veil over her
consciousness, and put her for the time to rest. There is a gentle
consolation in the firmness of the grasp of the inevitable, known but to
those who are led through the valley of the shadow. I left her with her son
and daughter, and returned to my own family. They too were of course in the
skirts of the cloud. Had they only heard of the occurrence, it would have
had little effect; but death had appeared to them. Everyone but Connie had
seen the dead lying there; and before the day was over, I wished that she
too had seen the dead. For I found from what she said at intervals, and
from the shudder that now and then passed through her, that her imagination
was at work, showing but the horrors that belong to death; for the
enfolding peace that accompanies it can be known but by sight of the dead.
When I spoke to her, she seemed, and I suppose for the time felt tolerably
quiet and comfortable; but I could see that the words she had heard fall in
the going and coming, and the communications of Charlie and Harry to each
other, had made as it were an excoriation on her fancy, to which her
consciousness was ever returning. And now I became more grateful than I
had yet been for the gift of that gipsy-child. For I felt no anxiety about
Connie so long as she was with her. The presence even of her mother could
not relieve her, for she and Wynnie were both clouded with the same
awe, and its reflex in Connie was distorted by her fancy. But the sweet
ignorance of the baby, which rightly considered is more than a type or
symbol of faith, operated most healingly; for she appeared in her sweet
merry ways--no baby was ever more filled with the mere gladness of life
than Connie's baby--to the mood in which they all were, like a little sunny
window in a cathedral crypt, telling of a whole universe of sunshine and
motion beyond those oppressed pillars and low-groined arches. And why
should not the baby know best? I believe the babies do know best. I
therefore favoured her having the child more than I might otherwise have
thought good for her, being anxious to get the dreary, unhealthy impression
healed as soon as possible, lest it should, in the delicate physical
condition in which she was, turn to a sore.

But my wife suffered for a time nearly as much as Connie. As long as she
was going about the house or attending to the wants of her family, she was
free; but no sooner did she lay her head on the pillow than in rushed the
cry of the sea, fierce, unkind, craving like a wild beast. Again and again
she spoke of it to me, for it came to her mingled with the voice of the
tempter, saying, "_Cruel chance_," over and over again. For although the
two words contradict each other when put together thus, each in its turn
would assert itself.

A great part of the doubt in the world comes from the fact that there are
in it so many more of the impressible as compared with the originating
minds. Where the openness to impression is balanced by the power of
production, the painful questions of the world are speedily met by their
answers; where such is not the case, there are often long periods of
suffering till the child-answer of truth is brought to the birth. Hence the
need for every impressible mind to be, by reading or speech, held in living
association with an original mind able to combat those suggestions of doubt
and even unbelief, which the look of things must often occasion--a look
which comes from our inability to gain other than fragmentary visions of
the work that the Father worketh hitherto. When the kingdom of heaven is at
hand, one sign thereof will be that all clergymen will be more or less of
the latter sort, and mere receptive goodness, no more than education and
moral character, will be considered sufficient reason for a man's occupying
the high position of an instructor of his fellows. But even now this
possession of original power is not by any means to be limited to those
who make public show of the same. In many a humble parish priest it shows
itself at the bedside of the suffering, or in the admonition of the closet,
although as yet there are many of the clergy who, so far from being able to
console wisely, are incapable of understanding the condition of those that
need consolation.

"It is all a fancy, my dear," I said to her. "There is nothing more
terrible in this than in any other death. On the contrary, I can hardly
imagine a less fearful one. A big wave falls on the man's head and stuns
him, and without further suffering he floats gently out on the sea of the
unknown."

"But it is so terrible for those left behind!"

"Had you seen the face of his widow, so gentle, so loving, so resigned in
its pallor, you would not have thought it so _terrible_."

But though she always seemed satisfied, and no doubt felt nearly so, after
any conversation of the sort, yet every night she would call out once and
again, "O, that sea, out there!" I was very glad indeed when Mr. Turner,
who had arranged to spend a short holiday with us, arrived.

He was concerned at the news I gave him of the shock both Connie and her
mother had received, and counselled an immediate change, that time might,
in the absence of surrounding associations, obliterate something of the
impression that had been made. The consequence was, that we resolved to
remove our household, for a short time, to some place not too far off to
permit of my attending to my duties at Kilkhaven, but out of the sight and
sound of the sea. It was Thursday when Mr. Turner arrived, and he spent the
next two days in inquiring and looking about for a suitable spot to which
we might repair as early in the week as possible.

On the Saturday the blacksmith was busy in the church-tower, and I went in
to see how he was getting on.

"You had a sad business here the last week, sir," he said, after we had
done talking about the repairs.

"A very sad business indeed," I answered.

"It was a warning to us all," he said.

"We may well take it so," I returned. "But it seems to me that we are too
ready to think of such remarkable things only by themselves, instead of
being roused by them to regard everything, common and uncommon, as ordered
by the same care and wisdom."

"One of our local preachers made a grand use of it."

I made no reply. He resumed.

"They tell me you took no notice of it last Sunday, sir."

"I made no immediate allusion to it, certainly. But I preached under the
influence of it. And I thought it better that those who could reflect on
the matter should be thus led to think for themselves than that they should
be subjected to the reception of my thoughts and feelings about it; for in
the main it is life and not death that we have to preach."

"I don't quite understand you, sir. But then you don't care much for
preaching in your church."

"I confess," I answered, "that there has been much indifference on that
point. I could, however, mention to you many and grand exceptions. Still
there is, even in some of the best in the church, a great amount of
disbelief in the efficacy of preaching. And I allow that a great deal of
what is called preaching, partakes of its nature only in the remotest
degree. But, while I hold a strong opinion of its value--that is, where it
is genuine--I venture just to suggest that the nature of the preaching to
which the body you belong to has resorted, has had something to do, by way
of a reaction, in driving the church to the other extreme."

"How do you mean that, sir?"

"You try to work upon people's feelings without reference to their
judgment. Anyone who can preach what you call rousing sermons is considered
a grand preacher amongst you, and there is a great danger of his being led
thereby to talk more nonsense than sense. And then when the excitement
goes off, there is no seed left in the soil to grow in peace, and they are
always craving after more excitement."

"Well, there is the preacher to rouse them up again."

"And the consequence is that they continue like children--the good ones, I
mean--and have hardly a chance of making a calm, deliberate choice of that
which is good; while those who have been only excited and nothing more, are
hardened and seared by the recurrence of such feeling as is neither aroused
by truth nor followed by action."

"You daren't talk like that if you knew the kind of people in this country
that the Methodists, as you call them, have got a hold of. They tell me it
was like hell itself down in those mines before Wesley come among them."

"I should be a fool or a bigot to doubt that the Wesleyans have done
incalculable good in the country. And that not alone to the people who
never went to church. The whole Church of England is under obligations to
Methodism such as no words can overstate."

"I wonder you can say such things against them, then."

"Now there you show the evil of thinking too much about the party you
belong to. It makes a man touchy; and then he fancies when another is
merely, it may be, analysing a difference, or insisting strongly on some
great truth, that he is talking against his party."

"But you said, sir, that our clergy don't care about moving our judgments,
only our feelings. Now I know preachers amongst us of whom that would be
anything but true."

"Of course there must be. But there is what I say--your party-feeling makes
you touchy. A man can't always be saying in the press of utterance, '_Of
course there are exceptions_.' That is understood. I confess I do not know
much about your clergy, for I have not had the opportunity. But I do know
this, that some of the best and most liberal people I have ever known have
belonged to your community."

"They do gather a deal of money for good purposes."

"Yes. But that was not what I meant by _liberal_. It is far easier to give
money than to be generous in judgment. I meant by _liberal_, able to see
the good and true in people that differ from you--glad to be roused to the
reception of truth in God's name from whatever quarter it may come, and not
readily finding offence where a remark may have chanced to be too sweeping
or unguarded. But I see that I ought to be more careful, for I have made
you, who certainly are not one of the quarrelsome people I have been
speaking of, misunderstand me."

"I beg your pardon, sir. I was hasty. But I do think I am more ready to
lose my temper since--"

Here he stopped. A fit of coughing came on, and, to my concern, was
followed by what I saw plainly could be the result only of a rupture in the
lungs. I insisted on his dropping his work and coming home with me, where I
made him rest the remainder of the day and all Sunday, sending word to
his mother that I could not let him go home. When we left on the Monday
morning, we took him with us in the carriage hired for the journey, and set
him down at his mother's, apparently no worse than usual.






CHAPTER VII.

AT THE FARM.





Leaving the younger members of the family at home with the servants, we set
out for a farmhouse, some twenty miles off, which Turner had discovered
for us. Connie had stood the journey down so well, and was now so much
stronger, that we had no anxiety about her so far as regarded the
travelling. Through deep lanes with many cottages, and here and there a
very ugly little chapel, over steep hills, up which Turner and Wynnie and
I walked, and along sterile moors we drove, stopping at roadside inns, and
often besides to raise Connie and let her look about upon the extended
prospect, so that it was drawing towards evening before we arrived at our
destination. On the way Turner had warned us that we were not to expect a
beautiful country, although the place was within reach of much that was
remarkable. Therefore we were not surprised when we drew up at the door of
a bare-looking, shelterless house, with scarcely a tree in sight, and a
stretch of undulating fields on every side.

"A dreary place in winter, Turner," I said, after we had seen Connie
comfortably deposited in the nice white-curtained parlour, smelling of
dried roses even in the height of the fresh ones, and had strolled out
while our tea--dinner was being got ready for us.

"Not a doubt of it; but just the place I wanted for Miss Connie," he
replied. "We are high above the sea, and the air is very bracing, and not,
at this season, too cold. A month later I should not on any account have
brought her here."

"I think even now there is a certain freshness in the wind that calls up a
kind of will in the nerves to meet it."

"That is precisely what I wanted for you all. You observe there is no rasp
in its touch, however. There are regions in this island of ours where
even in the hottest day in summer you would frequently discover a certain
unfriendly edge in the air, that would set you wondering whether the
seasons had not changed since you were a boy, and used to lie on the grass
half the idle day."

"I often do wonder whether it may not be so, but I always come to the
conclusion that even this is but an example of the involuntary tendency of
the mind of man towards the ideal. He forgets all that comes between and
divides the hints of perfection scattered here and there along the scope of
his experience. I especially remember one summer day in my childhood, which
has coloured all my ideas of summer and bliss and fulfilment of content.
It is made up of only mossy grass, and the scent of the earth and wild
flowers, and hot sun, and perfect sky--deep and blue, and traversed by
blinding white clouds. I could not have been more than five or six, I
think, from the kind of dress I wore, the very pearl buttons of which,
encircled on their face with a ring of half-spherical hollows, have their
undeniable relation in my memory to the heavens and the earth, to the march
of the glorious clouds, and the tender scent of the rooted flowers; and,
indeed, when I think of it, must, by the delight they gave me, have opened
my mind the more to the enjoyment of the eternal paradise around me. What a
thing it is to please a child!"

"I know what you mean perfectly," answered Turner. "It is as I get older
that I understand what Wordsworth says about childhood. It is indeed a
mercy that we were not born grown men, with what we consider our wits about
us. They are blinding things those wits we gather. I fancy that the single
thread by which God sometimes keeps hold of a man is such an impression of
his childhood as that of which you have been speaking."

"I do not doubt it; for conscience is so near in all those memories to
which you refer. The whole surrounding of them is so at variance with sin!
A sense of purity, not in himself, for the child is not feeling that he
is pure, is all about him; and when afterwards the condition returns upon
him,--returns when he is conscious of so much that is evil and so much that
is unsatisfied in him,--it brings with it a longing after the high clear
air of moral well-being."

"Do you think, then, that it is only by association that nature thus
impresses us? that she has no power of meaning these things?"

"Not at all. No doubt there is something in the recollection of the
associations of childhood to strengthen the power of nature upon us; but
the power is in nature herself, else it would be but a poor weak thing to
what it is. There _is_ purity and state in that sky. There _is_ a peace
now in this wide still earth--not so very beautiful, you own--and in that
overhanging blue, which my heart cries out that it needs and cannot be well
till it gains--gains in the truth, gains in God, who is the power of truth,
the living and causing truth. There is indeed a rest that remaineth, a rest
pictured out even here this night, to rouse my dull heart to desire it and
follow after it, a rest that consists in thinking the thoughts of Him who
is the Peace because the Unity, in being filled with that spirit which now
pictures itself forth in this repose of the heavens and the earth."

"True," said Turner, after a pause. "I must think more about such things.
The science the present day is going wild about will not give us that
rest."

"No; but that rest will do much to give you that science. A man with this
repose in his heart will do more by far, other capabilities being equal, to
find out the laws that govern things. For all law is living rest."

"What you have been saying," resumed Turner, after another pause, "reminds
me much of one of Wordsworth's poems. I do not mean the famous ode."

"You mean the 'Ninth Evening Voluntary,' I know--one of his finest and
truest and deepest poems. It begins, 'Had this effulgence disappeared.'"

"Yes, that is the one I mean. I shall read it again when I go home. But
you don't agree with Wordsworth, do you, about our having had an existence
previous to this?"

He gave a little laugh as he asked the question.

"Not in the least. But an opinion held by such men as Plato, Origen, and
Wordsworth, is not to be laughed at, Mr. Turner. It cannot be in its nature
absurd. I might have mentioned Shelley as holding it, too, had his opinion
been worth anything."

"Then you don't think much of Shelley?"

"I think his _feeling_ most valuable; his _opinion_ nearly worthless."

"Well, perhaps I had no business to laugh, at it; but--"

"Do not suppose for a moment that I even lean to it. I dislike it. It would
make me unhappy to think there was the least of sound argument for it. But
I respect the men who have held it, and know there must be _something_ good
in it, else they could not have held it."

"Are you able then to sympathise with that ode of Wordsworth's? Does it not
depend for all its worth on the admission of this theory?"

"Not in the least. Is it necessary to admit that we must have had a
conscious life before this life to find meaning in the words,--

  'But trailing clouds of glory do we come
  From God who is our home'?

Is not all the good in us his image? Imperfect and sinful as we are, is not
all the foundation of our being his image? Is not the sin all ours, and the
life in us all God's? We cannot be the creatures of God without partaking
of his nature. Every motion of our conscience, every admiration of what
is pure and noble, is a sign and a result of this. Is not every
self-accusation a proof of the presence of his spirit? That comes not of
ourselves--that is not without him. These are the clouds of glory we come
trailing from him. All feelings of beauty and peace and loveliness and
right and goodness, we trail with us from our home. God is the only home
of the human soul. To interpret in this manner what Wordsworth says, will
enable us to enter into perfect sympathy with all that grandest of his
poems. I do not say this is what he meant; but I think it includes what he
meant by being greater and wider than what he meant. Nor am I guilty of
presumption in saying so, for surely the idea that we are born of God is a
greater idea than that we have lived with him a life before this life. But
Wordsworth is not the first among our religious poets to give us at least
what is valuable in the notion. I came upon a volume amongst my friend
Shepherd's books, with which I had made no acquaintance before--Henry
Vaughan's poems. I brought it with me, for it has finer lines, I almost
think, than any in George Herbert, though not so fine poems by any means as
his best. When we go into the house I will read one of them to you."

"Thank you," said Turner. "I wish I could have such talk once a week. The
shades of the prison-house, you know, Mr. Walton, are always trying to
close about us, and shut out the vision of the glories we have come from,
as Wordsworth says."

"A man," I answered, "who ministers to the miserable necessities of his
fellows has even more need than another to believe in the light and the
gladness--else a poor Job's comforter will he be. _I_ don't want to be
treated like a musical snuff-box."

The doctor laughed.

"No man can _prove_," he said, "that there is not a being inside the
snuff-box, existing in virtue of the harmony of its parts, comfortable when
they go well, sick when they go badly, and dying when it is dismembered, or
even when it stops."

"No," I answered. "No man can prove it. But no man can convince a human
being of it. And just as little can anyone convince me that my conscience,
making me do sometimes what I _don't_ like, comes from a harmonious action
of the particles of my brain. But it is time we went in, for by the law of
things in general, I being ready for my dinner, my dinner ought to be ready
for me."

"A law with more exceptions than instances, I fear," said Turner.

"I doubt that," I answered. "The readiness is everything, and that we
constantly blunder in. But we had better see whether we are really ready
for it, by trying whether it is ready for us."

Connie went to bed early, as indeed we all did, and she was rather better
than worse the next morning. My wife, for the first time for many nights,
said nothing about the crying of the sea. The following day Turner and I
set out to explore the neighbourhood. The rest remained quietly at home.

It was, as I have said, a high bare country. The fields lay side by side,
parted from each other chiefly, as so often in Scotland, by stone
walls; and these stones being of a laminated nature, the walls were not
unfrequently built by laying thin plates on their edges, which gave a
neatness to them not found in other parts of the country as far as I am
aware. In the middle of the fields came here and there patches of yet
unreclaimed moorland.

Now in a region like this, beauty must be looked for below the surface.
There is a probability of finding hollows of repose, sunken spots of
loveliness, hidden away altogether from the general aspect of sternness,
or perhaps sterility, that meets the eye in glancing over the outspread
landscape; just as in the natures of stern men you may expect to find, if
opportunity should be afforded you, sunny spots of tender verdure, kept
ever green by that very sternness which is turned towards the common
gaze--thus existent because they are below the surface, and not laid bare
to the sweep of the cold winds that roam the world. How often have not men
started with amaze at the discovery of some feminine sweetness, some grace
of protection in the man whom they had judged cold and hard and rugged,
inaccessible to the more genial influences of humanity! It may be that such
men are only fighting against the wind, and keep their hearts open to the
sun.

I knew this; and when Turner and I set out that morning to explore, I
expected to light upon some instance of it--some mine or other in which
nature had hidden away rare jewels; but I was not prepared to find such as
I did find. With our hearts full of a glad secret we returned home, but we
said nothing about it, in order that Ethelwyn and Wynnie might enjoy the
discovery even as we had enjoyed it.

There was another grand fact with regard to the neighbourhood about which
we judged it better to be silent for a few days, that the inland influences
might be free to work. We were considerably nearer the ocean than my wife
and daughters supposed, for we had made a great round in order to arrive
from the land-side. We were, however, out of the sound of its waves, which
broke all along the shore, in this part, at the foot of tremendous cliffs.
What cliffs they were we shall soon find.






CHAPTER VIII.

THE KEEVE.





"Now, my dear! now, Wynnie!" I said, after prayers the next morning, "you
must come out for a walk as soon as ever you can get your bonnets on."

"But we can't leave Connie, papa," objected Wynnie.

"O, yes, you can, quite well. There's nursie to look after her. What do you
say, Connie?"

For, for some time now, Connie had been able to get up so early, that it
was no unusual thing to have prayers in her room.

"I am entirely independent of help from my family," returned Connie
grandiloquently. "I am a woman of independent means," she added. "If you
say another word, I will rise and leave the room."

And she made a movement as if she would actually do as she had said. Seized
with an involuntary terror, I rushed towards her, and the impertinent girl
burst out laughing in my face--threw herself back on her pillows, and
laughed delightedly.

"Take care, papa," she said. "I carry a terrible club for rebellious
people." Then, her mood changing, she added, as if to suppress the tears
gathering in her eyes, "I am the queen--of luxury and self-will--and I
won't have anybody come near me till dinner-time. I mean to enjoy myself."

So the matter was settled, and we went out for our walk. Ethelwyn was
not such a good walker as she had been; but even if she had retained the
strength of her youth, we should not have got on much the better for it--so
often did she and Wynnie stop to grub ferns out of the chinks and roots of
the stone-walls. Now, I admire ferns as much as anybody--that is, not,
I fear, so much as my wife and daughter, but quite enough
notwithstanding--but I do not quite enjoy being pulled up like a fern at
every turn.

"Now, my dear, what is the use of stopping to torture that harmless
vegetable?" I say, but say in vain. "It is much more beautiful where it is
than it will be anywhere where you can put it. Besides, you know they never
come to anything with you. They _always_ die."

Thereupon my wife reminds me of this fern and that fern, gathered in such
and such places, and now in such and such corners of the garden or the
greenhouse, or under glass-shades in this or that room, of the very
existence of which I am ignorant, whether from original inattention, or
merely from forgetfulness, I do not know. Certainly, out of their own place
I do not care much for them.

At length, partly by the inducement I held out to them of a much greater
variety of ferns where we were bound, I succeeded in getting them over the
two miles in little more than two hours. After passing from the lanes into
the fields, our way led downwards till we reached a very steep large
slope, with a delightful southern exposure, and covered with the sweetest
down-grasses. It was just the place to lie in, as on the edge of the earth,
and look abroad upon the universe of air and floating worlds.

"Let us have a rest here, Ethel," I said. "I am sure this is much more
delightful than uprooting ferns. What an awful thing to think that here we
are on this great round tumbling ball of a world, held by the feet, and
lifting up the head into infinite space--without choice or wish of our
own--compelled to think and to be, whether we will or not! Just God must
know it to be very good, or he would not have taken it in his hands to make
individual lives without a possible will of theirs. He must be our Father,
or we are wretched creatures--the slaves of a fatal necessity! Did it ever
strike you, Turner, that each one of us stands on the apex of the world?
With a sphere, you know, it must be so. And thus is typified, as it seems
to me, that each one of us must look up for himself to find God, and then
look abroad to find his fellows."

"I think I know what you mean," was all Turner's reply.

"No doubt," I resumed, "the apprehension of this truth has, in otherwise
ill-ordered minds, given rise to all sorts of fierce and grotesque
fanaticism. But the minds which have thus conceived the truth, would have
been immeasurably worse without it; nay, this truth affords at last
the only possible door out of the miseries of their own chaos, whether
inherited or the result of their own misconduct."

"What's that in the grass?" cried Wynnie, in a tone of alarm.

I looked where she indicated, and saw a slow-worm, or blind-worm, lying
basking in the sun. I rose and went towards it.

"Here's your stick," said Turner.

"What for?" I asked. "Why should I kill it? It is perfectly harmless, and,
to my mind, beautiful."

I took it in my hands, and brought it to my wife. She gave an involuntary
shudder as it came near her.

"I assure you it is harmless," I said, "though it has a forked tongue."
And I opened its mouth as I spoke. "I do not think the serpent form is
essentially ugly."

"It makes me feel ugly," said Wynnie.

"I allow I do not quite understand the mystery of it," I said. "But you
never saw lovelier ornamentation than these silvery scales, with all the
neatness of what you ladies call a set pattern, and none of the stiffness,
for there are not two of them the same in form. And you never saw lovelier
curves than this little patient creature, which does not even try to get
away from me, makes with the queer long thin body of him."

"I wonder how it can look after its tail, it is so far off," said Wynnie.

"It does though--better than you ladies look after your long dresses. I
wonder whether it is descended from creatures that once had feet, and did
not make a good use of them. Perhaps they had wings even, and would not use
them at all, and so lost them. Its ancestors may have had poison-fangs; it
is innocent enough. But it is a terrible thing to be all feet, is it not?
There is an awful significance in the condemnation of the serpent--'On thy
belly shalt thou go, and eat dust.' But it is better to talk of beautiful
things. _My_ soul at least has dropped from its world apex. Let us go on.
Come, wife. Come, Turner."

They did not seem willing to rise. But the glen drew me. I rose, and my
wife followed my example with the help of my hand. She returned to the
subject, however, as we descended the slope.

"Is it possible that in the course of ever so many ages wings and feet
should be both lost?" she said.

"The most presumptuous thing in the world is to pronounce on the possible
and the impossible. I do not know what is possible and what is impossible.
I can only tell a little of what is true and what is untrue. But I do say
this, that between the condition of many decent members of society and that
for the sake of which God made them, there is a gulf quite as vast as that
between a serpent and a bird. I get peeps now and then into the condition
of my own heart, which, for the moment, make it seem impossible that I
should ever rise into a true state of nature--that is, into the simplicity
of God's will concerning me. The only hope for ourselves and for others
lies in him--in the power the creating spirit has over the spirits he has
made."

By this time the descent on the grass was getting too steep and slippery to
admit of our continuing to advance in that direction. We turned, therefore,
down the valley in the direction of the sea. It was but a narrow cleft,
and narrowed much towards a deeper cleft, in which we now saw the tops of
trees, and from which we heard the rush of water. Nor had we gone far in
this direction before we came upon a gate in a stone wall, which led into
what seemed a neglected garden. We entered, and found a path turning and
winding, among small trees, and luxuriant ferns, and great stones, and
fragments of ruins down towards the bottom of the chasm. The noise of
falling water increased as we went on, and at length, after some scrambling
and several sharp turns, we found ourselves with a nearly precipitous wall
on each side, clothed with shrubs and ivy, and creeping things of the
vegetable world. Up this cleft there was no advance. The head of it was a
precipice down which shot the stream from the vale above, pouring out of a
deep slit it had itself cut in the rock as with a knife. Halfway down, it
tumbled into a great basin of hollowed stone, and flowing from a chasm in
its side, which left part of the lip of the basin standing like the arch of
a vanished bridge, it fell into a black pool below, whence it crept as
if half-stunned or weary down the gentle decline of the ravine. It was a
perfect little picture. I, for my part, had never seen such a picturesque
fall. It was a little gem of nature, complete in effect. The ladies were
full of pleasure. Wynnie, forgetting her usual reserve, broke out in
frantic exclamations of delight.

We stood for a while regarding the ceaseless pour of the water down the
precipice, here shot slanting in a little trough of the rock, full of
force and purpose, here falling in great curls of green and gray, with an
expression of absolute helplessness and conscious perdition, as if sheer to
the centre, but rejoicing the next moment to find itself brought up boiling
and bubbling in the basin, to issue in the gathered hope of experience.
Then we turned down the stream a little way, crossed it by a plank, and
stood again to regard it from the opposite side. Small as the whole affair
was--not more than about a hundred and fifty feet in height--it was so full
of variety that I saw it was all my memory could do, if it carried away
anything like a correct picture of its aspect. I was contemplating it
fixedly, when a little stifled cry from Wynnie made me start and look
round. Her face was flushed, yet she was trying to look unconcerned.

"I thought we were quite alone, papa," she said; "but I see a gentleman
sketching."

I looked whither she indicated. A little way down, the bed of the ravine
widened considerably, and was no doubt filled with water in rainy weather.
Now it was swampy--full of reeds and willow bushes. But on the opposite
side of the stream, with a little canal from it going all around it, lay a
great flat rectangular stone, not more than a foot above the level of the
water, and upon a camp-stool in the centre of this stone sat a gentleman
sketching. I had no doubt that Wynnie had recognised him at once. And I
was annoyed, and indeed angry, to think that Mr. Percivale had followed us
here. But while I regarded him, he looked up, rose very quietly, and,
with his pencil in his hand, came towards us. With no nearer approach to
familiarity than a bow, and no expression of either much pleasure or any
surprise, he said--

"I have seen your party for some time, Mr. Walton--since you crossed the
stream; but I would not break in upon your enjoyment with the surprise
which my presence here must cause you."

I suppose I answered with a bow of some sort; for I could not say with
truth that I was glad to see him. He resumed, doubtless penetrating my
suspicion--

"I have been here almost a week. I certainly had no expectation of the
pleasure of seeing you."

This he said lightly, though no doubt with the object of clearing himself.
And I was, if not reassured, yet disarmed, by his statement; for I could
not believe, from what I knew of him, that he would be guilty of such
a white lie as many a gentleman would have thought justifiable on the
occasion. Still, I suppose he found me a little stiff, for presently he
said--

"If you will excuse me, I will return to my work."

Then I felt as if I must say something, for I had shown him no courtesy
during the interview.

"It must be a great pleasure to carry away such talismans with you--capable
of bringing the place back to your mental vision at any moment."

"To tell the truth," he answered, "I am a little ashamed of being found
sketching here. Such bits of scenery are not of my favourite studies. But
it is a change."

"It is very beautiful here," I said, in a tone of contravention.

"It is very pretty," he answered--"very lovely, if you will--not very
beautiful, I think. I would keep that word for things of larger regard.
Beauty requires width, and here is none. I had almost said this place was
fanciful--the work of imagination in her play-hours, not in her large
serious moods. It affects me like the face of a woman only pretty, about
which boys and guardsmen will rave--to me not very interesting, save for
its single lines."

"Why, then, do you sketch the place?"

"A very fair question," he returned, with a smile. "Just because it is
soothing from the very absence of beauty. I would far rather, however, if I
were only following my taste, take the barest bit of the moor above, with a
streak of the cold sky over it. That gives room."

"You would like to put a skylark in it, wouldn't you?"

"That I would if I knew how. I see you know what I mean. But the mere
romantic I never had much taste for; though if you saw the kind of pictures
I try to paint, you would not wonder that I take sketches of places like
this, while in my heart of hearts I do not care much for them. They are so
different, and just _therefore_ they are good for me. I am not working now;
I am only playing."

"With a view to working better afterwards, I have no doubt," I answered.

"You are right there, I hope," was his quiet reply, as he turned and walked
back to the island.

He had not made a step towards joining us. He had only taken his hat off to
the ladies. He was gaining ground upon me rapidly.

"Have you quarrelled with our new friend, Harry?" said my wife, as I came
up to her.

She was sitting on a stone. Turner and Wynnie were farther off towards the
foot of the fall.

"Not in the least," I answered, slightly outraged--I did not at first
know why--by the question. "He is only gone to his work, which is a duty
belonging both to the first and second tables of the law."

"I hope you have asked him to come home to our early dinner, then," she
rejoined.

"I have not. That remains for you to do. Come, I will take you to him."

Ethelwyn rose at once, put her hand in mine, and with a little help soon
reached the table-rock. When Percivale saw that she was really on a visit
to him on his island-perch, he rose, and when she came near enough, held
out his hand. It was but a step, and she was beside him in a moment. After
the usual greetings, which on her part, although very quiet, like every
motion and word of hers, were yet indubitably cordial and kind, she said,
"When you get back to London, Mr. Percivale, might I ask you to allow some
friends of mine to call at your studio, and see your paintings?"

"With all my heart," answered Percivale. "I must warn you, however, that I
have not much they will care to see. They will perhaps go away less happy
than they entered. Not many people care to see my pictures twice."

"I would not send you anyone I thought unworthy of the honour," answered my
wife.

Percivale bowed--one of his stately, old-world bows, which I greatly liked.

"Any friend of yours--that is guarantee sufficient," he answered.

There was this peculiarity about any compliment that Percivale paid, that
you had not a doubt of its being genuine.

"Will you come and take an early dinner with us?" said my wife. "My invalid
daughter will be very pleased to see you."

"I will with pleasure," he answered, but in a tone of some hesitation, as
he glanced from Ethelwyn to me.

"My wife speaks for us all," I said. "It will give us all pleasure."

"I am only afraid it will break in upon your morning's work," remarked
Ethelwyn.

"O, that is not of the least consequence," he rejoined. "In fact, as I have
just been saying to Mr. Walton, I am not working at all at present. This is
pure recreation."

As he spoke he turned towards his easel, and began hastily to bundle up his
things.

"We're not quite ready to go yet," said my wife, loath to leave the lovely
spot. "What a curious flat stone this is!" she added.

"It is," said Percivale. "The man to whom the place belongs, a worthy
yeoman of the old school, says that this wider part of the channel must
have been the fish-pond, and that the portly monks stood on this stone and
fished in the pond."

"Then was there a monastery here?" I asked.

"Certainly. The ruins of the chapel, one of the smallest, are on the top,
just above the fall--rather a fearful place to look down from. I wonder
you did not observe them as you came. They say it had a silver bell in the
days of its glory, which now lies in a deep hole under the basin, half-way
between the top and bottom of the fall. But the old man says that nothing
will make him look, or let anyone else lift the huge stone; for he is much
better pleased to believe that it may be there, than he would be to know it
was not there; for certainly, if it were found, it would not be left there
long."

As he spoke Percivale had continued packing his gear. He now led our party
up to the chapel, and thence down a few yards to the edge of the chasm,
where the water fell headlong. I turned away with that fear of high places
which is one of my many weaknesses; and when I turned again towards the
spot, there was Wynnie on the very edge, looking over into the flash
and tumult of the water below, but with a nervous grasp of the hand of
Percivale, who stood a little farther back.

In going home, the painter led us by an easier way out of the valley, left
his little easel and other things at a cottage, and then walked on in front
between my wife and daughter, while Turner and I followed. He seemed quite
at his ease with them, and plenty of talk and laughter rose on the way.
I, however, was chiefly occupied with finding out Turner's impression of
Connie's condition.

"She is certainly better," he said. "I wonder you do not see it as plainly
as I do. The pain is nearly gone from her spine, and she can move herself
a good deal more, I am certain, than she could when she left. She asked me
yesterday if she might not turn upon one side. 'Do you think you could?'
I asked.--'I think so,' she answered. 'At any rate, I have often a great
inclination to try; only papa said I had better wait till you came.' I do
think she might be allowed a little more change of posture now."

"Then you have really some hope of her final recovery?"

"I have _hope_ most certainly. But what is hope in me, you must not allow
to become certainty in you. I am nearly sure, though, that she can never
be other than an invalid; that is, if I am to judge by what I know of such
cases."

"I am thankful for the hope," I answered. "You need not be afraid of my
turning upon you, should the hope never pass into sight. I should do so
only if I found that you had been treating me irrationally--inspiring
me with hope which you knew to be false. The element of uncertainty is
essential to hope, and for all true hope, even as hope, man has to be
unspeakably thankful."






CHAPTER IX.

THE WALK TO CHURCH.





I was glad to be able to arrange with a young clergyman who was on a visit
to Kilkhaven, that he should take my duty for me the next Sunday, for that
was the only one Turner could spend with us. He and I and Wynnie walked
together two miles to church. It was a lovely morning, with just a tint of
autumn in the air. But even that tint, though all else was of the summer,
brought a shadow, I could see, on Wynnie's face.

"You said you would show me a poem of--Vaughan, I think you said, was
the name of the writer. I am too ignorant of our older literature," said
Turner.

"I have only just made acquaintance with him," I answered. "But I think I
can repeat the poem. You shall judge whether it is not like Wordsworth's
Ode.

  'Happy those early days, when I
  Shined in my angel infancy;
  Before I understood the place
  Appointed for my second race,
  Or taught my soul to fancy ought
  But a white, celestial thought;
  When yet I had not walked above
  A mile or two from my first love,
  And looking back, at that short space,
  Could see a glimpse of his bright face;
  When on some gilded cloud or flower
  My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
  And in those weaker glories spy
  Some shadows of eternity;
  Before I taught my tongue to wound
  My conscience with a sinful sound,
  But felt through all this fleshly dress
  Bright shoots of everlastingness.
  O how I long to travel back----'"

But here I broke down, for I could not remember the rest with even
approximate accuracy.

"When did this Vaughan live?" asked Turner.

"He was born, I find, in 1621--five years, that is, after Shakspere's
death, and when Milton was about thirteen years old. He lived to the age of
seventy-three, but seems to have been little known. In politics he was on
the Cavalier side. By the way, he was a medical man, like you, Turner--an
M.D. We'll have a glance at the little book when we go back. Don't let me
forget to show it you. A good many of your profession have distinguished
themselves in literature, and as profound believers too."

"I should have thought the profession had been chiefly remarkable for such
as believe only in the evidence of the senses."

"As if having searched into the innermost recesses of the body, and not
having found a soul, they considered themselves justified in declaring
there was none."

"Just so."

"Well, that is true of the commonplace amongst them, I do believe. You will
find the exceptions have been men of fine minds and characters--not such as
he of whom Chaucer says,

  'His study was but little on the Bible;'

for if you look at the rest of the description of the man, you will find
that he was in alliance with his apothecary for their mutual advantage,
that he was a money-loving man, and that some of Chaucer's keenest irony
is spent on him in an off-hand, quiet manner. Compare the tone in which he
writes of the doctor of physic, with the profound reverence wherewith he
bows himself before the poor country-parson."

Here Wynnie spoke, though with some tremor in her voice.

"I never know, papa, what people mean by talking about childhood in that
way. I never seem to have been a bit younger and more innocent than I am."

"Don't you remember a time, Wynnie, when the things about you--the sky and
the earth, say--seemed to you much grander than they seem now? You are old
enough to have lost something."

She thought for a little while before she answered.

"My dreams were, I know. I cannot say so of anything else."

I in my turn had to be silent, for I did not see the true answer, though
I was sure there was one somewhere, if I could only find it. All I could
reply, however, even after I had meditated a good while, was--and perhaps,
after all, it was the best thing I could have said:

"Then you must make a good use of your dreams, my child."

"Why, papa?"

"Because they are the only memorials of childhood you have left."

"How am I to make a good use of them? I don't know what to do with my silly
old dreams."

But she gave a sigh as she spoke that testified her silly old dreams had a
charm for her still.

"If your dreams, my child, have ever testified to you of a condition of
things beyond that which you see around you, if they have been to you the
hints of a wonder and glory beyond what visits you now, you must not call
them silly, for they are just what the scents of Paradise borne on the air
were to Adam and Eve as they delved and spun, reminding them that they must
aspire yet again through labour into that childhood of obedience which
is the only paradise of humanity--into that oneness with the will of the
Father, which our race, our individual selves, need just as much as if we
had personally fallen with Adam, and from which we fall every time we are
disobedient to the voice of the Father within our souls--to the conscience
which is his making and his witness. If you have had no childhood, my
Wynnie, yet permit your old father to say that everything I see in you
indicates more strongly in you than in most people that it is this
childhood after which you are blindly longing, without which you find that
life is hardly to be endured. Thank God for your dreams, my child. In him
you will find that the essence of those dreams is fulfilled. We are saved
by hope, Turner. Never man hoped too much, or repented that he had hoped.
The plague is that we don't hope in God half enough. The very fact that
hope is strength, and strength the outcome, the body of life, shows that
hope is at one with life, with the very essence of what says 'I am'--yea,
of what doubts and says 'Am I?' and therefore is reasonable to creatures
who cannot even doubt save in that they live."

By this time, for I have, of course, only given the outlines, or rather
salient points, of our conversation, we had reached the church, where, if I
found the sermon neither healing nor inspiring, I found the prayers full of
hope and consolation. They at least are safe beyond human caprice, conceit,
or incapacity. Upon them, too, the man who is distressed at the thought of
how little of the needful food he had been able to provide for his people,
may fall back for comfort, in the thought that there at least was what
ought to have done them good, what it was well worth their while to go to
church for. But I did think they were too long for any individual Christian
soul, to sympathise with from beginning to end, that is, to respond to,
like organ-tube to the fingered key, in every touch of the utterance of the
general Christian soul. For my reader must remember that it is one thing
to read prayers and another to respond; and that I had had very few
opportunities of being in the position of the latter duty. I had had
suspicions before, and now they were confirmed--that the present crowding
of services was most inexpedient. And as I pondered on the matter, instead
of trying to go on praying after I had already uttered my soul, which is
but a heathenish attempt after much speaking, I thought how our Lord had
given us such a short prayer to pray, and I began to wonder when or how the
services came to be so heaped the one on the back of the other as they now
were. No doubt many people defended them; no doubt many people could sit
them out; but how many people could pray from beginning to end of them I
On this point we had some talk as we went home. Wynnie was opposed to any
change of the present use on the ground that we should only have the longer
sermons.

"Still," I said, "I do not think even that so great an evil. A sensitive
conscience will not reproach itself so much for not listening to the whole
of a sermon, as for kneeling in prayer and not praying. I think myself,
however, that after the prayers are over, everyone should be at liberty
to go out and leave the sermon unheard, if he pleases. I think the result
would be in the end a good one both for parson and people. It would break
through the deadness of this custom, this use and wont. Many a young mind
is turned for life against the influences of church-going--one of the
most sacred influences when _pure_, that is, un-mingled with
non-essentials--just by the feeling that he _must_ do so and so, that he
must go through a certain round of duty. It is a willing service that the
Lord wants; no forced devotions are either acceptable to him, or other than
injurious to the worshipper, if such he can be called."

After an early dinner, I said to Turner--"Come out with me, and we will
read that poem of Vaughan's in which I broke down today."

"O, papa!" said Connie, in a tone of injury, from the sofa.

"What is it, my dear?" I asked.

"Wouldn't it be as good for us as for Mr. Turner?"

"Quite, my dear. Well, I will keep it for the evening, and meantime Mr.
Turner and I will go and see if we can find out anything about the change
in the church-service."

For I had thrown into my bag as I left the rectory a copy of _The
Clergyman's Vade Mecum_--a treatise occupied with the externals of the
churchman's relations--in which I soon came upon the following passage:

"So then it appears that the common practice of reading all three together,
is an innovation, and if an ancient or infirm clergyman do read them at two
or three several times, he is more strictly conformable; however, this is
much better than to omit any part of the liturgy, or to read all
three offices into one, as is now commonly done, without any pause or
distinction."

"On the part of the clergyman, you see, Turner," I said, when I had
finished reading the whole passage to him. "There is no care taken of the
delicate women of the congregation, but only of the ancient or infirm
clergyman. And the logic, to say the least, is rather queer: is it only in
virtue of his antiquity and infirmity that he is to be upheld in being more
strictly conformable? The writer's honesty has its heels trodden upon by
the fear of giving offence. Nevertheless there should perhaps be a certain
slowness to admit change, even back to a more ancient form."

"I don't know that I can quite agree with you there," said Turner. "If the
form is better, no one should hesitate to advocate the change. If it is
worse, then slowness is not sufficient--utter obstinacy is the right
condition."

"You are right, Turner. For the right must be the rule, and where _the
right_ is beyond our understanding or our reach, then _the better_, as
indeed not only right compared with the other, but the sole ascent towards
the right."

In the evening I took Henry Vaughan's poems into the common sitting-room,
and to Connie's great delight read the whole of the lovely, though unequal
little poem, called "The Retreat," in recalling which I had failed in the
morning. She was especially delighted with the "white celestial thought,"
and the "bright shoots of everlastingness." Then I gave a few lines from
another yet more unequal poem, worthy in themselves of the best of the
other. I quote the first strophe entire:

  CHILDHOOD.

  "I cannot reach it; and my striving eye
  Dazzles at it, as at eternity.
  Were now that chronicle alive,
  Those white designs which children drive,
  And the thoughts of each harmless hour,
  With their content too in my power,
  Quickly would I make my path even,
  And by mere playing go to heaven.

  *     *     *     *     *

  And yet the practice worldlings call
  Business and weighty action all,
  Checking the poor child for his play,
  But gravely cast themselves away.

  *     *     *     *     *

  An age of mysteries! which he
  Must live twice that would God's face see;
  Which angels guard, and with it play,
  Angels! which foul men drive away.
  How do I study now, and scan
  Thee more than ere I studied man,
  And only see through a long night
  Thy edges and thy bordering light I
  O for thy centre and midday!
  For sure that is the _narrow way!_"

"For of such is the kingdom of heaven." said my wife softly, as I closed
the book.

"May I have the book, papa?" said Connie, holding out her thin white cloud
of a hand to take it.

"Certainly, my child. And if Wynnie would read it with you, she will feel
more of the truth of what Mr. Percivale was saying to her about finish.
Here are the finest, grandest thoughts, set forth sometimes with such
carelessness, at least such lack of neatness, that, instead of their
falling on the mind with all their power of loveliness, they are like a
beautiful face disfigured with patches, and, what is worse, they put the
mind out of the right, quiet, unquestioning, open mood, which is the only
fit one for the reception of such true things as are embodied in the poems.
But they are too beautiful after all to be more than a little spoiled
by such a lack of the finish with which Art ends off all her labours. A
gentleman, however, thinks it of no little importance to have his nails
nice as well as his face and his shirt."






CHAPTER X.

THE OLD CASTLE.





The place Turner had chosen suited us all so well, that after attending
to my duties on the two following Sundays at Kilkhaven, I returned on the
Monday or Tuesday to the farmhouse. But Turner left us in the middle of the
second week, for he could not be longer absent from his charge at home, and
we missed him much. It was some days before Connie was quite as cheerful
again as usual. I do not mean that she was in the least gloomy--that she
never was; she was only a little less merry. But whether it was that Turner
had opened our eyes, or that she had visibly improved since he allowed her
to make a little change in her posture--certainly she appeared to us to
have made considerable progress, and every now and then we were discovering
some little proof of the fact. One evening, while we were still at the
farm, she startled us by calling out suddenly,--

"Papa, papa! I moved my big toe! I did indeed."

We were all about her in a moment. But I saw that she was excited, and
fearing a reaction I sought to calm her.

"But, my dear," I said, as quietly as I could, "you are probably still
aware that you are possessed of two big toes: which of them are we to
congratulate on this first stride in the march of improvement?"

She broke out in the merriest laugh. A pause followed in which her face
wore a puzzled expression. Then she said all at once, "Papa, it is very
odd, but I can't tell which of them," and burst into tears. I was afraid
that I had done more harm than good.

"It is not of the slightest consequence, my child," I said. "You have had
so little communication with the twins of late, that it is no wonder you
should not be able to tell the one from the other."

She smiled again through her sobs, but was silent, with shining face, for
the rest of the evening. Our hopes took a fresh start, but we heard no more
from her of her power over her big toe. As often as I inquired she said she
was afraid she had made a mistake, for she had not had another hint of its
existence. Still I thought it could not have been a fancy, and I would
cleave to my belief in the good sign.

Percivale called to see us several times, but always appeared anxious not
to intrude more of his society upon us than might be agreeable. He grew
in my regard, however; and at length I asked him if he would assist me in
another surprise which I meditated for my companions, and this time for
Connie as well, and which I hoped would prevent the painful influences
of the sight of the sea from returning upon them when they went back to
Kilkhaven: they must see the sea from a quite different shore first. In a
word I would take them to Tintagel, of the near position of which they
were not aware, although in some of our walks we had seen the ocean in
the distance. An early day was fixed for carrying out our project, and
I proceeded to get everything ready. The only difficulty was to find a
carriage in the neighbourhood suitable for receiving Connie's litter. In
this, however, I at length succeeded, and on the morning of a glorious day
of blue and gold, we set out for the little village of Trevenna, now far
better known than at the time of which I write. Connie had been out every
day since she came, now in one part of the fields, now in another, enjoying
the expanse of earth and sky, but she had had no drive, and consequently
had seen no variety of scenery. Therefore, believing she was now thoroughly
able to bear it, I quite reckoned of the good she would get from the
inevitable excitement. We resolved, however, after finding how much she
enjoyed the few miles' drive, that we would not demand more, of her
strength that day, and therefore put up at the little inn, where, after
ordering dinner, Percivale and I left the ladies, and sallied forth to
reconnoitre.

We walked through the village and down the valley beyond, sloping steeply
between hills towards the sea, the opening closed at the end by the blue of
the ocean below and the more ethereal blue of the sky above. But when we
reached the mouth of the valley we found that we were not yet on the shore,
for a precipice lay between us and the little beach below. On the left a
great peninsula of rock stood out into the sea, upon which rose the ruins
of the keep of Tintagel, while behind on the mainland stood the ruins of
the castle itself, connected with the other only by a narrow isthmus. We
had read that this peninsula had once been an island, and that the two
parts of the castle were formerly connected by a drawbridge. Looking up
at the great gap which now divided the two portions, it seemed at first
impossible to believe that they had ever been thus united; but a little
reflection cleared up the mystery.

The fact was that the isthmus, of half the height of the two parts
connected by it, had been formed entirely by the fall of portions of the
rock and soil on each side into the narrow dividing space, through which
the waters of the Atlantic had been wont to sweep. And now the fragments
of walls stood on the very verge of the precipice, and showed that large
portions of the castle itself had fallen into the gulf between. We turned
to the left along the edge of the rock, and so by a narrow path reached and
crossed to the other side of the isthmus. We then found that the path led
to the foot of the rock, formerly island, of the keep, and thence in a
zigzag up the face of it to the top. We followed it, and after a great
climb reached a door in a modern battlement. Entering, we found ourselves
amidst grass, and ruins haggard with age. We turned and surveyed the path
by which we had come. It was steep and somewhat difficult. But the outlook
was glorious. It was indeed one of God's mounts of vision upon which we
stood. The thought, "O that Connie could see this!" was swelling in my
heart, when Percivale broke the silence--not with any remark on the glory
around us, but with the commonplace question--

"You haven't got your man with you, I think, Mr. Walton?"

"No," I answered; "we thought it better to leave him to look after the
boys."

He was silent for a few minutes, while I gazed in delight.

"Don't you think," he said, "it would be possible to bring Miss Constance
up here?"

I almost started at the idea, and had not replied before he resumed:

"It would be something for her to recur to with delight all the rest of her
life."

"It would indeed. But it is impossible."

"I do not think so--if you would allow me the honour to assist you. I think
we could do it perfectly between us."

I was again silent for a while. Looking down on the way we had come, it
seemed an almost dreadful undertaking. Percivale spoke again.

"As we shall come here to-morrow, we need not explore the place now.
Shall we go down at once and observe the whole path, with a view to the
practicability of carrying her up?"

"There can be no objection to that," I answered, as a little hope, and
courage with it, began to dawn in my heart. "But you must allow it does not
look very practicable."

"Perhaps it would seem more so to you, if you had come up with the idea in
your head all the way, as I did. Any path seems more difficult in looking
back than at the time when the difficulties themselves have to be met and
overcome."

"Yes, but then you must remember that we have to take the way back whether
we will or no, if we once take the way forward."

"True; and now I will go down with the descent in my head as well as under
my feet."

"Well, there can be no harm in reconnoitring it at least. Let us go."

"You know we can rest almost as often as we please," said Percivale, and
turned to lead the way.

It certainly was steep, and required care even in our own descent; but for
a man who had climbed mountains, as I had done in my youth, it could hardly
be called difficult even in middle age. By the time we had got again into
the valley road I was all but convinced of the practicability of the
proposal. I was a little vexed, however, I must confess, that a stranger
should have thought of giving such a pleasure to Connie, when the bare wish
that she might have enjoyed it had alone arisen in my mind. I comforted
myself with the reflection that this was one of the ways in which we were
to be weaned from the world and knit the faster to our fellows. For even
the middle-aged, in the decay of their daring, must look for the fresh
thought and the fresh impulse to the youth which follows at their heels in
the march of life. Their part is to _will_ the relation and the obligation,
and so, by love to and faith in the young, keep themselves in the line
along which the electric current flows, till at length they too shall once
more be young and daring in the strength of the Lord. A man must always
seek to rise above his moods and feelings, to let them move within him, but
not allow them to storm or gloom around him. By the time we reached home we
had agreed to make the attempt, and to judge by the path to the foot of the
rock, which was difficult in parts, whether we should be likely to succeed,
without danger, in attempting the rest of the way and the following
descent. As soon as we had arrived at this conclusion, I felt so happy
in the prospect that I grew quite merry, especially after we had further
agreed that, both for the sake of her nerves and for the sake of the lordly
surprise, we should bind Connie's eyes so that she should see nothing till
we had placed her in a certain position, concerning the preferableness of
which we were not of two minds.

"What mischief have you two been about?" said my wife, as we entered our
room in the inn, where the cloth was already laid for dinner. "You look
just like two schoolboys that have been laying some plot, and can hardly
hold their tongues about it."

"We have been enjoying our little walk amazingly," I answered. "So much so,
that we mean to set out for another the moment dinner is over."

"I hope you will take Wynnie with you then."

"Or you, my love," I returned.

"No; I will stay with Connie."

"Very well. You, and Connie too, shall go out to-morrow, for we have
found a place we want to take you to. And, indeed, I believe it was our
anticipation of the pleasure you and she would have in the view that made
us so merry when you accused us of plotting mischief."

My wife replied only with a loving look, and dinner appearing at this
moment, we sat down a happy party.

When that was over--and a very good dinner it was, just what I like, homely
in material but admirable in cooking--Wynnie and Percivale and I set out
again. For as Percivale and I came back in the morning we had seen the
church standing far aloft and aloof on the other side of the little valley,
and we wanted to go to it. It was rather a steep climb, and Wynnie accepted
Percivale's offered arm. I led the way, therefore, and left them to
follow--not so far in the rear, however, but that I could take a share in
the conversation. It was some little time before any arose, and it was
Wynnie who led the way into it.

"What kind of things do you like best to paint, Mr. Percivale?" she asked.

He hesitated for several seconds, which between a question and an answer
look so long, that most people would call them minutes.

"I would rather you should see some of my pictures--I should prefer that to
answering your question," he said, at length.

"But I have seen some of your pictures," she returned.

"Pardon me. Indeed you have not, Miss Walton."

"At least I have seen some of your sketches and studies."

"Some of my sketches--none of my studies."

"But you make use of your sketches for your pictures, do you not?"

"Never of such as you have seen. They are only a slight antidote to my
pictures."

"I cannot understand you."

"I do not wonder at that. But I would rather, I repeat, say nothing about
my pictures till you see some of them."

"But how am I to have that pleasure, then?"

"You go to London sometimes, do you not?"

"Very rarely. More rarely still when the Royal Academy is open."

"That does not matter much. My pictures are seldom to be found there."

"Do you not care to send them there?"

"I send one, at least, every year. But they are rarely accepted."

"Why?"

This was a very improper question, I thought; but if Wynnie had thought so
she would not have put it. He hesitated a little before he replied--

"It is hardly for me to say why," he answered; "but I cannot wonder much
at it, considering the subjects I choose.--But I daresay," he added, in
a lighter tone, "after all, that has little to do with it, and there is
something about the things themselves that precludes a favourable judgment.
I avoid thinking about it. A man ought to try to look at his own work as if
it were none of his, but not as with the eyes of other people. That is an
impossibility, and the attempt a bewilderment. It is with his own eyes he
must look, with his own judgment he must judge. The only effort is to get
it set far away enough from him to be able to use his own eyes and his own
judgment upon it."

"I think I see what you mean. A man has but his own eyes and his own
judgment. To look with those of other people is but a fancy."

"Quite so. You understand me quite."

He said no more in explanation of his rejection by the Academy. Till we
reached the church, nothing more of significance passed between them.

What a waste, bare churchyard that was! It had two or three lych-gates,
but they had no roofs. They were just small enclosures, with the low
stone tables, to rest the living from the weight of the dead, while the
clergyman, as the keeper of heaven's wardrobe, came forth to receive the
garment they restored--to be laid aside as having ended its work, as having
been worn done in the winds, and rains, and labours of the world. Not a
tree stood in that churchyard. Hank grass was the sole covering of the soil
heaved up with the dead beneath. What blasts from the awful space of the
sea must rush athwart the undefended garden! The ancient church stood in
the midst, with its low, strong, square tower, and its long, narrow nave,
the ridge bowed with age, like the back of a horse worn out in the service
of man, and its little homely chancel, like a small cottage that had leaned
up against its end for shelter from the western blasts. It was locked,
and we could not enter. But of all world-worn, sad-looking churches, that
one--sad, even in the sunset--was the dreariest I had ever beheld. Surely,
it needed the gospel of the resurrection fervently preached therein, to
keep it from sinking to the dust with dismay and weariness. Such a soul
alone could keep it from vanishing utterly of dismal old age. Near it was
one huge mound of grass-grown rubbish, looking like the grave where some
former church of the dead had been buried, when it could stand erect no
longer before the onsets of Atlantic winds. I walked round and round it,
gathering its architecture, and peeping in at every window I could reach.
Suddenly I was aware that I was alone. Returning to the other side, I found
that Percivale was seated on the churchyard wall, next the sea--it would
have been less dismal had it stood immediately on the cliffs, but they were
at some little distance beyond bare downs and rough stone walls; he
was sketching the place, and Wynnie stood beside him, looking over his
shoulder. I did not interrupt him, but walked among the graves, reading
the poor memorials of the dead, and wondering how many of the words of
laudation that were inscribed on their tombs were spoken of them while they
were yet alive. Yet, surely, in the lives of those to whom they applied
the least, there had been moments when the true nature, the nature God had
given them, broke forth in faith and tenderness, and would have justified
the words inscribed on their gravestones! I was yet wandering and reading,
and stumbling over the mounds, when my companions joined me, and, without a
word, we walked out of the churchyard. We were nearly home before one of us
spoke.

"That church is oppressive," said Percivale. "It looks like a great
sepulchre, a place built only for the dead--the church of the dead."

"It is only that it partakes with the living," I returned; "suffers with
them the buffetings of life, outlasts them, but shows, like the shield of
the Red-Cross Knight, the 'old dints of deep wounds.'"

"Still, is it not a dreary place to choose for a church to stand in?"

"The church must stand everywhere. There is no region into which it must
not, ought not to enter. If it refuses any earthly spot, it is shrinking
from its calling. Here this one stands for the sea as for the land,
high-uplifted, looking out over the waters as a sign of the haven from all
storms, the rest in God. And down beneath in its storehouse lie the bodies
of men--you saw the grave of some of them on the other side--flung ashore
from the gulfing sea. It may be a weakness, but one would rather have the
bones of his friend laid in the still Sabbath of the churchyard earth,
than sweeping and swaying about as Milton imagines the bones of his
friend Edward King, in that wonderful 'Lycidas.'" Then I told them the
conversation I had had with the sexton at Kilkhaven. "But," I went on,
"these fancies are only the ghostly mists that hang about the eastern hills
before the sun rises. We shall look down on all that with a smile by and
by; for the Lord tells us that if we believe in him we shall never die."

By this time we were back once more at the inn. We gave Connie a
description of what we had seen.

"What a brave old church!" said Connie.

The next day I awoke very early, full of the anticipated attempt. I got up
at once, found the weather most promising, and proceeded first of all to
have a look at Connie's litter, and see that it was quite sound. Satisfied
of this, I rejoiced in the contemplation of its lightness and strength.

After breakfast I went to Connie's room, and told her that Mr. Percivale
and I had devised a treat for her. Her face shone at once.

"But we want to do it our own way."

"Of course, papa," she answered.

"Will you let us tie your eyes up?"

"Yes; and my ears and my hands too. It would be no good tying my feet, when
I don't know one big toe from the other."

And she laughed merrily.

"We'll try to keep up the talk all the way, so that you sha'n't weary of
the journey."

"You're going to carry me somewhere with my eyes tied up. O! how jolly! And
then I shall see something all at once! Jolly! jolly!--Getting tired!" she
repeated. "Even the wind on my face would be pleasure enough for half a
day. I sha'n't get tired so soon as you will--you dear, kind papa! I am
afraid I shall be dreadfully heavy. But I sha'n't jerk your arms much. I
will lie so still!"

"And you won't mind letting Mr. Percivale help me to carry you?"

"No. Why should I, if he doesn't mind it? He looks strong enough; and I am
sure he is nice, and won't think me heavier than I am."

"Very well, then. I will send mamma and Wynnie to dress you at once; and we
shall set out as soon as you are ready."

She clapped her hands with delight, then caught me round the neck and gave
me one of my own kisses as she called the best she had, and began to call
as loud as she could on her mamma and Wynnie to come and dress her.

It was indeed a glorious morning. The wind came in little wafts, like veins
of cool white silver amid the great, warm, yellow gold of the sunshine. The
sea lay before us a mound of blue closing up the end of the valley, as if
overpowered into quietness by the lordliness of the sun overhead; and the
hills between which we went lay like great sheep, with green wool, basking
in the blissful heat. The gleam from the waters came up the pass; the grand
castle crowned the left-hand steep, seeming to warm its old bones, like the
ruins of some awful megatherium in the lighted air; one white sail sped
like a glad thought across the spandrel of the sea; the shadows of the
rocks lay over our path, like transient, cool, benignant deaths, through
which we had to pass again and again to yet higher glory beyond; and one
lark was somewhere in whose little breast the whole world was reflected as
in the convex mirror of a dewdrop, where it swelled so that he could not
hold it, but let it out again through his throat, metamorphosed into music,
which he poured forth over all as the libation on the outspread altar of
worship.

And of all this we talked to Connie as we went; and every now and then she
would clap her hands gently in the fulness of her delight, although she
beheld the splendour only as with her ears, or from the kisses of the wind
on her cheeks. But she seemed, since her accident, to have approached that
condition which Milton represents Samson as longing for in his blindness,
wherein the sight should be

  "through all parts diffused,
  That she might look at will through every pore."

I had, however, arranged with the rest of the company, that the moment
we reached the cliff over the shore, and turned to the left to cross the
isthmus, the conversation should no longer be about the things around us;
and especially I warned my wife and Wynnie that no exclamation of surprise
or delight should break from them before Connie's eyes were uncovered. I
had said nothing to either of them about the difficulties of the way, that,
seeing us take them as ordinary things, they might take them so too, and
not be uneasy.

We never stopped till we reached the foot of the peninsula, _ne_ island,
upon which the keep of Tintagel stands. There we set Connie down, to take
breath and ease our arms before we began the arduous way.

"Now, now!" said Connie eagerly, lifting her hands in the belief that we
were on the point of undoing the bandage from her eyes.

"No, no, my love, not yet," I said, and she lay still again, only she
looked more eager than before.

"I am afraid I have tired out you and Mr. Percivale, papa," she said.

Percivale laughed so amusedly, that she rejoined roguishly--

"O yes! I know every gentleman is a Hercules--at least, he chooses to be
considered one! But, notwithstanding my firm faith in the fact, I have a
little womanly conscience left that is hard to hoodwink."

There was a speech for my wee Connie to make! The best answer and the best
revenge was to lift her and go on. This we did, trying as well as we might
to prevent the difference of level between us from tilting the litter too
much for her comfort.

"Where _are_ you going, papa?" she said once, but without a sign of fear in
her voice, as a little slip I made lowered my end of the litter suddenly.
"You must be going up a steep place. Don't hurt yourself, dear papa."

We had changed our positions, and were now carrying her, head foremost, up
the hill. Percivale led, and I followed. Now I could see every change on
her lovely face, and it made me strong to endure; for I did find it hard
work, I confess, to get to the top. It lay like a little sunny pool,
on which all the cloudy thoughts that moved in some unseen heaven cast
exquisitely delicate changes of light and shade as they floated over it.
Percivale strode on as if he bore a feather behind him. I did wish we
were at the top, for my arms began to feel like iron-cables, stiff and
stark--only I was afraid of my fingers giving way. My heart was beating
uncomfortably too. But Percivale, I felt almost inclined to quarrel with
him before it was over, he strode on so unconcernedly, turning every corner
of the zigzag where I expected him to propose a halt, and striding on
again, as if there could be no pretence for any change of procedure. But I
held out, strengthened by the play on my daughter's face, delicate as the
play on an opal--one that inclines more to the milk than the fire.

When at length we turned in through the gothic door in the battlemented
wall, and set our lovely burden down upon the grass--

"Percivale," I said, forgetting the proprieties in the affected humour of
being angry with him, so glad was I that we had her at length on the mount
of glory, "why did you go on walking like a castle, and pay no heed to me?"

"You didn't speak, did you, Mr. Walton," he returned, with just a shadow of
solicitude in the question.

"No. Of course not," I rejoined.

"O, then," he returned, in a tone of relief, "how could I? You were my
captain: how could I give in so long as you were holding on?"

I am afraid the _Percivale_, without the _Mister_, came again and again
after this, though I pulled myself up for it as often as I caught myself.

"Now, papa!" said Connie from the grass.

"Not yet, my dear. Wait till your mamma and Wynnie come. Let us go and meet
them, Mr. Percivale."

"O yes, do, papa. Leave me alone here without knowing where I am or what
kind of a place I am in. I should like to know how it feels. I have never
been alone in all my life."

"Very well, my dear," I said; and Percivale and I left her alone in the
ruins.

We found Ethelwyn toiling up with Wynnie helping her all she could.

"Dear Harry," she said, "how could you think of bringing Connie up such an
awful place? I wonder you dared to do it."

"It's done you see, wife," I answered, "thanks to Mr. Percivale, who has
nearly torn the breath out of me. But now we must get you up, and you will
say that to see Connie's delight, not to mention your own, is quite wages
for the labour."

"Isn't she afraid to find herself so high up?"

"She knows nothing about it yet."

"You do not mean you have left the child there with her eyes tied up."

"To be sure. We could not uncover them before you came. It would spoil half
the pleasure."

"Do let us make haste then. It is surely dangerous to leave her so."

"Not in the least; but she must be getting tired of the darkness. Take my
arm now."

"Don't you think Mrs. Walton had better take my arm," said Percivale, "and
then you can put your hand on her back, and help her a little that way."

We tried the plan, found it a good one, and soon reached the top. The
moment our eyes fell upon Connie, we could see that she had found the place
neither fearful nor lonely. The sweetest ghost of a smile hovered on her
pale face, which shone in the shadow of the old gateway of the keep, with
light from within her own sunny soul. She lay in such still expectation,
that you would have thought she had just fallen asleep after receiving an
answer to a prayer, reminding me of a little-known sonnet of Wordsworth's,
in which he describes as the type of Death--

  "the face of one
  Sleeping alone within a mossy cave
  With her face up to heaven; that seemed to have
  Pleasing remembrance of a thought foregone;
  A lovely beauty in a summer grave."

[Footnote: _Miscellaneous Sonnets_, part i.28.]

But she heard our steps, and her face awoke.

"Is mamma come?"

"Yes, my darling. I am here," said her mother. "How do you feel?"

"Perfectly well, mamma, thank you. Now, papa!"

"One moment more, my love. Now, Percivale."

We carried her to the spot we had agreed upon, and while we held her a
little inclined that she might see the better, her mother undid the bandage
from her head.

"Hold your hands over her eyes, a little way from them," I said to her as
she untied the handkerchief, "that the light may reach them by degrees, and
not blind her."

Ethelwyn did so for a few moments, then removed them. Still for a moment or
two more, it was plain from her look of utter bewilderment, that all was a
confused mass of light and colour. Then she gave a little cry, and to my
astonishment, almost fear, half rose to a sitting posture. One moment more
and she laid herself gently back, and wept and sobbed.

And now I may admit my reader to a share, though at best but a dim reflex
in my poor words, of the glory that made her weep.

Through the gothic-arched door in the battlemented wall, which stood on the
very edge of the precipitous descent, so that nothing of the descent was
seen, and the door was as a framework to the picture, Connie saw a great
gulf at her feet, full to the brim of a splendour of light and colour.
Before her rose the great ruins of rock and castle, the ruin of rock with
castle; rough stone below, clear green happy grass above, even to the verge
of the abrupt and awful precipice; over it the summer sky so clear that it
must have been clarified by sorrow and thought; at the foot of the rocks,
hundreds of feet below, the blue waters breaking in white upon the dark
gray sands; all full of the gladness of the sun overflowing in speechless
delight, and reflected in fresh gladness from stone and water and flower,
like new springs of light rippling forth from the earth itself to swell the
universal tide of glory--all this seen through the narrow gothic archway of
a door in a wall--up--down--on either hand. But the main marvel was the
look sheer below into the abyss full of light and air and colour, its sides
lined with rock and grass, and its bottom lined with blue ripples and sand.
Was it any wonder that my Connie should cry aloud when the vision dawned
upon her, and then weep to ease a heart ready to burst with delight? "O
Lord God," I said, almost involuntarily, "thou art very rich. Thou art the
one poet, the one maker. We worship thee. Make but our souls as full of
glory in thy sight as this chasm is to our eyes glorious with the forms
which thou hast cloven and carved out of nothingness, and we shall be
worthy to worship thee, O Lord, our God." For I was carried beyond myself
with delight, and with sympathy with Connie's delight and with the calm
worship of gladness in my wife's countenance. But when my eye fell on
Wynnie, I saw a trouble mingled with her admiration, a self-accusation, I
think, that she did not and could not enjoy it more; and when I turned from
her, there were the eyes of Percivale fixed on me in wonderment; and for
the moment I felt as David must have felt when, in his dance of undignified
delight that he had got the ark home again, he saw the contemptuous eyes of
Michal fixed on him from the window. But I could not leave it so. I said to
him--coldly I daresay:

"Excuse me, Mr. Percivale; I forgot for the moment that I was not amongst
my own family."

Percivale took his hat off.

"Forgive my seeming rudeness, Mr. Walton. I was half-envying and
half-wondering. You would not be surprised at my unconscious behaviour
if you had seen as much of the wrong side of the stuff as I have seen in
London."

I had some idea of what he meant; but this was no time to enter upon a
discussion. I could only say--

"My heart was full, Mr. Percivale, and I let it overflow."

"Let me at least share in its overflow," he rejoined, and nothing more
passed on the subject.

For the next ten minutes we stood in absolute silence. We had set Connie
down on the grass again, but propped up so that she could see through the
doorway. And she lay in still ecstasy. But there was more to be seen ere
we descended. There was the rest of the little islet with its crop of
down-grass, on which the horses of all the knights of King Arthur's round
table might have fed for a week--yes, for a fortnight, without, by any
means, encountering the short commons of war. There were the ruins of the
castle so built of plates of the laminated stone of the rocks on which they
stood, and so woven in or more properly incorporated with the outstanding
rocks themselves, that in some parts I found it impossible to tell which
was building and which was rock--the walls themselves seeming like a growth
out of the island itself, so perfectly were they in harmony with, and in
kind the same as, the natural ground upon which and of which they had
been constructed. And this would seem to me to be the perfection of
architecture. The work of man's hands should be so in harmony with the
place where it stands that it must look as if it had grown out of the soil.
But the walls were in some parts so thin that one wondered how they could
have stood so long. They must have been built before the time of any
formidable artillery--enough only for defence from arrows. But then the
island was nowhere commanded, and its own steep cliffs would be more easily
defended than any erections upon it. Clearly the intention was that no
enemy should thereon find rest for the sole of his foot; for if he was able
to land, farewell to the notion of any further defence. Then there was
outside the walls the little chapel--such a tiny chapel! of which little
more than the foundation remained, with the ruins of the altar still
standing, and outside the chancel, nestling by its wall, a coffin hollowed
in the rock; then the churchyard a little way off full of graves, which, I
presume, would have vanished long ago were it not that the very graves were
founded on the rock. There still stood old worn-out headstones of thin
slate, but no memorials were left. Then there was the fragment of arched
passage underground laid open to the air in the centre of the islet; and
last, and grandest of all, the awful edges of the rock, broken by time, and
carved by the winds and the waters into grotesque shapes and threatening
forms. Over all the surface of the islet we carried Connie, and from three
sides of this sea-fortress she looked abroad over "the Atlantic's level
powers." It blew a gentle ethereal breeze on the top; but had there been
such a wind as I have since stood against on that fearful citadel of
nature, I should have been in terror lest we should all be blown, into the
deep. Over the edge she peeped at the strange fantastic needle-rock, and
round the corner she peeped to see Wynnie and her mother seated in what
they call Arthur's chair--a canopied hollow wrought in the plated rock by
the mightiest of all solvents--air and water; till at length it was time
that we should take our leave of the few sheep that fed over the place, and
issuing by the gothic door, wind away down the dangerous path to the safe
ground below.

"I think we had better tie up your eyes again, Connie?" I said.

"Why?" she asked, in wonderment. "There's nothing higher yet, is there?"

"No, my love. If there were, you would hardly be able for it to-day, I
should think. It is only to keep you from being frightened at the precipice
as you go down."

"But I sha'n't be frightened, papa."

"How do you know that?"

"Because you are going to carry me."

"But what if I should slip? I might, you know."

"I don't mind. I sha'n't mind being tumbled over the precipice, if you do
it. I sha'n't be to blame, and I'm sure you won't, papa." Then she drew my
head down and whispered in my ear, "If I get as much more by being killed,
as I have got by having my poor back hurt, I'm sure it will be well worth
it."

I tried to smile a reply, for I could not speak one. We took her just as
she was, and with some tremor on my part, but not a single slip, we bore
her down the winding path, her face showing all the time that, instead of
being afraid, she was in a state of ecstatic delight. My wife, I could see,
was nervous, however; and she breathed a sigh of relief when we were once
more at the foot.

"Well, I'm glad that's over," she said.

"So am I," I returned, as we set down the litter.

"Poor papa! I've pulled his arms to pieces! and Mr. Percivale's too!"

Percivale answered first by taking up a huge piece of stone. Then turning
towards her, he said, "Look here, Miss Connie;" and flung it far out from
the isthmus on which we were resting. We heard it strike on a rock below,
and then fall in a shower of fragments. "My arms are all right, you see,"
he said.

Meantime, Wynnie had scrambled down to the shore, where we had not yet
been. In a few minutes, we still lingering, she came running back to us out
of breath with the news:

"Papa! Mr. Percivale! there's such a grand cave down there! It goes right
through under the island."

Connie looked so eager, that Percivale and I glanced at each other, and
without a word, lifted her, and followed Wynnie. It was a little way
that we had to carry her down, but it was very broken, and insomuch more
difficult than the other. At length we stood in the cavern. What a contrast
to the vision overhead!--nothing to be seen but the cool, dark vault of the
cave, long and winding, with the fresh seaweed lying on its pebbly floor,
and its walls wet with the last tide, for every tide rolled through in
rising and falling--the waters on the opposite sides of the islet greeting
through this cave; the blue shimmer of the rising sea, and the forms of
huge outlying rocks, looking in at the further end, where the roof rose
like a grand cathedral arch; and the green gleam of veins rich with copper,
dashing and streaking the darkness in gloomy little chapels, where the
floor of heaped-up pebbles rose and rose within till it met the descending
roof. It was like a going-down from Paradise into the grave--but a cool,
friendly, brown-lighted grave, which even in its darkest recesses bore some
witness to the wind of God outside, in the occasional ripple of shadowed
light, from the play of the sun on the waves, that, fleeted and reflected,
wandered across its jagged roof. But we dared not keep Connie long in the
damp coolness; and I have given my reader quite enough of description for
one hour's reading. He can scarcely be equal to more.

My invalids had now beheld the sea in such a different aspect, that I no
longer feared to go back to Kilkhaven. Thither we went three days after,
and at my invitation, Percivale took Turner's place in the carriage.






CHAPTER XI.

JOE AND HIS TROUBLE.





How bright the yellow shores of Kilkhaven looked after the dark sands of
Tintagel! But how low and tame its highest cliffs after the mighty rampart
of rocks which there face the sea like a cordon of fierce guardians! It was
pleasant to settle down again in what had begun to look like home, and was
indeed made such by the boisterous welcome of Dora and the boys. Connie's
baby crowed aloud, and stretched forth her chubby arms at sight of her. The
wind blew gently around us, full both of the freshness of the clean waters
and the scents of the down-grasses, to welcome us back. And the dread
vision of the shore had now receded so far into the past, that it was no
longer able to hurt.

We had called at the blacksmith's house on our way home, and found that he
was so far better as to be working at his forge again. His mother said he
was used to such attacks, and soon got over them. I, however, feared that
they indicated an approaching break-down.

"Indeed, sir," she said, "Joe might be well enough if he liked. It's all
his own fault."

"What do you mean?" I asked. "I cannot believe that your son is in any way
guilty of his own illness."

"He's a well-behaved lad, my Joe," she answered; "but he hasn't learned
what I had to learn long ago."

"What is that?" I asked.

"To make up his mind, and stick to it. To do one thing or the other."

She was a woman with a long upper lip and a judicial face, and as she
spoke, her lip grew longer and longer; and when she closed her mouth in
mark of her own resolution, that lip seemed to occupy two-thirds of all her
face under the nose.

"And what is it he won't do?"

"I don't mind whether he does it or not, if he would only
make--up--his--mind--and--stick--to--it."

"What is it you want him to do, then?"

"I don't want him to do it, I'm sure. It's no good to me--and wouldn't be
much to him, that I'll be bound. Howsomever, he must please himself."

I thought it not very wonderful that he looked gloomy, if there was no more
sunshine for him at home than his mother's face indicated. Few things can
make a man so strong and able for his work as a sun indoors, whose rays are
smiles, ever ready to shine upon him when he opens the door,--the face of
wife or mother or sister. Now his mother's face certainly was not sunny.
No doubt it must have shone upon him when he was a baby. God has made that
provision for babies, who need sunshine so much that a mother's face cannot
help being sunny to them: why should the sunshine depart as the child grows
older?

"Well, I suppose I must not ask. But I fear your son is very far from well.
Such attacks do not often occur without serious mischief somewhere. And if
there is anything troubling him, he is less likely to get over it."

"If he would let somebody make up his mind for him, and then stick to it--"

"O, but that is impossible, you know. A man must make up his own mind."

"That's just what he won't do."

All the time she looked naughty, only after a self-righteous fashion. It
was evident that whatever was the cause of it, she was not in sympathy with
her son, and therefore could not help him out of any difficulty he might
be in. I made no further attempt to learn from her the cause of her son's
discomfort, clearly a deeper cause than his illness. In passing his
workshop, we stopped for a moment, and I made an arrangement to meet him at
the church the next day.

I was there before him, and found that he had done a good deal since we
left. Little remained except to get the keys put to rights, and the rods
attached to the cranks in the box. To-day he was to bring a carpenter, a
cousin of his own, with him.

They soon arrived, and a small consultation followed. The cousin was a
bright-eyed, cheruby-cheeked little man, with a ready smile and white
teeth: I thought he might help me to understand what was amiss in Joseph's
affairs. But I would not make the attempt except openly. I therefore said
half in a jocular fashion, as with gloomy, self-withdrawn countenance the
smith was fitting one loop into another in two of his iron rods,--

"I wish we could get this cousin of yours to look a little more cheerful.
You would think he had quarrelled with the sunshine."

The carpenter showed his white teeth between his rosy lips.

"Well, sir, if you'll excuse me, you see my cousin Joe is not like the rest
of us. He's a religious man, is Joe."

"But I don't see how that should make him miserable. It hasn't made me
miserable. I hope I'm a religious man myself. It makes me happy every day
of my life."

"Ah, well," returned the carpenter, in a thoughtful tone, as he worked away
gently to get the inside out of the oak-chest without hurting it, "I don't
say it's the religion, for I don't know; but perhaps it's the way he takes
it up. He don't look after hisself enough; he's always thinking about other
people, you see, sir; and it seems to me, sir, that if you don't look after
yourself, why, who is to look after you? That's common sense, _I_ think."

It was a curious contrast--the merry friendly face, which shone
good-fellowship to all mankind, accusing the sombre, pale, sad, severe,
even somewhat bitter countenance beside him, of thinking too much about
other people, and too little about himself. Of course it might be correct
in a way. There is all the difference between a comfortable, healthy
inclination, and a pained, conscientious principle. It was a smile very
unlike his cousin's with which Joe heard his remarks on himself.

"But," I said, "you will allow, at least, that if everybody would take
Joe's way of it, there would then be no occasion for taking care of
yourself."

"I don't see why, sir."

"Why, because everybody would take care of everybody else."

"Not so well, I doubt, sir."

"Yes, and a great deal better."

"At any rate, that's a long way off; and mean time, _who's_ to take care of
the odd man like Joe there, that don't look after hisself?"

"Why, God, of course."

"Well, there's just where I'm out. I don't know nothing about that branch,
sir."

I saw a grateful light mount up in Joe's gloomy eyes as I spoke thus
upon his side of the question. He said nothing, however; and his cousin
volunteering no further information, I did not push any advantage I might
have gained.

At noon I made them leave their work, and come home with me to have their
dinner; they hoped to finish the job before dusk. Harry Cobb and I dropped
behind, and Joe Harper walked on in front, apparently sunk in meditation.

Scarcely were we out of the churchyard, and on the road leading to the
rectory, when I saw the sexton's daughter meeting us. She had almost come
up to Joe before he saw her, for his gaze was bent on the ground, and he
started. They shook hands in what seemed to me an odd, constrained, yet
familiar fashion, and then stood as if they wanted to talk, but without
speaking. Harry and I passed, both with a nod of recognition to the young
woman, but neither of us had the ill-manners to look behind. I glanced at
Harry, and he answered me with a queer look. When we reached the turning
that would hide them from our view, I looked back almost involuntarily,
and there they were still standing. But before we reached the door of the
rectory, Joe got up with us.

There was something remarkable in the appearance of Agnes Coombes, the
sexton's daughter. She was about six-and-twenty, I should imagine, the
youngest of the family, with a sallow, rather sickly complexion, somewhat
sorrowful eyes, a smile rare and sweet, a fine figure, tall and slender,
and a graceful gait. I now saw, I thought, a good hair's-breadth further
into the smith's affairs. Beyond the hair's-breadth, however, all was dark.
But I saw likewise that the well of truth, whence I might draw the whole
business, must be the girl's mother.

After the men had had their dinner and rested a while, they went back to
the church, and I went to the sexton's cottage. I found the old man seated
at the window, with his pot of beer on the sill, and an empty plate beside
it.

"Come in, sir," he said, rising, as I put my head in at the door. "The
mis'ess ben't in, but she'll be here in a few minutes."

"O, it's of no consequence," I said. "Are they all well?"

"All comfortable, sir. It be fine dry weather for them, this, sir. It be in
winter it be worst for them."

"But it's a snug enough shelter you've got here. It seems such, anyhow;
though, to be sure, it is the blasts of winter that find out the weak
places both in house and body."

"It ben't the wind touch _them_" he said; "they be safe enough from the
wind. It be the wet, sir. There ben't much snow in these parts; but when it
du come, that be very bad for them, poor things!"

Could it be that he was harping on the old theme again?

"But at least this cottage keeps out the wet," I said. "If not, we must
have it seen to."

"This cottage du well enough, sir. It'll last my time, anyhow."

"Then why are you pitying your family for having to live in it?"

"Bless your heart, sir! It's not them. They du well enough. It's my people
out yonder. You've got the souls to look after, and I've got the bodies.
That's what it be, sir. To be sure!"

The last exclamation was uttered in a tone of impatient surprise at my
stupidity in giving all my thoughts and sympathies to the living, and none
to the dead. I pursued the subject no further, but as I lay in bed that
night, it began to dawn upon me as a lovable kind of hallucination in which
the man indulged. He too had an office in the Church of God, and he would
magnify that office. He could not bear that there should be no further
outcome of his labour; that the burying of the dead out of sight should be
"the be-all and the end-all." He was God's vicar, the gardener in God's
Acre, as the Germans call the churchyard. When all others had forsaken the
dead, he remained their friend, caring for what little comfort yet remained
possible to them. Hence in all changes of air and sky above, he attributed
to them some knowledge of the same, and some share in their consequences
even down in the darkness of the tomb. It was his way of keeping up the
relation between the living and the dead. Finding I made him no reply, he
took up the word again.

"You've got your part, sir, and I've got mine. You up into the pulpit, and
I down into the grave. But it'll be all the same by and by."

"I hope it will," I answered. "But when you do go down into your own grave,
you'll know a good deal less about it than you do now. You'll find you've
got other things to think about. But here comes your wife. She'll talk
about the living rather than the dead."

"That's natural, sir. She brought 'em to life, and I buried 'em--at least,
best part of 'em. If only I had the other two safe down with the rest!"

I remembered what the old woman had told me--that she had two boys _in_ the
sea; and I knew therefore what he meant. He regarded his drowned boys as
still tossed about in the weary wet cold ocean, and would have gladly laid
them to rest in the warm dry churchyard.

He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye with the back of his hand, and
saying, "Well, I must be off to my gardening," left me with his wife. I saw
then that, humorist as the old man might be, his humour, like that of all
true humorists, lay close about the wells of weeping.

"The old man seems a little out of sorts," I said to his wife.

"Well, sir," she answered, with her usual gentleness, a gentleness which
obedient suffering had perfected, "this be the day he buried our Nancy,
this day two years; and to-day Agnes be come home from her work poorly; and
the two things together they've upset him a bit."

"I met Agnes coming this way. Where is she?"

"I believe she be in the churchyard, sir. I've been to the doctor about
her."

"I hope it's nothing serious."

"I hope not, sir; but you see--four on 'em, sir!"

"Well, she's in God's hands, you know."

"That she be, sir."

"I want to ask you about something, Mrs. Coombes."

"What be that, sir? If I can tell, I will, you may be sure, sir."

"I want to know what's the matter with Joe Harper, the blacksmith."

"They du say it be a consumption, sir."

"But what has he got on his mind?"

"He's got nothing on his mind, sir. He be as good a by as ever stepped, I
assure you, sir."

"But I am sure there is something or other on his mind. He's not so happy
as he should be. He's not the man, it seems to me, to be unhappy because
he's ill. A man like him would not be miserable because he was going to
die. It might make him look sad sometimes, but not gloomy as he looks."

"Well, sir, I believe you be right, and perhaps I know summat. But it's
part guessing.--I believe my Agnes and Joe Harper are as fond upon one
another as any two in the county."

"Are they not going to be married then?"

"There be the pint, sir. I don't believe Joe ever said a word o' the sort
to Aggy. She never could ha' kep it from me, sir."

"Why doesn't he then?"

"That's the pint again, sir. All as knows him says it's because he be in
such bad health, and he thinks he oughtn't to go marrying with one foot in
the grave. He never said so to me; but I think very likely that be it."

"For that matter, Mrs. Coombes, we've all got one foot in the grave, I
think."

"That be very true, sir."

"And what does your daughter think?"

"I believe she thinks the same. And so they go on talking to each other,
quiet-like, like old married folks, not like lovers at all, sir. But I
can't help fancying it have something to do with my Aggy's pale face."

"And something to do with Joe's pale face too, Mrs. Coombes," I said.
"Thank you. You've told me more than I expected. It explains everything. I
must have it out with Joe now."

"O deary me! sir, don't go and tell him I said anything, as if I wanted him
to marry my daughter."

"Don't you be afraid. I'll take good care of that. And don't fancy I'm fond
of meddling with other people's affairs. But this is a case in which I
ought to do something. Joe's a fine fellow."

"That he be, sir. I couldn't wish a better for a son-in-law."

I put on my hat.

"You won't get me into no trouble with Joe, will ye, sir!"

"Indeed I will not, Mrs. Coombes. I should be doing a great deal more harm
than good if I said a word to make him doubt you."

I went straight to the church. There were the two men working away in the
shadowy tower, and there was Agnes standing beside, knitting like her
mother, so quiet, so solemn even, that it did indeed look as if she were a
long-married wife, hovering about her husband at his work. Harry was saying
something to her as I went in, but when they saw me they were silent, and
Agnes gently withdrew.

"Do you think you will get through to-night?" I asked.

"Sure of it, sir," answered Harry.

"You shouldn't be sure of anything, Harry. We are told in the New Testament
that we ought to say _If the Lord will_," said Joe.

"Now, Joe, you're too hard upon Harry," I said. "You don't think that the
Bible means to pull a man up every step like that, till he's afraid to
speak a word. It was about a long journey and a year's residence that the
Apostle James was speaking."

"No doubt, sir. But the principle's the same. Harry can no more be sure of
finishing his work before it be dark, than those people could be of going
their long journey."

"That is perfectly true. But you are taking the letter for the spirit, and
that, I suspect, in more ways than one. The religion does not lie in not
being sure about anything, but in a loving desire that the will of God in
the matter, whatever it be, may be done. And if Harry has not learned yet
to care about the will of God, what is the good of coming down upon him
that way, as if that would teach him in the least. When he loves God, then,
and not till then, will he care about his will. Nor does the religion lie
in saying, _if the Lord will_, every time anything is to be done. It is a
most dangerous thing to use sacred words often. It makes them so common to
our ear that at length, when used most solemnly, they have not half the
effect they ought to have, and that is a serious loss. What the Apostle
means is, that we should always be in the mood of looking up to God and
having regard to his will, not always writing D.V. for instance, as so many
do--most irreverently, I think--using a Latin contraction for the beautiful
words, just as if they were a charm, or as if God would take offence
if they did not make the salvo of acknowledgment. It seems to me quite
heathenish. Our hearts ought ever to be in the spirit of those words; our
lips ought to utter them rarely. Besides, there are some things a man might
be pretty sure the Lord wills."

"It sounds fine, sir; but I'm not sure that I understand what you mean to
say. It sounds to me like a darkening of wisdom."

I saw that I had irritated him, and so had in some measure lost ground. But
Harry struck in--

"How _can_ you say that now, Joe? _I_ know what the parson means well
enough, and everybody knows I ain't got half the brains you've got."

"The reason is, Harry, that he's got something in his head that stands in
the way."

"And there's nothing in my head _to_ stand in the way!" returned Harry,
laughing.

This made me laugh too, and even Joe could not help a sympathetic grin. By
this time it was getting dark.

"I'm afraid, Harry, after all, you won't get through to-night."

"I begin to think so too, sir. And there's Joe saying, 'I told you so,'
over and over to himself, though he won't say it out like a man."

Joe answered only with another grin.

"I tell you what it is, Harry," I said--"you must come again on Monday. And
on your way home, just look in and tell Joe's mother that I have kept him
over to-morrow. The change will do him good."

"No, sir, that can't he. I haven't got a clean shirt."

"You can have a shirt of mine," I said. "But I'm afraid you'll want your
Sunday clothes."

"I'll bring them for you, Joe--before you're up," interposed Harry. "And
then you can go to church with Aggy Coombes, you know."

Here was just what I wanted.

"Hold your tongue, Harry," said Joe angrily. "You're talking of what you
don't know anything about."

"Well, Joe, I ben't a fool, if I ben't so religious as you be. You ben't
a bad fellow, though you be a Methodist, and I ben't a fool, though I be
Harry Cobb."

"What do you mean, Harry? Do hold your tongue."

"Well, I'll tell you what I mean first, and then I'll hold my tongue. I
mean this--that nobody with two eyes, or one eye, for that matter, in his
head, could help seeing the eyes you and Aggy make at each other, and why
you don't port your helm and board her--I won't say it's more than I know,
but I du say it to be more than I think be fair to the young woman."

"Hold your tongue, Harry."

"I said I would when I'd answered you as to what I meaned. So no more
at present; but I'll be over with your clothes afore you're up in the
morning."

As Harry spoke he was busy gathering his tools.

"They won't be in the way, will they, sir?" he said, as he heaped them
together in the furthest corner of the tower.

"Not in the least," I returned. "If I had my way, all the tools used in
building the church should be carved on the posts and pillars of it, to
indicate the sacredness of labour, and the worship of God that lies, not in
building the church merely, but in every honest trade honestly pursued for
the good of mankind and the need of the workman. For a necessity of God is
laid upon every workman as well as on St. Paul. Only St. Paul saw it, and
every workman doesn't, Harry."

"Thank you, sir. I like that way of it. I almost think I could be a little
bit religious after your way of it, sir."

"Almost, Harry!" growled Joe--not unkindly.

"Now, you hold your tongue, Joe," I said. "Leave Harry to me. You may take
him, if you like, after I've done with him."

Laughing merrily, but making no other reply than a hearty good-night, Harry
strode away out of the church, and Joe and I went home together.

When he had had his tea, I asked him to go out with me for a walk.

The sun was shining aslant upon the downs from over the sea. We rose out of
the shadowy hollow to the sunlit brow. I was a little in advance of Joe.
Happening to turn, I saw the light full on his head and face, while the
rest of his body had not yet emerged from the shadow.

"Stop, Joe," I said. "I want to see you so for a moment."

He stood--a little surprised.

"You look just like a man rising from the dead, Joe," I said.

"I don't know what you mean, sir," he returned.

"I will describe yourself to you. Your head and face are full of sunlight,
the rest of your body is still buried in the shadow. Look; I will stand
where you are now; and you come here. You will soon see what I mean."

We changed places. Joe stared for a moment. Then his face brightened.

"I see what you mean, sir," he said. "I fancy you don't mean the
resurrection of the body, but the resurrection of righteousness."

"I do, Joe. Did it ever strike you that the whole history of the Christian
life is a series of such resurrections? Every time a man bethinks himself
that he is not walking in the light, that he has been forgetting himself,
and must repent, that he has been asleep and must awake, that he has been
letting his garments trail, and must gird up the loins of his mind--every
time this takes place, there is a resurrection in the world. Yes, Joe; and
every time that a man finds that his heart is troubled, that he is not
rejoicing in God, a resurrection must follow--a resurrection out of the
night of troubled thoughts into the gladness of the truth. For the truth
is, and ever was, and ever must be, gladness, however much the souls on
which it shines may be obscured by the clouds of sorrow, troubled by the
thunders of fear, or shot through with the lightnings of pain. Now, Joe,
will you let me tell you what you are like--I do not know your thoughts; I
am only judging from your words and looks?"

"You may if you like, sir," answered Joe, a little sulkily. But I was not
to be repelled.

I stood up in the sunlight, so that my eyes caught only about half the
sun's disc. Then I bent my face towards the earth.

"What part of me is the light shining on now, Joe?"

"Just the top of your head," answered he.

"There, then," I returned, "that is just what you are like--a man with the
light on his head, but not on his face. And why not on your face? Because
you hold your head down."

"Isn't it possible, sir, that a man might lose the light on his face, as
you put it, by doing his duty?"

"That is a difficult question," I replied. "I must think before I answer
it."

"I mean," added Joe--"mightn't his duty be a painful one?"

"Yes. But I think that would rather etherealise than destroy the light.
Behind the sorrow would spring a yet greater light from the very duty
itself. I have expressed myself badly, but you will see what I mean.--To
be frank with you, Joe, I do not see that light in your face. Therefore
I think something must be wrong with you. Remember a good man is not
necessarily in the right. St. Peter was a good man, yet our Lord called him
Satan--and meant it of course, for he never said what he did not mean."

"How can I be wrong when all my trouble comes from doing my duty--nothing
else, as far as I know?"

"Then," I replied, a sudden light breaking in on my mind, "I doubt whether
what you suppose to be your duty can be your duty. If it were, I do not
think it would make you so miserable. At least--I may be wrong, but I
venture to think so."

"What is a man to go by, then? If he thinks a thing is his duty, is he not
to do it?"

"Most assuredly--until he knows better. But it is of the greatest
consequence whether the supposed duty be the will of God or the invention
of one's own fancy or mistaken judgment. A real duty is always something
right in itself. The duty a man makes his for the time, by supposing it to
be a duty, may be something quite wrong in itself. The duty of a Hindoo
widow is to burn herself on the body of her husband. But that duty lasts no
longer than till she sees that, not being the will of God, it is not her
duty. A real duty, on the other hand, is a necessity of the human nature,
without seeing and doing which a man can never attain to the truth and
blessedness of his own being. It was the duty of the early hermits to
encourage the growth of vermin upon their bodies, for they supposed that
was pleasing to God; but they could not fare so well as if they had seen
the truth that the will of God was cleanliness. And there may be far more
serious things done by Christian people against the will of God, in the
fancy of doing their duty, than such a trifle as swarming with worms. In a
word, thinking a thing is your duty makes it your duty only till you know
better. And the prime duty of every man is to seek and find, that he may
do, the will of God."

"But do you think, sir, that a man is likely to be doing what he ought not,
if he is doing what he don't like?"

"Not so likely, I allow. But there may be ambition in it. A man must not
want to be better than the right. That is the delusion of the anchorite--a
delusion in which the man forgets the rights of others for the sake of his
own sanctity."

"It might be for the sake of another person, and not for the person's own
sake at all."

"It might be; but except it were the will of God for that other person, it
would be doing him or her a real injury."

We were coming gradually towards what I wanted to make the point in
question. I wished him to tell me all about it himself, however, for I
knew that while advice given on request is generally disregarded, to offer
advice unasked is worthy only of a fool."

"But how are you to know the will of God in every case?" asked Joe.

"By looking at the general laws of life, and obeying them--except there be
anything special in a particular case to bring it under a higher law."

"Ah! but that be just what there is here."

"Well, my dear fellow, that may be; but the special conduct may not be
right for the special case for all that. The speciality of the case may not
be even sufficient to take it from under the ordinary rule. But it is of no
use talking generals. Let us come to particulars. If you can trust me, tell
me all about it, and we may be able to let some light in. I am sure there
is darkness somewhere."

"I will turn it over in my mind, sir; and if I can bring myself to talk
about it, I will. I would rather tell you than anyone else."

I said no more. We watched a glorious sunset--there never was a grander
place for sunsets--and went home.






CHAPTER XII.

A SMALL ADVENTURE.





The next morning Harry came with the clothes. But Joe did not go to church.
Neither did Agnes make her appearance that morning. They were both present
at the evening service, however.

When we came out of church, it was cloudy and dark, and the wind was
blowing cold from the sea. The sky was covered with one cloud, but the
waves tossing themselves against the rocks, flashed whiteness out of the
general gloom. As the tide rose the wind increased. It was a night of surly
temper--hard and gloomy. Not a star cracked the blue above--there was no
blue; and the wind was _gurly_; I once heard that word in Scotland, and
never forgot it.

After one of our usual gatherings in Connie's room, which were much shorter
here because of the evening service in summer, I withdrew till supper
should be ready.

Now I have always had, as I think I have incidentally stated before, a
certain peculiar pleasure in the surly aspects of nature. When I was a
young man this took form in opposition and defiance; since I had begun
to grow old the form had changed into a sense of safety. I welcomed such
aspects, partly at least, because they roused my faith to look through and
beyond the small region of human conditions in which alone the storm can be
and blow, and thus induced a feeling like that of the child who lies in his
warm crib and listens to the howling of one of these same storms outside
the strong-built house which yet trembles at its fiercer onsets: the house
is not in danger; or, if it be, that is his father's business, not
his. Hence it came that, after supper, I put on my great-coat and
travelling-cap, and went out into the ill-tempered night--speaking of it in
its human symbolism.

I meant to have a stroll down to the breakwater, of which I have yet said
little, but which was a favourite resort, both of myself and my children.
At the further end of it, always covered at high water, was an outlying
cluster of low rocks, in the heart of which the lord of the manor, a
noble-hearted Christian gentleman of the old school, had constructed a bath
of graduated depth--an open-air swimming-pool--the only really safe place
for men who were swimmers to bathe in. Thither I was in the habit of taking
my two little men every morning, and bathing with them, that I might
develop the fish that was in them; for, as George Herbert says:

  "Man is everything,
  And more: he is a tree, yet bears no fruit;
  A beast, yet is, or should be, more;"

and he might have gone on to say that he is, or should be, a fish as well.

It will seem strange to any reader who can recall the position of my
Connie's room, that the nearest way to the breakwater should be through
that room; but so it was. I mention the fact because I want my readers to
understand a certain peculiarity of the room. By the side of the window
which looked out upon the breakwater was a narrow door, apparently of a
closet or cupboard, which communicated, however, with a narrow, curving,
wood-built passage, leading into a little wooden hut, the walls of
which were by no means impervious to the wind, for they were formed of
outside-planks, with the bark still upon them. From this hut one or two
little windows looked seaward, and a door led out on the bit of sward in
which lay the flower-bed under Connie's window. From this spot again a door
in the low wall and thick hedge led out on the downs, where a path wound
along the cliffs that formed the side of the bay, till, descending under
the storm-tower, it brought you to the root of the breakwater.

This mole stretched its long strong low back to a rock a good way out,
breaking the force of the waves, and rendering the channel of a small
river, that here flowed into the sea across the sands from the mouth of
the canal, a refuge from the Atlantic. But it was a roadway often hard to
reach. In fair weather even, the wind falling as the vessel rounded the
point of the breakwater into the calm of the projecting headlands, the
under-current would sometimes dash her helpless on the rocks. During
all this heavenly summer there had been no thought or fear of any such
disaster. The present night was a hint of what weather would yet come.

When I went into Connie's room, I found her lying in bed a very picture of
peace. But my entrance destroyed the picture.

"Papa," she said, "why have you got your coat on? Surely you are not going
out to-night. The wind is blowing dreadfully."

"Not very dreadfully, Connie. It blew much worse the night we found your
baby."

"But it is very dark."

"I allow that; but there is a glimmer from the sea. I am only going on the
breakwater for a few minutes. You know I like a stormy night quite as much
as a fine one."

"I shall be miserable till you come home, papa."

"Nonsense, Connie. You don't think your father hasn't sense to take care of
himself! Or rather, Connie, for I grant that is poor ground of comfort, you
don't think I can go anywhere without my Father to take care of me?"

"But there is no occasion--is there, papa?"

"Do you think I should be better pleased with my boys if they shrunk from
everything involving the least possibility of danger because there was no
occasion for it? That is just the way to make cowards. And I am certain God
would not like his children to indulge in such moods of self-preservation
as that. He might well be ashamed of them. The fearful are far more likely
to meet with accidents than the courageous. But really, Connie, I am almost
ashamed of talking so. It is all your fault. There is positively no ground
for apprehension, and I hope you won't spoil my walk by the thought that my
foolish little girl is frightened."

"I will be good--indeed I will, papa," she said, holding up her mouth to
kiss me.

I left her room, and went through the wooden passage into the bark hut. The
wind roared about it, shook it, and pawed it, and sung and whistled in the
chinks of the planks. I went out and shut the door. That moment the wind
seized upon me, and I had to fight with it. When I got on the path leading
along the edge of the downs, I felt something lighter than any feather fly
in my face. When I put up my hand, I found my cheek wet. Again and again I
was thus assailed, but when I got to the breakwater I found what it was.
They were flakes of foam, bubbles worked up into little masses of adhering
thousands, which the wind blew off the waters and across the downs,
carrying some of them miles inland. When I reached the breakwater, and
looked along its ridge through the darkness of the night, I was bewildered
to see a whiteness lying here and there in a great patch upon its top. They
were but accumulations of these foam-flakes, like soap-suds, lying so thick
that I expected to have to wade through them, only they vanished at the
touch of my feet. Till then I had almost believed it was snow I saw. On
the edge of the waves, in quieter spots, they lay like yeast, foaming and
working. Now and then a little rush of water from a higher wave swept over
the top of the broad breakwater, as with head bowed sideways against the
wind, I struggled along towards the rock at its end; but I said to myself,
"The tide is falling fast, and salt water hurts nobody," and struggled on
over the huge rough stones of the mighty heap, outside which the waves were
white with wrath, inside which they had fallen asleep, only heaving with
the memory of their late unrest. I reached the tall rock at length, climbed
the rude stair leading up to the flagstaff, and looked abroad, if looking
it could be called, into the thick dark. But the wind blew so strong on the
top that I was glad to descend. Between me and the basin where yesterday
morning I had bathed in still water and sunshine with my boys, rolled
the deathly waves. I wandered on the rough narrow space yet uncovered,
stumbling over the stones and the rocky points between which they lay,
stood here and there half-meditating, and at length, finding a sheltered
nook in a mass of rock, sat with the wind howling and the waves bursting
around me. There I fell into a sort of brown study--almost a half-sleep.

But I had not sat long before I came broad awake, for I heard voices, low
and earnest. One I recognised as Joe's voice. The other was a woman's.
I could not tell what they said for some time, and therefore felt no
immediate necessity for disclosing my proximity, but sat debating with
myself whether I should speak to them or not. At length, in a lull of the
wind, I heard the woman say--I could fancy with a sigh--

"I'm sure you'll du what is right, Joe. Don't 'e think o' me, Joe."

"It's just of you that I du think, Aggy. You know it ben't for my sake.
Surely you know that?"

There was no answer for a moment. I was still doubting what I had best
do--go away quietly or let them know I was there--when she spoke again.
There was a momentary lull now in the noises of both wind and water, and I
heard what she said well enough.

"It ben't for me to contradict you, Joe. But I don't think you be going to
die. You be no worse than last year. Be you now, Joe?"

It flashed across me how once before, a stormy night and darkness had
brought me close to a soul in agony. Then I was in agony myself; now the
world was all fair and hopeful around me--the portals of the world beyond
ever opening wider as I approached them, and letting out more of their
glory to gladden the path to their threshold. But here were two souls
straying in a mist which faith might roll away, and leave them walking in
the light. The moment was come. I must speak.

"Joe!" I called out.

"Who's there?" he cried; and I heard him start to his feet.

"Only Mr. Walton. Where are you?"

"We can't be very far off," he answered, not in a tone of any pleasure at
finding me so nigh.

I rose, and peering about through the darkness, found that they were a
little higher up on the same rock by which I was sheltered.

"You mustn't think," I said, "that I have been eavesdropping. I had no idea
anyone was near me till I heard your voices, and I did not hear a word till
just the last sentence or two."

"I saw someone go up the Castle-rock," said Joe; "but I thought he was gone
away again. It will be a lesson to me."

"I'm no tell-tale, Joe," I returned, as I scrambled up the rock. "You will
have no cause to regret that I happened to overhear a little. I am sure,
Joe, you will never say anything you need be ashamed of. But what I heard
was sufficient to let me into the secret of your trouble. Will you let me
talk to Joe, Agnes? I've been young myself, and, to tell the truth, I don't
think I'm old yet."

"I am sure, sir," she answered, "you won't be hard on Joe and me. I don't
suppose there be anything wrong in liking each other, though we can't
be--married."

She spoke in a low tone, and her voice trembled very much; yet there was a
certain womanly composure in her utterance. "I'm sure it's very bold of me
to talk so," she added, "but Joe will tell you all about it."

I was close beside them now, and fancied I saw through the dusk the motion
of her hand stealing into his.

"Well, Joe, this is just what I wanted," I said. "A woman can be braver
than a big smith sometimes. Agnes has done her part. Now you do yours, and
tell me all about it."

No response followed my adjuration. I must help him.

"I think I know how the matter lies, Joe. You think you are not going to
live long, and that therefore you ought not to marry. Am I right?"

"Not far off it, sir," he answered.

"Now, Joe," I said, "can't we talk as friends about this matter? I have
no right to intrude into your affairs--none in the least--except what
friendship gives me. If you say I am not to talk about it, I shall be
silent. To force advice upon you would be as impertinent as useless."

"It's all the same, I'm afraid, sir. My mind has been made up for a long
time. What right have I to bring other people into trouble? But I take it
kind of you, sir, though I mayn't look over-pleased. Agnes wants to hear
your way of it. I'm agreeable."

This was not very encouraging. Still I thought it sufficient ground for
proceeding.

"I suppose you will allow that the root of all Christian behaviour is the
will of God?"

"Surely, sir."

"Is it not the will of God, then, that when a man and woman love each
other, they should marry?"

"Certainly, sir--where there be no reasons against it."

"Of course. And you judge you see reason for not doing so, else you would?"

"I do see that a man should not bring a woman into trouble for the sake of
being comfortable himself for the rest of a few weary days."

Agnes was sobbing gently behind her handkerchief. I knew how gladly she
would be Joe's wife, if only to nurse him through his last illness.

"Not except it would make her comfortable too, I grant you, Joe. But listen
to me. In the first place, you don't know, and you are not required to
know, when you are going to die. In fact, you have nothing to do with it.
Many a life has been injured by the constant expectation of death. It is
life we have to do with, not death. The best preparation for the night is
to work while the day lasts, diligently. The best preparation for death is
life. Besides, I have known delicate people who have outlived all their
strong relations, and been left alone in the earth--because they had
possibly taken too much care of themselves. But marriage is God's will, and
death is God's will, and you have no business to set the one over against,
as antagonistic to, the other. For anything you know, the gladness and the
peace of marriage may be the very means intended for your restoration to
health and strength. I suspect your desire to marry, fighting against the
fancy that you ought not to marry, has a good deal to do with the state of
health in which you now find yourself. A man would get over many things if
he were happy, that he cannot get over when he is miserable."

"But it's for Aggy. You forget that."

"I do not forget it. What right have you to seek for her another kind of
welfare than you would have yourself? Are you to treat her as if she were
worldly when you are not--to provide for her a comfort which yourself you
would despise? Why should you not marry because you have to die soon?--if
you _are_ thus doomed, which to me is by no means clear. Why not have what
happiness you may for the rest of your sojourn? If you find at the end of
twenty years that here you are after all, you will be rather sorry you did
not do as I say."

"And if I find myself dying at the end of six months'?"

"You will thank God for those six months. The whole thing, my dear fellow,
is a want of faith in God. I do not doubt you think you are doing right,
but, I repeat, the whole thing comes from want of faith in God. You will
take things into your own hands, and order them after a preventive and
self-protective fashion, lest God should have ordained the worst for you,
which worst, after all, would be best met by doing his will without inquiry
into the future; and which worst is no evil. Death is no more an evil than
marriage is."

"But you don't see it as I do," persisted the blacksmith.

"Of course I don't. I think you see it as it is not."

He remained silent for a little. A shower of spray fell upon us. He
started.

"What a wave!" he cried. "That spray came over the top of the rock. We
shall have to run for it."

I fancied that he only wanted to avoid further conversation.

"There's no hurry," I said. "It was high water an hour and a half ago."

"You don't know this coast, sir," returned he, "or you wouldn't talk like
that."

As he spoke he rose, and going from under the shelter of the rock, looked
along.

"For God's sake, Aggy!" he cried in terror, "come at once. Every other wave
be rushing across the breakwater as if it was on the level."

So saying, he hurried back, caught her by the hand, and began to draw her
along.

"Hadn't we better stay where we are?" I suggested.

"If you can stand the night in the cold. But Aggy here is delicate; and I
don't care about being out all night. It's not the tide, sir; it's a ground
swell--from a storm somewhere out at sea. That never asks no questions
about tide or no tide."

"Come along, then," I said. "But just wait one minute more. It is better to
be ready for the worst."

For I remembered that the day before I had seen a crowbar lying among the
stones, and I thought it might be useful. In a moment or two I had found
it, and returning, gave it to Joe. Then I took the girl's disengaged hand.
She thanked me in a voice perfectly calm and firm. Joe took the bar in
haste, and drew Agnes towards the breakwater.

Any real thought of danger had not yet crossed my mind. But when I looked
along the outstretched back of the mole, and saw a dim sheet of white sweep
across it, I felt that there was ground for his anxiety, and prepared
myself for a struggle.

"Do you know what to do with the crowbar, Joe?" I said, grasping my own
stout oak-stick more firmly.

"Perfectly," answered Joe. "To stick between the stones and hold on. We
must watch our time between the waves."

"You take the command, then, Joe," I returned. "You see better than I do,
and you know the ways of that raging wild beast there better than I do. I
will obey orders--one of which, no doubt, will be, not for wind or sea to
lose hold of Agnes--eh, Joe?"

Joe gave a grim enough laugh in reply, and we started, he carrying his
crowbar in his right hand towards the advancing sea, and I my oak-stick in
my left towards the still water within.

"Quick march!" said Joe, and away we went out on the breakwater.

Now the back of the breakwater was very rugged, for it was formed of huge
stones, with wide gaps between, where the waters had washed out the cement,
and worn their edges. But what impeded our progress secured our safety.

"Halt!" cried Joe, when we were yet but a few yards beyond the shelter of
the rocks. "There's a topper coming."

We halted at the word of command, as a huge wave, with combing crest,
rushed against the far out-sloping base of the mole, and flung its heavy
top right over the middle of the mass, a score or two of yards in front of
us.

"Now for it!" cried Joe. "Run!"

We did run. In my mind there was just sense enough of danger to add to the
pleasure of the excitement. I did not know how much danger there was. Over
the rough worn stones we sped stumbling.

"Halt!" cried the smith once more, and we did halt; but this time, as it
turned out, in the middle front of the coming danger.

"God be with us!" I exclaimed, when the huge billow showed itself through
the night, rushing towards the mole. The smith stuck his crowbar between
two great stones. To this he held on with one hand, and threw the other arm
round Agnes's waist. I, too, had got my oak firmly fixed, held on with one
hand, and threw the other arm round Agnes. It took but a moment.

"Now then!" cried Joe. "Here she comes! Hold on, sir. Hold on, Aggy!"

But when I saw the height of the water, as it rushed on us up the sloping
side of the mound, I cried out in my turn, "Down, Joe! Down on your face,
and let it over us easy! Down Agnes!"

They obeyed. We threw ourselves across the breakwater, with our heads to
the coming foe, and I grasped my stick close to the stones with all the
power of a hand that was then strong. Over us burst the mighty wave,
floating us up from the stones where we lay. But we held on, the wave
passed, and we sprung gasping to our feet.

"Now, now!" cried Joe and I together, and, heavy as we were, with the water
pouring from us, we flew across the remainder of the heap, and arrived,
panting and safe, at the other end, ere one wave more had swept the
surface. The moment we were in safety we turned and looked back over the
danger we had traversed. It was to see a huge billow sweep the breakwater
from end to end. We looked at each other for a moment without speaking.

"I believe, sir," said Joe at length, with slow and solemn speech, "if you
hadn't taken the command at that moment we should all have been lost."

"It seems likely enough, when I look back on it. For one thing, I was not
sure that my stick would stand, so I thought I had better grasp it low
down."

"We were awfully near death," said Joe.

"Nearer than you thought, Joe; and yet we escaped it. Things don't go
all as we fancy, you see. Faith is as essential to manhood as
foresight--believe me, Joe. It is very absurd to trust God for the future,
and not trust him for the present. The man who is not anxious is the man
most likely to do the right thing. He is cool and collected and ready. Our
Lord therefore told his disciples that when they should be brought before
kings and rulers, they were to take no thought what answer they should
make, for it would be given them when the time came."

We were climbing the steep path up to the downs. Neither of my companions
spoke.

"You have escaped one death together," I said at length: "dare another."

Still neither of them returned an answer. When we came near the parsonage,
I said, "Now, Joe, you must go in and get to bed at once. I will take Agnes
home. You can trust me not to say anything against you?"

Joe laughed rather hoarsely, and replied: "As you please, sir. Good night,
Aggie. Mind you get to bed as fast as you can."

When I returned from giving Agnes over to her parents, I made haste to
change my clothes, and put on my warm dressing-gown. I may as well mention
at once, that not one of us was the worse for our ducking. I then went up
to Connie's room.

"Here I am, you see, Connie, quite safe."

"I've been lying listening to every blast of wind since you went out, papa.
But all I could do was to trust in God."

"Do you call that _all_, Connie? Believe me, there is more power in that
than any human being knows the tenth part of yet. It is indeed _all_."

I said no more then. I told my wife about it that night, but we were well
into another month before I told Connie.

When I left her, I went to Joe's room to see how he was, and found him
having some gruel. I sat down on the edge of his bed, and said,

"Well, Joe, this is better than under water. I hope you won't be the worse
for it."

"I don't much care what comes of me, sir. It will be all over soon."

"But you ought to care what comes of you, Joe. I will tell you why. You are
an instrument out of which ought to come praise to God, and, therefore, you
ought to care for the instrument."

"That way, yes, sir, I ought."

"And you have no business to be like some children who say, 'Mamma won't
give me so and so,' instead of asking her to give it them."

"I see what you mean, sir. But really you put me out before the young
woman. I couldn't say before her what I meant. Suppose, you know, sir,
there was to come a family. It might be, you know."

"Of course. What else would you have?"

"But if I was to die, where would she be then?"

"In God's hands; just as she is now."

"But I ought to take care that she is not left with a burden like that to
provide for."

"O, Joe! how little you know a woman's heart! It would just be the greatest
comfort she could have for losing you--that's all. Many a woman has married
a man she did not care enough for, just that she might have a child of her
own to let out her heart upon. I don't say that is right, you know. Such
love cannot be perfect. A woman ought to love her child because it is her
husband's more than because it is her own, and because it is God's more
than either's. I saw in the papers the other day, that a woman was brought
before the Recorder of London for stealing a baby, when the judge himself
said that there was no imaginable motive for her action but a motherly
passion to possess the child. It is the need of a child that makes so
many women take to poor miserable, broken-nosed lap-dogs; for they are
self-indulgent, and cannot face the troubles and dangers of adopting
a child. They would if they might get one of a good family, or from a
respectable home; but they dare not take an orphan out of the dirt, lest
it should spoil their silken chairs. But that has nothing to do with our
argument. What I mean is this, that if Agnes really loves you, as no one
can look in her face and doubt, she will be far happier if you leave her
a child--yes, she will be happier if you only leave her your name for
hers--than if you died without calling her your wife."

I took Joe's basin from him, and he lay down. He turned his face to the
wall. I waited a moment, but finding him silent, bade him good-night, and
left the room.

A month after, I married them.






CHAPTER XIII.

THE HARVEST.





It was some time before we got the bells to work to our mind, but at
last we succeeded. The worst of it was to get the cranks, which at first
required strong pressure on the keys, to work easily enough. But neither
Joe nor his cousin spared any pains to perfect the attempt, and, as I say,
at length we succeeded. I took Wynnie down to the instrument and made her
try whether she could not do something, and she succeeded in making the old
tower discourse loudly and eloquently.

By this time the thanksgiving for the harvest was at hand: on the morning
of that first of all would I summon the folk to their prayers with the
sound of the full peal. And I wrote a little hymn of praise to the God of
the harvest, modelling it to one of the oldest tunes in that part of the
country, and I had it printed on slips of paper and laid plentifully on the
benches. What with the calling of the bells, like voices in the highway,
and the solemn meditation of the organ within to bear aloft the thoughts of
those who heard, and came to the prayer and thanksgiving in common, and the
message which God had given me to utter to them, I hoped that we should
indeed keep holiday.

Wynnie summoned the parish with the hundredth psalm pealed from aloft,
dropping from the airy regions of the tower on village and hamlet and
cottage, calling aloud--for who could dissociate the words from the music,
though the words are in the Scotch psalms?--written none the less by an
Englishman, however English wits may amuse themselves with laughing at
their quaintness--calling aloud,

  "All people that on earth do dwell
  Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice;
  Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell--
  Come ye before him and rejoice."

Then we sang the psalm before the communion service, making bold in the
name of the Lord to serve him with _mirth_ as in the old version, and not
with the _fear_ with which some editor, weak in faith, has presumed to
alter the line. Then before the sermon we sang the hymn I had prepared--a
proceeding justifiable by many an example in the history of the church
while she was not only able to number singers amongst her clergy, but those
singers were capable of influencing the whole heart and judgment of the
nation with their songs. Ethelwyn played the organ. The song I had prepared
was this:

  "We praise the Life of All;
  From buried seeds so small
  Who makes the ordered ranks of autumn stand;
  Who stores the corn
  In rick and barn
  To feed the winter of the land.

  We praise the Life of Light!
  Who from the brooding night
  Draws out the morning holy, calm, and grand;
  Veils up the moon,
  Sends out the sun,
  To glad the face of all the land.

  We praise the Life of Work,
  Who from sleep's lonely dark
  Leads forth his children to arise and stand,
  Then go their way,
  The live-long day,
  To trust and labour in the land.

  We praise the Life of Good,
  Who breaks sin's lazy mood,
  Toilsomely ploughing up the fruitless sand.
  The furrowed waste
  They leave, and haste
  Home, home, to till their Father's land.

  We praise the Life of Life,
  Who in this soil of strife
  Casts us at birth, like seed from sower's hand;
  To die and so
  Like corn to grow
  A golden harvest in his land."

After we had sung this hymn, the meaning of which is far better than the
versification, I preached from the words of St. Paul, "If by any means I
might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had already
attained, either were already perfect." And this is something like what I
said to them:

"The world, my friends, is full of resurrections, and it is not always of
the same resurrection that St. Paul speaks. Every night that folds us up
in darkness is a death; and those of you that have been out early and have
seen the first of the dawn, will know it--the day rises out of the night
like a being that has burst its tomb and escaped into life. That you may
feel that the sunrise is a resurrection--the word resurrection just means a
rising again--I will read you a little description of it from a sermon by a
great writer and great preacher called Jeremy Taylor. Listen. 'But as when
the sun approaching towards the gates of the morning, he first opens a
little eye of heaven and sends away the spirits of darkness, and gives
light to a cock, and calls up the lark to matins, and by and by gilds the
fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his
golden horns like those which decked the brows of Moses, when he was forced
to wear a veil, because himself had seen the face of God; and still, while
a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he shows a fair face
and a full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often,
and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly; so is a
man's reason and his life.' Is not this a resurrection of the day out of
the night? Or hear how Milton makes his Adam and Eve praise God in the
morning,--

  'Ye mists and exhalations that now rise
  From hill or streaming lake, dusky or gray,
  Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold,
  In honour to the world's great Author rise,
  Whether to deck with clouds the uncoloured sky,
  Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers,
  Rising or falling still advance his praise.'

But it is yet more of a resurrection to you. Think of your own condition
through the night and in the morning. You die, as it were, every night. The
death of darkness comes down over the earth; but a deeper death, the death
of sleep, descends on you. A power overshadows you; your eyelids close, you
cannot keep them open if you would; your limbs lie moveless; the day is
gone; your whole life is gone; you have forgotten everything; an evil man
might come and do with your goods as he pleased; you are helpless. But the
God of the Resurrection is awake all the time, watching his sleeping men
and women, even as a mother who watches her sleeping baby, only with larger
eyes and more full of love than hers; and so, you know not how, all at once
you know that you are what you are; that there is a world that wants you
outside of you, and a God that wants you inside of you; you rise from the
death of sleep, not by your own power, for you knew nothing about it; God
put his hand over your eyes, and you were dead; he lifted his hand and
breathed light on you and you rose from the dead, thanked the God who
raised you up, and went forth to do your work. From darkness to light; from
blindness to seeing; from knowing nothing to looking abroad on the mighty
world; from helpless submission to willing obedience,--is not this a
resurrection indeed? That St. Paul saw it to be such may be shown from his
using the two things with the same meaning when he says, 'Awake, thou that
sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.'
No doubt he meant a great deal more. No man who understands what he is
speaking about can well mean only one thing at a time.

"But to return to the resurrections we see around us in nature. Look at the
death that falls upon the world in winter. And look how it revives when the
sun draws near enough in the spring to wile the life in it once more out of
its grave. See how the pale, meek snowdrops come up with their bowed heads,
as if full of the memory of the fierce winds they encountered last spring,
and yet ready in the strength of their weakness to encounter them again. Up
comes the crocus, bringing its gold safe from the dark of its colourless
grave into the light of its parent gold. Primroses, and anemones, and
blue-bells, and a thousand other children of the spring, hear the
resurrection-trumpet of the wind from the west and south, obey, and leave
their graves behind to breathe the air of the sweet heavens. Up and up they
come till the year is glorious with the rose and the lily, till the trees
are not only clothed upon with new garments of loveliest green, but the
fruit-tree bringeth forth its fruit, and the little children of men are
made glad with apples, and cherries, and hazel-nuts. The earth laughs out
in green and gold. The sky shares in the grand resurrection. The garments
of its mourning, wherewith it made men sad, its clouds of snow and hail and
stormy vapours, are swept away, have sunk indeed to the earth, and are now
humbly feeding the roots of the flowers whose dead stalks they beat upon
all the winter long. Instead, the sky has put on the garments of praise.
Her blue, coloured after the sapphire-floor on which stands the throne of
him who is the Resurrection and the Life, is dashed and glorified with the
pure white of sailing clouds, and at morning and evening prayer, puts on
colours in which the human heart drowns itself with delight--green and gold
and purple and rose. Even the icebergs floating about in the lonely summer
seas of the north are flashing all the glories of the rainbow. But, indeed,
is not this whole world itself a monument of the Resurrection? The earth
was without form and void. The wind of God moved on the face of the waters,
and up arose this fair world. Darkness was on the face of the deep: God
said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light.

"In the animal world as well, you behold the goings of the Resurrection.
Plainest of all, look at the story of the butterfly--so plain that the
pagan Greeks called it and the soul by one name--Psyche. Psyche meant with
them a butterfly or the soul, either. Look how the creeping thing, ugly to
our eyes, so that we can hardly handle it without a shudder, finding itself
growing sick with age, straightway falls a spinning and weaving at its
own shroud, coffin, and grave, all in one--to prepare, in fact, for its
resurrection; for it is for the sake of the resurrection that death exists.
Patiently it spins its strength, but not its life, away, folds itself up
decently, that its body may rest in quiet till the new body is formed
within it; and at length when the appointed hour has arrived, out of the
body of this crawling thing breaks forth the winged splendour of the
butterfly--not the same body--a new one built out of the ruins of the
old--even as St. Paul tells us that it is not the same body _we_ have in
the resurrection, but a nobler body like ourselves, with all the imperfect
and evil thing taken away. No more creeping for the butterfly; wings of
splendour now. Neither yet has it lost the feet wherewith to alight on all
that is lovely and sweet. Think of it--up from the toilsome journey over
the low ground, exposed to the foot of every passer-by, destroying the
lovely leaves upon which it fed, and the fruit which they should shelter,
up to the path at will through the air, and a gathering of food which hurts
not the source of it, a food which is but as a tribute from the loveliness
of the flowers to the yet higher loveliness of the flower-angel: is not
this a resurrection? Its children too shall pass through the same process,
to wing the air of a summer noon, and rejoice in the ethereal and the pure.

"To return yet again from the human thoughts suggested by the symbol of the
butterfly"--

Here let me pause for a moment--and there was a corresponding pause, though
but momentary, in the sermon as I spoke it--to mention a curious, and to me
at the moment an interesting fact. At this point of my address, I caught
sight of a white butterfly, a belated one, flitting about the church.
Absorbed for a moment, my eye wandered after it. It was near the bench
where my own people sat, and, for one flash of thought, I longed that the
butterfly would alight on my Wynnie, for I was more anxious about her
resurrection at the time than about anything else. But the butterfly would
not. And then I told myself that God would, and that the butterfly was only
the symbol of a grand truth, and of no private interpretation, to make
which of it was both selfishness and superstition. But all this passed in a
flash, and I resumed my discourse.

--"I come now naturally to speak of what we commonly call the Resurrection.
Some say: 'How can the same dust be raised again, when it may be scattered
to the winds of heaven?' It is a question I hardly care to answer. The
mere difficulty can in reason stand for nothing with God; but the apparent
worthlessness of the supposition renders the question uninteresting to me.
What is of import is, that I should stand clothed upon, with a body which
is _my_ body because it serves my ends, justifies my consciousness of
identity by being, in all that was good in it, like that which I had
before, while now it is tenfold capable of expressing the thoughts and
feelings that move within me. How can I care whether the atoms that form
a certain inch of bone should be the same as those which formed that bone
when I died? All my life-time I never felt or thought of the existence of
such a bone! On the other hand, I object to having the same worn muscles,
the same shrivelled skin with which I may happen to die. Why give me the
same body as that? Why not rather my youthful body, which was strong, and
facile, and capable? The matter in the muscle of my arm at death would not
serve to make half the muscle I had when young. But I thank God that St.
Paul says it will _not_ be the same body. That body dies--up springs
another body. I suspect myself that those are right who say that this body
being the seed, the moment it dies in the soil of this world, that moment
is the resurrection of the new body. The life in it rises out of it in a
new body. This is not after it is put in the mere earth; for it is dead
then, and the germ of life gone out of it. If a seed rots, no new body
comes of it. The seed dies into a new life, and so does man. Dying and
rotting are two very different things.--But I am not sure by any means. As
I say, the whole question is rather uninteresting to me. What do I care
about my old clothes after I have done with them? What is it to me to know
what becomes of an old coat or an old pulpit gown? I have no such clinging
to the flesh. It seems to me that people believe their bodies to be
themselves, and are therefore very anxious about them--and no wonder then.
Enough for me that I shall have eyes to see my friends, a face that they
shall know me by, and a mouth to praise God withal. I leave the matter with
one remark, that I am well content to rise as Jesus rose, however that was.
For me the will of God is so good that I would rather have his will done
than my own choice given me.

"But I now come to the last, because infinitely the most important part
of my subject--the resurrection for the sake of which all the other
resurrections exist--the resurrection unto Life. This is the one of which
St. Paul speaks in my text. This is the one I am most anxious--indeed, the
only one I am anxious to set forth, and impress upon you.

"Think, then, of all the deaths you know; the death of the night, when the
sun is gone, when friend says not a word to friend, but both lie drowned
and parted in the sea of sleep; the death of the year, when winter lies
heavy on the graves of the children of summer, when the leafless trees moan
in the blasts from the ocean, when the beasts even look dull and oppressed,
when the children go about shivering with cold, when the poor and
improvident are miserable with suffering or think of such a death of
disease as befalls us at times, when the man who says, 'Would God it were
morning!' changes but his word, and not his tune, when the morning comes,
crying, 'Would God it were evening!' when what life is left is known to us
only by suffering, and hope is amongst the things that were once and are no
more--think of all these, think of them all together, and you will have but
the dimmest, faintest picture of the death from which the resurrection
of which I have now to speak, is the rising. I shrink from the attempt,
knowing how weak words are to set forth _the_ death, set forth _the_
resurrection. Were I to sit down to yonder organ, and crash out the most
horrible dissonances that ever took shape in sound, I should give you but
a weak figure of this death; were I capable of drawing from many a row of
pipes an exhalation of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet, such as Milton
himself could have invaded our ears withal, I could give you but a faint
figure of this resurrection. Nevertheless, I must try what I can do in my
own way.

"If into the face of the dead body, lying on the bed, waiting for its
burial, the soul of the man should begin to dawn again, drawing near from
afar to look out once more at those eyes, to smile once again through those
lips, the change on that face would be indeed great and wondrous, but
nothing for marvel or greatness to that which passes on the countenance,
the very outward bodily face of the man who wakes from his sleep, arises
from the dead and receives light from Christ. Too often indeed, the
reposeful look on the face of the dead body would be troubled, would vanish
away at the revisiting of the restless ghost; but when a man's own right
true mind, which God made in him, is restored to him again, and he wakes
from the death of sin, then comes the repose without the death. It may take
long for the new spirit to complete the visible change, but it begins at
once, and will be perfected. The bloated look of self-indulgence passes
away like the leprosy of Naaman, the cheek grows pure, the lips return to
the smile of hope instead of the grin of greed, and the eyes that made
innocence shrink and shudder with their yellow leer grow childlike and
sweet and faithful. The mammon-eyes, hitherto fixed on the earth, are
lifted to meet their kind; the lips that mumbled over figures and sums of
gold learn to say words of grace and tenderness. The truculent, repellent,
self-satisfied face begins to look thoughtful and doubtful, as if searching
for some treasure of whose whereabouts it had no certain sign. The face
anxious, wrinkled, peering, troubled, on whose lines you read the dread of
hunger, poverty, and nakedness, thaws into a smile; the eyes reflect in
courage the light of the Father's care, the back grows erect under its
burden with the assurance that the hairs of its head are all numbered. But
the face can with all its changes set but dimly forth the rising from the
dead which passes within. The heart, which cared but for itself, becomes
aware of surrounding thousands like itself, in the love and care of which
it feels a dawning blessedness undreamt of before. From selfishness to
love--is not this a rising from the dead? The man whose ambition declares
that his way in the world would be to subject everything to his desires, to
bring every human care, affection, power, and aspiration to his feet--such
a world it would be, and such a king it would have, if individual ambition
might work its will! if a man's opinion of himself could be made out in
the world, degrading, compelling, oppressing, doing everything for his own
glory!--and such a glory!--but a pang of light strikes this man to the
heart; an arrow of truth, feathered with suffering and loss and dismay,
finds out--the open joint in his armour, I was going to say--no, finds out
the joint in the coffin where his heart lies festering in a death so dead
that itself calls it life. He trembles, he awakes, he rises from the dead.
No more he seeks the slavery of all: where can he find whom to serve? how
can he become if but a threshold in the temple of Christ, where all serve
all, and no man thinks first of himself? He to whom the mass of his
fellows, as he massed them, was common and unclean, bows before every human
sign of the presence of the making God. The sun, which was to him but a
candle with which to search after his own ends, wealth, power, place,
praise--the world, which was but the cavern where he thus searched--are now
full of the mystery of loveliness, full of the truth of which sun and
wind and land and sea are symbols and signs. From a withered old age of
unbelief, the dim eyes of which refuse the glory of things a passage to the
heart, he is raised up a child full of admiration, wonder, and gladness.
Everything is glorious to him; he can believe, and therefore he sees. It
is from the grave into the sunshine, from the night into the morning, from
death into life. To come out of the ugly into the beautiful; out of the
mean and selfish into the noble and loving; out of the paltry into the
great; out of the false into the true; out of the filthy into the clean;
out of the commonplace into the glorious; out of the corruption of disease
into the fine vigour and gracious movements of health; in a word, out of
evil into good--is not this a resurrection indeed--_the_ resurrection of
all, the resurrection of Life? God grant that with St. Paul we may attain
to this resurrection of the dead.

"This rising from the dead is often a long and a painful process. Even
after he had preached the gospel to the Gentiles, and suffered much for the
sake of his Master, Paul sees the resurrection of the dead towering grandly
before him, not yet climbed, not yet attained unto--a mountainous splendour
and marvel, still shining aloft in the air of existence, still, thank God,
to be attained, but ever growing in height and beauty as, forgetting those
things that are behind, he presses towards the mark, if by any means he may
attain to the resurrection of the dead. Every blessed moment in which a man
bethinks himself that he has been forgetting his high calling, and sends up
to the Father a prayer for aid; every time a man resolves that what he has
been doing he will do no more; every time that the love of God, or the
feeling of the truth, rouses a man to look first up at the light, then down
at the skirts of his own garments--that moment a divine resurrection is
wrought in the earth. Yea, every time that a man passes from resentment to
forgiveness, from cruelty to compassion, from hardness to tenderness, from
indifference to carefulness, from selfishness to honesty, from honesty to
generosity, from generosity to love,--a resurrection, the bursting of a
fresh bud of life out of the grave of evil, gladdens the eye of the Father
watching his children. Awake, then, thou that sleepest, and arise from the
dead, and Christ will give thee light. As the harvest rises from the wintry
earth, so rise thou up from the trials of this world a full ear in the
harvest of Him who sowed thee in the soil that thou mightest rise above it.
As the summer rises from the winter, so rise thou from the cares of eating
and drinking and clothing into the fearless sunshine of confidence in
the Father. As the morning rises out of the night, so rise thou from the
darkness of ignorance to do the will of God in the daylight; and as a man
feels that he is himself when he wakes from the troubled and grotesque
visions of the night into the glory of the sunrise, even so wilt thou feel
that then first thou knowest what thy life, the gladness of thy being, is.
As from painful tossing in disease, rise into the health of well-being. As
from the awful embrace of thy own dead body, burst forth in thy spiritual
body. Arise thou, responsive to the indwelling will of the Father, even as
thy body will respond to thy indwelling soul.

  'White wings are crossing;
  Glad waves are tossing;
  The earth flames out in crimson and green:

  Spring is appearing,
  Summer is nearing--
  Where hast thou been?

  Down in some cavern,
  Death's sleepy tavern,
  Housing, carousing with spectres of night?
  The trumpet is pealing
  Sunshine and healing--
  Spring to the light.'"

With this quotation from a friend's poem, I closed my sermon, oppressed
with a sense of failure; for ever the marvel of simple awaking, the mere
type of the resurrection eluded all my efforts to fix it in words. I had to
comfort myself with the thought that God is so strong that he can work even
with our failures.

END OF VOL. II.






THE SEABOARD PARISH

BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, LL.D.

VOL. III.






CONTENTS OF VOL. III.




   I. A WALK WITH MY WIFE
  II. OUR LAST SHORE-DINNER
 III. A PASTORAL VISIT.
  IV. THE ART OF NATURE
   V. THE SORE SPOT
  VI. THE GATHERING STORM.
 VII. THE GATHERED STORM.
VIII. THE SHIPWRECK
  IX. THE FUNERAL
   X. THE SERMON.
  XI. CHANGED PLANS.
 XII. THE STUDIO.
XIII. HOME AGAIN.





CHAPTER I.

A WALK WITH MY WIFE.





The autumn was creeping up on the earth, with winter holding by its skirts
behind; but before I loose my hold of the garments of summer, I must write
a chapter about a walk and a talk I had one night with my wife. It had
rained a good deal during the day, but as the sun went down the air began
to clear, and when the moon shone out, near the full, she walked the
heavens, not "like one that hath been led astray," but as "queen and
huntress, chaste and fair."

"What a lovely night it is!" said Ethelwyn, who had come into my
study--where I always sat with unblinded windows, that the night and her
creatures might look in upon me--and had stood gazing out for a moment.

"Shall we go for a little turn?" I said.

"I should like it very much," she answered. "I will go and put on my bonnet
at once."

In a minute or two she looked in again, all ready. I rose, laid aside my
Plato, and went with her. We turned our steps along the edge of the down,
and descended upon the breakwater, where we seated ourselves upon the same
spot where in the darkness I had heard the voices of Joe and Agnes. What a
different night it was from that! The sea lay as quiet as if it could not
move for the moonlight that lay upon it. The glory over it was so mighty in
its peacefulness, that the wild element beneath was afraid to toss itself
even with the motions of its natural unrest. The moon was like the face of
a saint before which the stormy people has grown dumb. The rocks stood up
solid and dark in the universal aether, and the pulse of the ocean throbbed
against them with a lapping gush, soft as the voice of a passionate child
soothed into shame of its vanished petulance. But the sky was the glory.
Although no breath moved below, there was a gentle wind abroad in the upper
regions. The air was full of masses of cloud, the vanishing fragments of
the one great vapour which had been pouring down in rain the most of the
day. These masses were all setting with one steady motion eastward into the
abysses of space; now obscuring the fair moon, now solemnly sweeping away
from before her. As they departed, out shone her marvellous radiance, as
calm as ever. It was plain that she knew nothing of what we called her
covering, her obscuration, the dimming of her glory. She had been busy all
the time weaving her lovely opaline damask on the other side of the mass in
which we said she was swallowed up.

"Have you ever noticed, wifie," I said, "how the eyes of our minds--almost
our bodily eyes--are opened sometimes to the cubicalness of nature, as it
were?"

"I don't know, Harry, for I don't understand your question," she answered.

"Well, it was a stupid way of expressing what I meant. No human being could
have understood it from that. I will make you understand in a moment,
though. Sometimes--perhaps generally--we see the sky as a flat dome,
spangled with star-points, and painted blue. _Now_ I see it as an awful
depth of blue air, depth within depth; and the clouds before me are not
passing away to the left, but sinking away from the front of me into the
marvellous unknown regions, which, let philosophers say what they will
about time and space,--and I daresay they are right,--are yet very awful
to me. Thank God, my dear," I said, catching hold of her arm, as the terror
of mere space grew upon me, "for himself. He is deeper than space, deeper
than time; he is the heart of all the cube of history."

"I understand you now, husband," said my wife.

"I knew you would," I answered.

"But," she said again, "is it not something the same with the things inside
us? I can't put it in words as you do. Do you understand me now?"

"I am not sure that I do. You must try again."

"You understand me well enough, only you like to make me blunder where
you can talk," said my wife, putting her hand in mine. "But I will try.
Sometimes, after thinking about something for a long time, you come to a
conclusion about it, and you think you have settled it plain and clear to
yourself, for ever and a day. You hang it upon your wall, like a picture,
and are satisfied for a fortnight. But some day, when you happen to cast a
look at it, you find that instead of hanging flat on the wall, your picture
has gone through it--opens out into some region you don't know where--shows
you far-receding distances of air and sea--in short, where you thought one
question was settled for ever, a hundred are opened up for the present
hour."

"Bravo, wife !" I cried in true delight. "I do indeed understand you now.
You have said it better than I could ever have done. That's the plague of
you women! You have been taught for centuries and centuries that there is
little or nothing to be expected of you, and so you won't try. Therefore we
men know no more than you do whether it is in you or not. And when you do
try, instead of trying to think, you want to be in Parliament all at once."

"Do you apply that remark to me, sir?" demanded Ethelwyn.

"You must submit to bear the sins of your kind upon occasion," I answered.

"I am content to do that, so long as yours will help mine," she replied.

"Then I may go on?" I said, with interrogation.

"Till sunrise if you like. We were talking of the cubicalness--I believe
you called it--of nature."

"And you capped it with the cubicalness of thought. And quite right
too. There are people, as a dear friend of mine used to say, who are so
accustomed to regard everything in the _flat_, as dogma cut and--not
_always_ dried my moral olfactories aver--that if you prove to them the
very thing they believe, but after another mode than that they have been
accustomed to, they are offended, and count you a heretic. There is no help
for it. Even St. Paul's chief opposition came from the Judaizing Christians
of his time, who did not believe that God _could_ love the Gentiles, and
therefore regarded him as a teacher of falsehood. We must not be fierce
with them. Who knows what wickedness of their ancestors goes to account for
their stupidity? For that there are stupid people, and that they are, in
very consequence of their stupidity, conceited, who can deny? The worst of
it is, that no man who is conceited can be convinced of the fact."

"Don't say that, Harry. That is to deny conversion."

"You are right, Ethelwyn. The moment a man is convinced of his folly, he
ceases to be a fool. The moment a man is convinced of his conceit, he
ceases to be conceited. But there _must_ be a final judgment, and the true
man will welcome it, even if he is to appear a convicted fool. A man's
business is to see first that he is not acting the part of a fool, and
next, to help any honest people who care about the matter to take heed
likewise that they be not offering to pull the mote out of their brother's
eye. But there are even societies established and supported by good
people for the express purpose of pulling out motes.--'The Mote-Pulling
Society!'--That ought to take with a certain part of the public."

"Come, come, Harry. You are absurd. Such people don't come near you."

"They can't touch me. No. But they come near good people whom I know,
brandishing the long pins with which they pull the motes out, and
threatening them with judgment before their time. They are but pins, to be
sure--not daggers."

"But you have wandered, Harry, into the narrowest underground, musty ways,
and have forgotten all about 'the cubicalness of nature.'"

"You are right, my love, as you generally are," I answered, laughing. "Look
at that great antlered elk, or moose--fit quarry for Diana of the silver
bow. Look how it glides solemnly away into the unpastured depths of the
aerial deserts. Look again at that reclining giant, half raised upon his
arm, with his face turned towards the wilderness. What eyes they must be
under those huge brows! On what message to the nations is he borne as by
the slow sweep of ages, on towards his mysterious goal?"

"Stop, stop, Harry," said my wife. "It makes me unhappy to hear grand words
clothing only cloudy fancies. Such words ought to be used about the truth,
and the truth only."

"If I could carry it no further, my dear, then it would indeed be a
degrading of words. But there never was a vagary that uplifted the soul,
or made the grand words flow from the gates of speech, that had not its
counterpart in truth itself. Man can imagine nothing, even in the clouds of
the air, that God has not done, or is not doing. Even as that cloudy giant
yields, and is 'shepherded by the slow unwilling wind,' so is each of us
borne onward to an unseen destiny--a glorious one if we will but yield to
the Spirit of God that bloweth where it listeth--with a grand listing--
coming whence we know not, and going whither we know not. The very clouds
of the air are hung up as dim pictures of the thoughts and history of man."

"I do not mind how long you talk like that, husband, even if you take the
clouds for your text. But it did make me miserable to think that what you
were saying had no more basis than the fantastic forms which the clouds
assume. I see I was wrong, though."

"The clouds themselves, in such a solemn stately march as this, used to
make me sad for the very same reason. I used to think, What is it all for?
They are but vapours blown by the wind. They come nowhence, and they go
nowhither. But now I see them and all things as ever moving symbols of the
motions of man's spirit and destiny."

A pause followed, during which we sat and watched the marvellous depth
of the heavens, deep as I do not think I ever saw them before or since,
covered with a stately procession of ever-appearing and ever-vanishing
forms--great sculpturesque blocks of a shattered storm--the icebergs of the
upper sea. These were not far off against a blue background, but floating
near us in the heart of a blue-black space, gloriously lighted by a golden
rather than silvery moon. At length my wife spoke.

"I hope Mr. Percivale is out to-night," she said. "How he must be enjoying
it if he is!"

"I wonder the young man is not returning to his professional labours," I
said. "Few artists can afford such long holidays as he is taking."

"He is laying in stock, though, I suppose," answered my wife.

"I doubt that, my dear. He said not, on one occasion, you may remember."

"Yes, I remember. But still he must paint better the more familiar he gets
with the things God cares to fashion."

"Doubtless. But I am afraid the work of God he is chiefly studying at
present is our Wynnie."

"Well, is she not a worthy object of his study?" returned Ethelwyn, looking
up in my face with an arch expression.

"Doubtless again, Ethel; but I hope she is not studying him quite so much
in her turn. I have seen her eyes following him about."

My wife made no answer for a moment. Then she said,

"Don't you like him, Harry?"

"Yes. I like him very much."

"Then why should you not like Wynnie to like him?"

"I should like to be surer of his principles, for one thing."

"I should like to be surer of Wynnie's."

I was silent. Ethelwyn resumed.

"Don't you think they might do each other good?"

Still I could not reply.

"They both love the truth, I am sure; only they don't perhaps know what it
is yet. I think if they were to fall in love with each other, it would very
likely make them both more desirous of finding it still."

"Perhaps," I said at last. "But you are talking about awfully serious
things, Ethelwyn."

"Yes, as serious as life," she answered.

"You make me very anxious," I said. "The young man has not, I fear, any
means of gaining a livelihood for more than himself."

"Why should he before he wanted it? I like to see a man who can be content
with an art and a living by it."

"I hope I have not been to blame in allowing them to see so much of each
other," I said, hardly heeding my wife's words.

"It came about quite naturally," she rejoined. "If you had opposed
their meeting, you would have been interfering just as if you had been
Providence. And you would have only made them think more about each other."

"He hasn't said anything--has he?" I asked in positive alarm.

"O dear no. It may be all my fancy. I am only looking a little ahead. I
confess I should like him for a son-in-law. I approve of him," she added,
with a sweet laugh.

"Well," I said, "I suppose sons-in-law are possible, however disagreeable,
results of having daughters."

I tried to laugh, but hardly succeeded.

"Harry," said my wife, "I don't like you in such a mood. It is not like you
at all. It is unworthy of you."

"How can I help being anxious when you speak of such dreadful things as the
possibility of having to give away my daughter, my precious wonder that
came to me through you, out of the infinite--the tender little darling!"

"'Out of the heart of God,' you used to say, Henry. Yes, and with a destiny
he had ordained. It is strange to me how you forget your best and noblest
teaching sometimes. You are always telling us to trust in God. Surely it is
a poor creed that will only allow us to trust in God for ourselves--a very
selfish creed. There must be something wrong there. I should say that the
man who can only trust God for himself is not half a Christian. Either he
is so selfish that that satisfies him, or he has such a poor notion of God
that he cannot trust him with what most concerns him. The former is not
your case, Harry: is the latter, then?--You see I must take my turn at the
preaching sometimes. Mayn't I, dearest?"

She took my hand in both of hers. The truth arose in my heart. I never
loved my wife more than at that moment. And now I could not speak for other
reasons. I saw that I had been faithless to my God, and the moment I could
command my speech, I hastened to confess it.

"You are right, my dear," I said, "quite right. I have been wicked, for I
have been denying my God. I have been putting my providence in the place
of his--trying, like an anxious fool, to count the hairs on Wynnie's head,
instead of being content that the grand loving Father should count them. My
love, let us pray for Wynnie; for what is prayer but giving her to God and
his holy, blessed will?"

We sat hand in hand. Neither spoke aloud for some minutes, but we spoke in
our hearts to God, talking to him about Wynnie. Then we rose together, and
walked homeward, still in silence. But my heart and hand clung to my wife
as to the angel whom God had sent to deliver me out of the prison of my
faithlessness. And as we went, lo! the sky was glorious again. It had faded
from my sight, had grown flat as a dogma, uninteresting as "a foul and
pestilent congregation of vapours;" the moon had been but a round thing
with the sun shining upon it, and the stars were only minding their own
business. But now the solemn march towards an unseen, unimagined goal had
again begun. Wynnie's life was hid with Christ in God. Away strode the
cloudy pageant with its banners blowing in the wind, which blew where it
grandly listed, marching as to a solemn triumphal music that drew them from
afar towards the gates of pearl by which the morning walks out of the New
Jerusalem to gladden the nations of the earth. Solitary stars, with all
their sparkles drawn in, shone, quiet as human eyes, in the deep solemn
clefts of dark blue air. They looked restrained and still, as if they
knew all about it--all about the secret of this midnight march. For the
moon--she saw the sun, and therefore made the earth glad.

"You have been a moon to me this night, my wife," I said. "You were looking
full at the truth, while I was dark. I saw its light in your face, and
believed, and turned my soul to the sun. And now I am both ashamed and
glad. God keep me from sinning so again."

"My dear husband, it was only a mood--a passing mood," said Ethelwyn,
seeking to comfort me.

"It was a mood, and thank God it is now past; but it was a wicked one. It
was a mood in which the Lord might have called me a devil, as he did St.
Peter. Such moods have to be grappled with and fought the moment they
appear. They must not have their way for a single thought even."

"But we can't help it always, can we, husband?"

"We can't help it out and out, because our wills are not yet free with the
freedom God is giving us as fast as we will let him. When we are able to
will thoroughly, then we shall do what we will. At least, I think we shall.
But there is a mystery in it God only understands. All we know is, that we
can struggle and pray. But a mood is an awful oppression sometimes when you
least believe in it and most wish to get rid of it. It is like a headache
in the soul."

"What do the people do that don't believe in God?" said Ethelwyn.

The same moment Wynnie, who had seen us pass the window, opened the door of
the bark-house for us, and we passed into Connie's chamber and found her
lying in the moonlight, gazing at the same heavens as her father and mother
had been revelling in.






CHAPTER II.

OUR LAST SHORE-DINNER.





The next day was very lovely. I think it is the last of the kind of which
I shall have occasion to write in my narrative of the Seaboard Parish. I
wonder if my readers are tired of so much about the common things of
Nature. I reason about it something in this way: We are so easily affected
by the smallest things that are of the unpleasant kind, that we ought to
train ourselves to the influence of those that are of an opposite nature.
The unpleasant ones are like the thorns which make themselves felt as we
scramble--for we often do scramble in a very undignified manner--through
the thickets of life; and, feeling the thorns, we grumble, and are blind
to all but the thorns. The flowers, and the lovely leaves, and the red
berries, and the clusters of filberts, and the birds'-nests do not force
themselves upon our attention as the thorns do, and the thorns make us
forget to look for them. But a scratch would be forgotten--and that in
mental hurts is often equivalent to a cure, for a forgotten scratch on the
mind or heart will never fester--if we but allowed our being a moment's
repose upon any of the quiet, waiting, unobtrusive beauties that lie
around the half-trodden way, offering their gentle healing. And when I
think how, not unfrequently, otherwise noble characters are anything but
admirable when under the influence of trifling irritations, the very
paltriness of which seems what the mind, which would at once rouse itself
to a noble endurance of any mighty evil, is unable to endure, I would
gladly help so with sweet antidotes to defeat the fly in the ointment of
the apothecary that the whole pot shall send forth a pure savour. We ought
for this to cultivate the friendships of little things. Beauty is one of
the surest antidotes to vexation. Often when life looked dreary about me,
from some real or fancied injustice or indignity, has a thought of truth
been flashed into my mind from a flower, a shape of frost, or even a
lingering shadow--not to mention such glories as angel-winged clouds,
rainbows, stars, and sunrises. Therefore I hope that in my loving delay
over such aspects of Nature as impressed themselves upon me in this most
memorable part of my history I shall not prove wearisome to my reader, for
therein I should utterly contravene my hope and intent in the recording of
them.

This day there was to be an unusually low tide, and we had reckoned on
enlarging our acquaintance with the bed of the ocean--of knowing a few
yards more of the millions of miles lapt in the mystery of waters. It was
to be low water about two o'clock, and we resolved to dine upon the sands.
But all the morning the children were out playing on the threshold of old
Neptune's palace; for in his quieter mood he will, like a fierce
mastiff, let children do with him what they will. I gave myself a whole
holiday--sometimes the most precious part of my life both for myself and
those for whom I labour--and wandered about on the shore, now passing the
children, and assailed with a volley of cries and entreaties to look at
this one's castle and that one's ditch, now leaving them behind, with what
in its ungraduated flatness might well enough personate an endless
desert of sand between, over the expanse of which I could imagine them
disappearing on a far horizon, whence however a faint occasional cry of
excitement and pleasure would reach my ears. The sea was so calm, and the
shore so gently sloping, that you could hardly tell where the sand ceased
and the sea began--the water sloped to such a thin pellicle, thinner
than any knife-edge, upon the shining brown sand, and you saw the sand
underneath the water to such a distance out. Yet this depth, which would
not drown a red spider, was the ocean. In my mind I followed that bed of
shining sand, bared of its hiding waters, out and out, till I was lost in
an awful wilderness of chasms, precipices, and mountain-peaks, in whose
caverns the sea-serpent may dwell, with his breath of pestilence; the
kraken, with "his skaly rind," may there be sleeping

  "His ancient dreamless, uninvaded sleep,"

while

    "faintest sunlights flee
  About his shadowy sides,"

as he lies

  "Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep."

There may lie all the horrors that Schiller's diver encountered--the
frightful Molch, and that worst of all, to which he gives no name, which
came creeping with a hundred knots at once; but here are only the gracious
rainbow-woven shells, an evanescent jelly or two, and the queer baby-crabs
that crawl out from the holes of the bordering rocks. What awful gradations
of gentleness lead from such as these down to those cabins where wallow
the inventions of Nature's infancy, when, like a child of untutored
imagination, she drew on the slate of her fancy creations in which flitting
shadows of beauty serve only to heighten the shuddering, gruesome horror.
The sweet sun and air, the hand of man, and the growth of the ages, have
all but swept such from the upper plains of the earth. What hunter's bow
has twanged, what adventurer's rifle has cracked in those leagues of
mountain-waste, vaster than all the upper world can show, where the beasts
of the ocean "graze the sea-weed, their pasture"! Diana of the silver bow
herself, when she descends into the interlunar caves of hell, sends no such
monsters fleeing from her spells. Yet if such there be, such horrors too
must lie in the undiscovered caves of man's nature, of which all this outer
world is but a typical analysis. By equally slow gradations may the inner
eye descend from the truth of a Cordelia to the falsehood of an Iago. As
these golden sands slope from the sunlight into the wallowing abyss of
darkness, even so from the love of the child to his holy mother slopes the
inclined plane of humanity to the hell of the sensualist. "But with one
difference in the moral world," I said aloud, as I paced up and down on the
shimmering margin, "that everywhere in the scale the eye of the all-seeing
Father can detect the first quiver of the eyelid that would raise itself
heavenward, responsive to his waking spirit." I lifted my eyes in the
relief of the thought, and saw how the sun of the autumn hung above the
waters oppressed with a mist of his own glory; far away to the left a man
who had been clambering on a low rock, inaccessible save in such a tide,
gathering mussels, threw himself into the sea and swam ashore; above his
head the storm-tower stood in the stormless air; the sea glittered and
shone, and the long-winged birds knew not which to choose, the balmy air or
the cool deep, now flitting like arrow-heads through the one, now alighting
eagerly upon the other, to forsake it anew for the thinner element. I
thanked God for his glory.

"O, papa, it's so jolly--so jolly!" shouted the children as I passed them
again.

"What is it that's so jolly, Charlie?" I asked.

"My castle," screeched Harry in reply; "only it's tumbled down. The water
_would_ keep coming in underneath."

"I tried to stop it with a newspaper," cried Charlie, "but it wouldn't. So
we were forced to let it be, and down it went into the ditch."

"We blew it up rather than surrender," said Dora. "We did; only Harry
always forgets, and says it was the water did it."

I drew near the rock that held the bath. I had never approached it from
this side before. It was high above my head, and a stream of water was
flowing from it. I scrambled up, undressed, and plunged into its dark
hollow, where I felt like one of the sea-beasts of which I had been
dreaming, down in the caves of the unvisited ocean. But the sun was over
my head, and the air with an edge of the winter was about me. I dressed
quickly, descended on the other side of the rock, and wandered again on the
sands to seaward of the breakwater, which lay above, looking dry and
weary, and worn with years of contest with the waves, which had at length
withdrawn defeated to their own country, and left it as if to victory and a
useless age of peace. How different was the scene when a raving mountain of
water filled all the hollow where I now wandered, and rushed over the top
of that mole now so high above me; and I had to cling to its stones to keep
me from being carried off like a bit of floating sea-weed! This was the
loveliest and strangest part of the shore. Several long low ridges of rock,
of whose existence I scarcely knew, worn to a level with the sand, hollowed
and channelled with the terrible run of the tide across them, and looking
like the old and outworn cheek-teeth of some awful beast of prey, stretched
out seawards. Here and there amongst them rose a well-known rock, but now
so changed in look by being lifted all the height between the base on the
waters, and the second base in the sand, that I wondered at each, walking
round and viewing it on all sides. It seemed almost a fresh growth out of
the garden of the shore, with uncouth hollows around its fungous root,
and a forsaken air about its brows as it stood in the dry sand and looked
seaward. But what made the chief delight of the spot, closed in by rocks
from the open sands, was the multitude of fairy rivers that flowed across
it to the sea. The gladness these streams gave me I cannot communicate. The
tide had filled thousands of hollows in the breakwater, hundreds of cracked
basins in the rocks, huge sponges of sand; from all of which--from cranny
and crack, and oozing sponge--the water flowed in restricted haste back,
back to the sea, tumbling in tiny cataracts down the faces of the rocks,
bubbling from their roots as from wells, gathering in tanks of sand, and
overflowing in broad shallow streams, curving and sweeping in their sandy
channels, just like, the great rivers of a continent;--here spreading into
smooth silent lakes and reaches, here babbling along in ripples and waves
innumerable--flowing, flowing, to lose their small beings in the same ocean
that met on the other side the waters of the Mississippi, the Orinoco, the
Amazon. All their channels were of golden sand, and the golden sunlight
was above and through and in them all: gold and gold met, with the waters
between. And what gave an added life to their motion was, that all the
ripples made shadows on the clear yellow below them. The eye could not
see the rippling on the surface; but the sun saw it, and drew it in
multitudinous shadowy motion upon the sand, with the play of a thousand
fancies of gold burnished and dead, of sunlight and yellow, trembling,
melting, curving, blending, vanishing ever, ever renewed. It was as if all
the water-marks upon a web of golden silk had been set in wildest yet most
graceful curvilinear motion by the breath of a hundred playful zephyrs. My
eye could not be filled with seeing. I stood in speechless delight for a
while, gazing at the "endless ending" which was "the humour of the game,"
and thinking how in all God's works the laws of beauty are wrought out
in evanishment, in birth and death. There, there is no hoarding, but
an ever-fresh creating, an eternal flow of life from the heart of the
All-beautiful. Hence even the heart of man cannot hoard. His brain or his
hand may gather into its box and hoard; but the moment the thing has passed
into the box, the heart has lost it and is hungry again. If man would
_have,_ it is the giver he must have; the eternal, the original, the
ever-outpouring is alone within his reach; the everlasting _creation_ is
his heritage. Therefore all that he makes must be free to come and go
through the heart of his child; he can enjoy it only as it passes, can
enjoy only its life, its soul, its vision, its meaning, not itself. To
hoard rubies and sapphires is as useless and hopeless for the heart, as if
I were to attempt to hoard this marvel of sand and water and sunlight in
the same iron chest with the musty deeds of my wife's inheritance.

"Father," I murmured half aloud, "thou alone art, and I am because thou
art. Thy will shall be mine."

I know that I must have spoken aloud, because I remember the start of
consciousness and discomposure occasioned by the voice of Percivale
greeting me.

"I beg your pardon," he added; "I did not mean to startle you, Mr. Walton.
I thought you were only looking at Nature's childplay--not thinking."

"I know few things _more_ fit to set one thinking than what you have very
well called Nature's childplay," I returned. "Is Nature very heartless now,
do you think, to go on with this kind of thing at our feet, when away up
yonder lies the awful London, with so many sores festering in her heart?"

"You must answer your own question, Mr. Walton. You know I cannot. I
confess I feel the difficulty deeply. I will go further, and confess that
the discrepancy makes me doubt many things I would gladly believe. I know
_you_ are able to distinguish between a glad unbelief and a sorrowful
doubt."

"Else were I unworthy of the humblest place in the kingdom--unworthy to be
a doorkeeper in the house of my God," I answered, and recoiled from the
sound of my own words; for they seemed to imply that I believed myself
worthy of the position I occupied. I hastened to correct them: "But do not
mistake my thoughts," I said; "I do not dream of worthiness in the way of
honour--only of fitness for the work to be done. For that I think God has
fitted me in some measure. The doorkeeper's office may be given him, not
because he has done some great deed worthy of the honour, but because he
can sweep the porch and scour the threshold, and will, in the main, try to
keep them clean. That is all the worthiness I dare to claim, even to hope
that I possess."

"No one who knows you can mistake your words, except wilfully," returned
Percivale courteously.

"Thank you," I said. "Now I will just ask you, in reference to the contrast
between human life and nature, how you will go back to your work in London,
after seeing all this child's and other play of Nature? Suppose you had
had nothing here but rain and high winds and sea-fogs, would you have been
better fitted for doing something to comfort those who know nothing of such
influences than you will be now? One of the most important qualifications
of a sick-nurse is a ready smile. A long-faced nurse in a sickroom is a
visible embodiment and presence of the disease against which the eager life
of the patient is fighting in agony. Such ought to be banished, with their
black dresses and their mourning-shop looks, from every sick-chamber, and
permitted to minister only to the dead, who do not mind looks. With what a
power of life and hope does a woman--young or old I do not care--with a
face of the morning, a dress like the spring, a bunch of wild flowers in
her hand, with the dew upon them, and perhaps in her eyes too (I don't
object to that--that is sympathy, not the worship of darkness),--with
what a message from nature and life does she, looking death in the face
with a smile, dawn upon the vision of the invalid! She brings a little
health, a little strength to fight, a little hope to endure, actually lapt
in the folds of her gracious garments; for the soul itself can do more than
any medicine, if it be fed with the truth of life."

"But are you not--I beg your pardon for interposing on your eloquence with
dull objection," said Percivale--"are you not begging all the question?
_Is_ life such an affair of sunshine and gladness?"

"If life is not, then I confess all this show of nature is worse than
vanity--it is a vile mockery. Life is gladness; it is the death in it that
makes the misery. We call life-in-death life, and hence the mistake. If
gladness were not at the root, whence its opposite sorrow, against which
we arise, from which we recoil, with which we fight? We recognise it as
death--the contrary of life. There could be no sorrow but for a recognition
of primordial bliss. This in us that fights must be life. It is of the
nature of light, not of darkness; darkness is nothing until the light
comes. This very childplay, as you call it, of Nature, is her assertion of
the secret that life is the deepest, that life shall conquer death. Those
who believe this must bear the good news to them that sit in darkness and
the shadow of death. Our Lord has conquered death--yea, the moral death
that he called the world; and now, having sown the seed of light, the
harvest is springing in human hearts, is springing in this dance of
radiance, and will grow and grow until the hearts of the children of the
kingdom shall frolic in the sunlight of the Father's presence. Nature has
God at her heart; she is but the garment of the Invisible. God wears his
singing robes in a day like this, and says to his children, 'Be not afraid:
your brothers and sisters up there in London are in my hands; go and help
them. I am with you. Bear to them the message of joy. Tell them to be of
good cheer: I have overcome the world. Tell them to endure hunger, and not
sin; to endure passion, and not yield; to admire, and not desire. Sorrow
and pain are serving my ends; for by them will I slay sin; and save my
children.'"

"I wish I could believe as you do, Mr. Walton."

"I wish you could. But God will teach you, if you are willing to be
taught."

"I desire the truth, Mr. Walton."

"God bless you! God is blessing you," I said.

"Amen," returned Percivale devoutly; and we strolled away together in
silence towards the cliffs.

The recession of the tide allowed us to get far enough away from the face
of the rocks to see the general effect. With the lisping of the inch-deep
wavelets at our heels we stood and regarded the worn yet defiant, the
wasted and jagged yet reposeful face of the guardians of the shore.

"Who could imagine, in weather like this, and with this baby of a tide
lying behind us, low at our feet, and shallow as the water a schoolboy
pours upon his slate to wash it withal, that those grand cliffs before
us bear on their front the scars and dints of centuries, of chiliads of
stubborn resistance, of passionate contest with this same creature that is
at this moment unable to rock the cradle of an infant? Look behind you, at
your feet, Mr. Percivale; look before you at the chasms, rents, caves, and
hollows of those rocks."

"I wish you were a painter, Mr. Walton," he said.

"I wish I were," I returned. "At least I know I should rejoice in it, if it
had been given me to be one. But why do you say so now?"

"Because you have always some individual predominating idea, which
would give interpretation to Nature while it gave harmony, reality, and
individuality to your representation of her."

"I know what you mean," I answered; "but I have no gift whatever in that
direction. I have no idea of drawing, or of producing the effects of light
and shade; though I think I have a little notion of colour--perhaps about
as much as the little London boy, who stopped a friend of mine once to ask
the way to the field where the buttercups grew, had of nature."

"I wish I could ask your opinion of some of my pictures."

"That I should never presume to give. I could only tell you what they made
me feel, or perhaps only think. Some day I may have the pleasure of looking
at them."

"May I offer you my address?" he said, and took a card from his
pocket-book. "It is a poor place, but if you should happen to think of
me when you are next in London, I shall be honoured by your paying me a
visit."

"I shall be most happy," I returned, taking his card.--"Did it ever occur
to you, in reference to the subject we were upon a few minutes ago, how
little you can do without shadow in making a picture?"

"Little indeed," answered Percivale. "In fact, it would be no picture at
all."

"I doubt if the world would fare better without its shadows."

"But it would be a poor satisfaction, with regard to the nature of God, to
be told that he allowed evil for artistic purposes."

"It would indeed, if you regard the world as a picture. But if you think of
his art as expended, not upon the making of a history or a drama, but upon
the making of an individual, a being, a character, then I think a great
part of the difficulty concerning the existence of evil which oppresses you
will vanish. So long as a creature has not sinned, sin is possible to him.
Does it seem inconsistent with the character of God that in order that sin
should become impossible he should allow sin to come? that, in order that
his creatures should choose the good and refuse the evil, in order that
they might become such, with their whole nature infinitely enlarged, as to
turn from sin with a perfect repugnance of the will, he should allow them
to fall? that, in order that, from being sweet childish children, they
should become noble, child-like men and women, he should let them try to
walk alone? Why should he not allow the possible in order that it should
become impossible? for possible it would ever have been, even in the midst
of all the blessedness, until it had been, and had been thus destroyed.
Thus sin is slain, uprooted. And the war must ever exist, it seems to me,
where there is creation still going on. How could I be content to guard my
children so that they should never have temptation, knowing that in all
probability they would fail if at any moment it should cross their path?
Would the deepest communion of father and child ever be possible between
us? Evil would ever seem to be in the child, so long as it was possible it
should be there developed. And if this can be said for the existence of
moral evil, the existence of all other evil becomes a comparative trifle;
nay, a positive good, for by this the other is combated."

"I think I understand you," returned Percivale. "I will think over what you
have said. These are very difficult questions."

"Very. I don't think argument is of much use about them, except as it may
help to quiet a man's uneasiness a little, and so give his mind peace to
think about duty. For about the doing of duty there can be no question,
once it is seen. And the doing of duty is the shortest--in very fact, the
only way into the light."

As we spoke, we had turned from the cliffs, and wandered back across the
salt streams to the sands beyond. From the direction of the house came
a little procession of servants, with Walter at their head, bearing the
preparations for our dinner--over the gates of the lock, down the sides of
the embankment of the canal, and across the sands, in the direction of the
children, who were still playing merrily.

"Will you join our early dinner, which is to be out of doors, as you see,
somewhere hereabout on the sands?" I said.

"I shall be delighted," he answered, "if you will let me be of some use
first. I presume you mean to bring your invalid out."

"Yes; and you shall help me to carry her, if you will."

"That is what I hoped," said Percivale; and we went together towards the
parsonage.

As we approached, I saw Wynnie sitting at the drawing-room window; but when
we entered the room, she was gone. My wife was there, however.

"Where is Wynnie?" I asked.

"She saw you coming," she answered, "and went to get Connie ready; for I
guessed Mr. Percivale had come to help you to carry her out."

But I could not help doubting there might be more than that in Wynnie's
disappearance. "What if she should have fallen in love with him," I
thought, "and he should never say a word on the subject? That would be
dreadful for us all."

They had been repeatedly but not very much together of late, and I was
compelled to allow to myself that if they did fall in love with each other
it would be very natural on both sides, for there was evidently a great
mental resemblance between them, so that they could not help sympathising
with each other's peculiarities. And anyone could see what a fine couple
they would make.

Wynnie was much taller than Connie--almost the height of her mother. She
had a very fair skin, and brown hair, a broad forehead, a wise, thoughtful,
often troubled face, a mouth that seldom smiled, but on which a smile
seemed always asleep, and round soft cheeks that dimpled like water when
she did smile. I have described Percivale before. Why should not two such
walk together along the path to the gates of the light? And yet I could
not help some anxiety. I did not know anything of his history. I had no
testimony concerning him from anyone that knew him. His past life was a
blank to me; his means of livelihood probably insufficient--certainly,
I judged, precarious; and his position in society--but there I checked
myself: I had had enough of that kind of thing already. I would not
willingly offend in that worldliness again. The God of the whole earth
could not choose that I should look at such works of his hands after that
fashion. And I was his servant--not Mammon's or Belial's.

All this passed through my mind in about three turns of the winnowing-fan
of thought. Mr. Percivale had begun talking to my wife, who took no pains
to conceal that his presence was pleasant to her, and I went upstairs,
almost unconsciously, to Connie's room.

When I opened the door, forgetting to announce my approach as I ought to
have done, I saw Wynnie leaning over Connie, and Connie's arm round her
waist. Wynnie started back, and Connie gave a little cry, for the jerk thus
occasioned had hurt her. Wynnie had turned her head away, but turned it
again at Connie's cry, and I saw a tear on her face.

"My darlings, I beg your pardon," I said. "It was very stupid of me not to
knock at the door."

Connie looked up at me with large resting eyes, and said--

"It's nothing, papa, Wynnie is in one of her gloomy moods, and didn't want
you to see her crying. She gave me a little pull, that was all. It didn't
hurt me much, only I'm such a goose! I'm in terror before the pain comes.
Look at me," she added, seeing, doubtless, some perturbation on my
countenance, "I'm all right now." And she smiled in my face perfectly.

I turned to Wynnie, put my arm about her, kissed her cheek, and left the
room. I looked round at the door, and saw that Connie was following me with
her eyes, but Wynnie's were hidden in her handkerchief.

I went back to the drawing-room, and in a few minutes Walter came to
announce that dinner was about to be served. The same moment Wynnie came to
say that Connie was ready. She did not lift her eyes, or approach to
give Percivale any greeting, but went again as soon as she had given her
message. I saw that he looked first concerned and then thoughtful.

"Come, Mr. Percivale," I said; and he followed me up to Connie's room.

Wynnie was not there; but Connie lay, looking lovely, all ready for going.
We lifted her, and carried her by the window out on the down, for the
easiest way, though the longest, was by the path to the breakwater, along
its broad back and down from the end of it upon the sands. Before we
reached the breakwater, I found that Wynnie was following behind us. We
stopped in the middle of it, and set Connie down, as if I wanted to take
breath. But I had thought of something to say to her, which I wanted Wynnie
to hear without its being addressed to her.

"Do you see, Connie," I said, "how far off the water is?"

"Yes, papa; it is a long way off. I wish I could get up and run down to
it."

"You can hardly believe that all between, all those rocks, and all that
sand, will be covered before sunset."

"I know it will be. But it doesn't _look_ likely, does it, papa!"

"Not the least likely, my dear. Do you remember that stormy night when I
came through your room to go out for a walk in the dark?"

"Remember it, papa? I cannot forget it. Every time I hear the wind blowing
when I wake in the night I fancy you are out in it, and have to wake myself
up' quite to get rid of the thought."

"Well, Connie, look down into the great hollow there, with rocks and sand
at the bottom of it, stretching far away."

"Yes, papa."

"Now look over the side of your litter. You see those holes all about
between the stones?"

"Yes, papa."

"Well, one of those little holes saved my life that night, when the great
gulf there was full of huge mounds of roaring water, which rushed across
this breakwater with force enough to sweep a whole cavalry regiment off its
back."

"Papa!" exclaimed Connie, turning pale.

Then first I told her all the story. And Wynnie listened behind.

"Then I _was_ right in being frightened, papa!" cried Connie, bursting into
tears; for since her accident she could not well command her feelings.

"You were right in trusting in God, Connie."

"But you might have been drowned, papa!" she sobbed.

"Nobody has a right to say that anything might have been other than what
has been. Before a thing has happened we can say might or might not; but
that has to do only with our ignorance. Of course I am not speaking
of things wherein we ought to exercise will and choice. That is _our_
department. But this does not look like that now, does it? Think what a
change--from the dark night and the roaring water to this fulness of
sunlight and the bare sands, with the water lisping on their edge away
there in the distance. Now, I want you to think that in life troubles will
come which look as if they would never pass away; the night and the storm
look as if they would last for ever; but the calm and the morning cannot be
stayed; the storm in its very nature is transient. The effort of Nature,
as that of the human heart, ever is to return to its repose, for God is
Peace."

"But if you will excuse me, Mr. Walton," said Percivale, "you can hardly
expect experience to be of use to any but those who have had it. It seems
to me that its influences cannot be imparted."

"That depends on the amount of faith in those to whom its results are
offered. Of course, as experience, it can have no weight with another; for
it is no longer experience. One remove, and it ceases. But faith in the
person who has experienced can draw over or derive--to use an old Italian
word--some of its benefits to him who has the faith. Experience may thus,
in a sense, be accumulated, and we may go on to fresh experience of our
own. At least I can hope that the experience of a father may take the form
of hope in the minds of his daughters. Hope never hurt anyone, never yet
interfered with duty; nay, always strengthens to the performance of duty,
gives courage, and clears the judgment. St. Paul says we are saved by hope.
Hope is the most rational thing in the universe. Even the ancient poets,
who believed it was delusive, yet regarded it as an antidote given by the
mercy of the gods against some, at least, of the ills of life."

"But they counted it delusive. A wise man cannot consent to be deluded."

"Assuredly not. The sorest truth rather than a false hope! But what is a
false hope? Only one that ought not to be fulfilled. The old poets could
give themselves little room for hope, and less for its fulfilment; for what
were the gods in whom they believed--I cannot say in whom they trusted?
Gods who did the best their own poverty of being was capable of doing for
men when they gave them the _illusion_ of hope. But I see they are waiting
for us below. One thing I repeat--the waves that foamed across the spot
where we now stand are gone away, have sunk and vanished."

"But they will come again, papa," faltered Wynnie.

"And God will come with them, my love," I said, as we lifted the litter.

In a few minutes more we were all seated on the sand around a table-cloth
spread upon it. I shall never forgot the peace and the light outside and
in, as far as I was concerned at least, and I hope the others too, that
afternoon. The tide had turned, and the waves were creeping up over the
level, soundless almost as thought; but it would be time to go home long
before they had reached us. The sun was in the western half of the sky, and
now and then a breath of wind came from the sea, with a slight saw-edge in
it, but not enough to hurt. Connie could stand much more in that way now.
And when I saw how she could move herself on her couch, and thought how
much she had improved since first she was laid upon it, hope for her kept
fluttering joyously in my heart. I could not help fancying even that I saw
her move her legs a little; but I could not be in the least sure; and she,
if she did move them, was clearly unconscious of it. Charles and Harry were
every now and then starting up from their dinner and running off with a
shout, to return with apparently increased appetite for the rest of it;
and neither their mother nor I cared to interfere with the indecorum. Dora
alone took it upon her to rebuke them. Wynnie was very silent, but looked
more cheerful. Connie seemed full of quiet bliss. My wife's face was a
picture of heavenly repose. The old nurse was walking about with the baby,
occasionally with one hand helping the other servants to wait upon us.
They, too, seemed to have a share in the gladness of the hour, and, like
Ariel, did their spiriting gently.

"This is the will of God," I said, after the things were removed, and we
had sat for a few moments in silence.

"What is the will of God, husband?" asked Ethelwyn.

"Why, this, my love," I answered; "this living air, and wind, and sea,
and light, and land all about us; this consenting, consorting harmony of
Nature, that mirrors a like peace in our souls. The perfection of such
visions, the gathering of them all in one was, is, I should say, in the
face of Christ Jesus. You will say that face was troubled sometimes. Yes,
but with a trouble that broke not the music, but deepened the harmony.
When he wept at the grave of Lazarus, you do not think it was for Lazarus
himself, or for his own loss of him, that he wept? That could not be,
seeing he had the power to call him back when he would. The grief was for
the poor troubled hearts left behind, to whom it was so dreadful because
they had not faith enough in his Father, the God of life and love, who was
looking after it all, full of tenderness and grace, with whom Lazarus was
present and blessed. It was the aching, loving heart of humanity for which
he wept, that needed God so awfully, and could not yet trust in him. Their
brother was only hidden in the skirts of their Father's garment, but they
could not believe that: they said he was dead--lost--away--all gone, as
the children say. And it was so sad to think of a whole world full of the
grief of death, that he could not bear it without the human tears to help
his heart, as they help ours. It was for our dark sorrows that he wept. But
the peace could be no less plain on the face that saw God. Did you ever
think of that wonderful saying: 'Again a little while, and ye shall see
me, because I go to the Father'? The heart of man would have joined the
'because I go to the Father' with the former result--the not seeing of him.
The heart of man is not able, without more and more light, to understand
that all vision is in the light of the Father. Because Jesus went to the
Father, therefore the disciples saw him tenfold more. His body no longer in
their eyes, his very being, his very self was in their hearts--not in their
affections only--in their spirits, their heavenly consciousness."

As I said this, a certain hymn, for which I had and have an especial
affection, came into my mind, and, without prologue or introduction, I
repeated it:

      "If I Him but have,
    If he be but mine,
      If my heart, hence to the grave,
    Ne'er forgets his love divine--
  Know I nought of sadness,
  Feel I nought but worship, love, and gladness.

      If I Him but have,
    Glad with all I part;
      Follow on my pilgrim staff
    My Lord only, with true heart;
  Leave them, nothing saying,
  On broad, bright, and crowded highways straying.

        If I Him but have,
      Glad I fall asleep;
        Aye the flood that his heart gave
      Strength within my heart shall keep,
  And with soft compelling
  Make it tender, through and through it swelling.

        If I Him but have,
      Mine the world I hail!
        Glad as cherub smiling grave,
      Holding back the virgin's veil.
  Sunk and lost in seeing,
  Earthly fears have died from all my being.

        Where I have but Him
      Is my Fatherland;
        And all gifts and graces come
      Heritage into my hand:
  Brothers long deplored
  I in his disciples find restored."

"What a lovely hymn, papa!" exclaimed Connie. She could always speak more
easily than either her mother or sister. "Who wrote it?"

"Friedrich von Hardenberg, known, where he is known, as Novalis."

"But he must have written it in German. Did you translate it?"

"Yes. You will find, I think, that I have kept form, thought, and feeling,
however I may have failed in making an English poem of it."

"O, you dear papa, it is lovely! Is it long since you did it?"

"Years before you were born, Connie."

"To think of you having lived so long, and being one of us!" she returned.
"Was he a Roman Catholic, papa?"

"No, he was a Moravian. At least, his parents were. I don't think he
belonged to any section of the church in particular."

"But oughtn't he, papa?"

"Certainly not, my dear, except he saw good reason for it. But what is the
use of asking such questions, after a hymn like that?"

"O, I didn't think anything bad, papa, I assure you. It was only that I
wanted to know more about him."

The tears were in her eyes, and I was sorry I had treated as significant
what was really not so. But the constant tendency to consider Christianity
as associated of necessity with this or that form of it, instead of as
simply obedience to Christ, had grown more and more repulsive to me as I
had grown myself, for it always seemed like an insult to my brethren in
Christ; hence the least hint of it in my children I was too ready to be
down upon like a most unchristian ogre. I took her hand in mine, and she
was comforted, for she saw in my face that I was sorry, and yet she could
see that there was reason at the root of my haste.

"But," said Wynnie, who, I thought afterwards, must have strengthened
herself to speak from the instinctive desire to show Percivale how far she
was from being out of sympathy with what he might suppose formed a barrier
between him and me--"But," she said, "the lovely feeling in that poem
seems to me, as in all the rest of such poems, to belong only to the New
Testament, and have nothing to do with this world round about us. These
things look as if they were only for drawing and painting and being glad
in, not as if they had relations with all those awful and solemn things. As
soon as I try to get the two together, I lose both of them."

"That is because the human mind must begin with one thing and grow to the
rest. At first, Christianity seemed to men to have only to do with their
conscience. That was the first relation, of course. But even with art
it was regarded as having no relation except for the presentment of its
history. Afterwards, men forgot the conscience almost in trying to make
Christianity comprehensible to the understanding. Now, I trust, we are
beginning to see that Christianity is everything or nothing. Either the
whole is a lovely fable setting forth the loftiest longing of the human
soul after the vision of the divine, or it is such a fact as is the heart
not only of theology so called, but of history, politics, science, and art.
The treasures of the Godhead must be hidden in him, and therefore by him
only can be revealed. This will interpret all things, or it has not yet
been. Teachers of men have not taught this, because they have not seen it.
If we do not find him in nature, we may conclude either that we do not
understand the expression of nature, or have mistaken ideas or poor
feelings about him. It is one great business in our life to find the
interpretation which will render this harmony visible. Till we find it, we
have not seen him to be all in all. Recognising a discord when they touched
the notes of nature and society, the hermits forsook the instrument
altogether, and contented themselves with a partial symphony--lofty,
narrow, and weak. Their example, more or less, has been followed by almost
all Christians. Exclusion is so much the easier way of getting harmony
in the orchestra than study, insight, and interpretation, that most have
adopted it. It is for us, and all who have hope in the infinite God, to
widen its basis as we may, to search and find the true tone and right idea,
place, and combination of instruments, until to our enraptured ear they
all, with one voice of multiform yet harmonious utterance, declare the
glory of God and of his Christ."

"A grand idea," said Percivale.

"Therefore likely to be a true one," I returned. "People find it hard
to believe grand things; but why? If there be a God, is it not likely
everything is grand, save where the reflection of his great thoughts is
shaken, broken, distorted by the watery mirrors of our unbelieving and
troubled souls? Things ought to be grand, simple, and noble. The ages of
eternity will go on showing that such they are and ever have been. God will
yet be victorious over our wretched unbeliefs."

I was sitting facing the sea, but with my eyes fixed on the sand, boring
holes in it with my stick, for I could talk better when I did not look my
familiar faces in the face. I did not feel thus in the pulpit; there I
sought the faces of my flock, to assist me in speaking to their needs. As
I drew to the close of my last monologue, a colder and stronger blast from
the sea blew in my face. I lifted my head, and saw that the tide had crept
up a long way, and was coming in fast. A luminous fog had sunk down over
the western horizon, and almost hidden the sun, had obscured the half of
the sea, and destroyed all our hopes of a sunset. A certain veil as of the
commonplace, like that which so often settles down over the spirit of man
after a season of vision and glory and gladness, had dropped over the face
of Nature. The wind came in little bitter gusts across the dull waters. It
was time to lift Connie and take her home.

This was the last time we ate together on the open shore.






CHAPTER III.

A PASTORAL VISIT.





The next morning rose neither "cherchef't in a comely cloud" nor "roab'd in
flames and amber light," but covered all in a rainy mist, which the wind
mingled with salt spray torn from the tops of the waves. Every now and then
the wind blew a blastful of larger drops against the window of my study
with an angry clatter and clash, as if daring me to go out and meet its
ire. The earth was very dreary, for there were no shadows anywhere. The
sun was hustled away by the crowding vapours; and earth, sea, and sky were
possessed by a gray spirit that threatened wrath. The breakfast-bell rang,
and I went down, expecting to find my Wynnie, who was always down first to
make the tea, standing at the window with a sad face, giving fit response
to the aspect of nature without, her soul talking with the gray spirit. I
did find her at the window, looking out upon the restless tossing of the
waters, but with no despondent answer to the trouble of nature. On the
contrary, her cheek, though neither rosy nor radiant, looked luminous, and
her eyes were flashing out upon the ebb-tide which was sinking away into
the troubled ocean beyond. Does my girl-reader expect me to tell her next
that something had happened? that Percivale had said something to her? or
that, at least, he had just passed the window, and given her a look which
she might interpret as she pleased? I must disappoint her. It was nothing
of the sort. I knew the heart and feeling of my child. It was only that
kind nature was in sympathy with her mood. The girl was always more
peaceful in storm than in sunshine. I remembered that now. A movement of
life instantly began in her when the obligation of gladness had departed
with the light. Her own being arose to provide for its own needs. She could
smile now when nature required from her no smile in response to hers. And I
could not help saying to myself, "She must marry a poor man some day; she
is a creature of the north, and not of the south; the hot sun of prosperity
would wither her up. Give her a bleak hill-side, and a glint or two of
sunshine between the hailstorms, and she will live and grow; give her
poverty and love, and life will be interesting to her as a romance; give
her money and position, and she will grow dull and haughty. She will
believe in nothing that poet can sing or architect build. She will, like
Cassius, scorn her spirit for being moved to smile at anything."

I had stood regarding her for a moment. She turned and saw me, and came
forward with her usual morning greeting.

"I beg your pardon, papa: I thought it was Walter."

"I am glad to see a smile on your face, my love."

"Don't think me very disagreeable, papa. I know I am a trouble to you. But
I am a trouble to myself first. I fear I have a discontented mind and a
complaining temper. But I do try, and I will try hard to overcome it."

"It will not get the better of you, so long as you do the duty of the
moment. But I think, as I told you before, that you are not very well, and
that your indisposition is going to do you good by making you think about
some things you are ready to think about, but which you might have banished
if you had been in good health and spirits. You are feeling as you never
felt before, that you need a presence in your soul of which at least you
haven't enough yet. But I preached quite enough to you yesterday, and I
won't go on the same way to-day again. Only I wanted to comfort you. Come
and give me my breakfast."

"You do comfort me, papa," she answered, approaching the table. "I know I
don't show what I feel as I ought, but you do comfort me much. Don't you
like a day like this, papa?"

"I do, my dear. I always did. And I think you take after me in that, as you
do in a good many things besides. That is how I understand you so well."

"Do I really take after you, papa? Are you sure that you understand me so
well?" she asked, brightening up.

"I know I do," I returned, replying to her last question.

"Better than I do myself?" she asked with an arch smile.

"Considerably, if I mistake not," I answered.

"How delightful! To think that I am understood even when I don't understand
myself!"

"But even if I am wrong, you are yet understood. The blessedness of life is
that we can hide nothing from God. If we could hide anything from God, that
hidden thing would by and by turn into a terrible disease. It is the sight
of God that keeps and makes things clean. But as we are both, by mutual
confession, fond of this kind of weather, what do you say to going out with
me? I have to visit a sick woman."

"You don't mean Mrs. Coombes, papa?"

"No, my dear. I did not hear she was ill."

"O, I daresay it is nothing much. Only old nursey said yesterday she was in
bed with a bad cold, or something of that sort."

"We'll call and inquire as we pass,--that is, if you are inclined to go
with me."

"How can you put an _if_ to that, papa?"

"I have just had a message from that cottage that stands all alone on the
corner of Mr. Barton's farm--over the cliff, you know--that the woman is
ill, and would like to see me. So the sooner we start the better."

"I shall have done my breakfast in five minutes, papa. O, here's
mamma!--Mamma, I'm going out for a walk in the rain with papa. You won't
mind, will you?"

"I don't think it will do you any harm, my dear. That's all I mind, you
know. It was only once or twice when you were not well that I objected to
it. I quite agree with your papa, that only lazy people are _glad_ to stay
in-doors when it rains."

"And it does blow so delightfully!" said Wynnie, as she left the room to
put on her long cloak and her bonnet.

We called at the sexton's cottage, and found him sitting gloomily by the
low window, looking seaward.

"I hope your wife is not _very_ poorly, Coombes," I said.

"No, sir. She be very comfortable in bed. Bed's not a bad place to be in
in such weather," he answered, turning again a dreary look towards the
Atlantic. "Poor things!"

"What a passion for comfort you have, Coombes! How does that come about, do
you think?"

"I suppose I was made so, sir."

"To be sure you were. God made you so."

"Surely, sir. Who else?"

"Then I suppose he likes making people comfortable if he makes people like
to be comfortable."

"It du look likely enough, sir."

"Then when he takes it out of your hands, you mustn't think he doesn't look
after the people you would make comfortable if you could."

"I must mind my work, you know, sir."

"Yes, surely. And you mustn't want to take his out of his hands, and go
grumbling as if you would do it so much better if he would only let you get
_your_ hand to it."

"I daresay you be right, sir," he said. "I must just go and have a look
about, though. Here's Agnes. She'll tell you about mother."

He took his spade from the corner, and went out. He often brought his tools
into the cottage. He had carved the handle of his spade all over with the
names of the people he had buried.

"Tell your mother, Agnes, that I will call in the evening and see her, if
she would like to see me. We are going now to see Mrs. Stokes. She is very
poorly, I hear."

"Let us go through the churchyard, papa," said Wynnie, "and see what the
old man is doing."

"Very well, my dear. It is only a few steps round."

"Why do you humour the sexton's foolish fancy so much, papa? It is
such nonsense! You taught us it was, surely, in your sermon about the
resurrection?"

"Most certainly, my dear. But it would be of no use to try to get it out of
his head by any argument. He has a kind of craze in that direction. To get
people's hearts right is of much more importance than convincing their
judgments. Right judgment will follow. All such fixed ideas should be
encountered from the deepest grounds of truth, and not from the outsides of
their relations. Coombes has to be taught that God cares for the dead more
than he does, and _therefore_ it is unreasonable for him to be anxious
about them."

When we reached the churchyard we found the old man kneeling on a grave
before its headstone. It was a very old one, with a death's-head and
cross-bones carved upon the top of it in very high relief. With his
pocket-knife he was removing the lumps of green moss out of the hollows of
the eyes of the carven skull. We did not interrupt him, but walked past
with a nod.

"You saw what he was doing, Wynnie? That reminds me of almost the only
thing in Dante's grand poem that troubles me. I cannot think of it without
a renewal of my concern, though I have no doubt he is as sorry now as I am
that ever he could have written it. When, in the _Inferno,_ he reaches the
lowest region of torture, which is a solid lake of ice, he finds the lost
plunged in it to various depths, some, if I remember rightly, entirely
submerged, and visible only through the ice, transparent as crystal, like
the insects found in amber. One man with his head only above the ice,
appeals to him as condemned to the same punishment to take pity on him, and
remove the lumps of frozen tears from his eyes, that he may weep a little
before they freeze again and stop the relief once more. Dante says to him,
'Tell me who you are, and if I do not assist you, I deserve to lie at the
bottom of the ice myself.' The man tells him who he is, and explains to him
one awful mystery of these regions. Then he says, 'Now stretch forth thy
hand, and open my eyes.' 'And,' says Dante, I did not open them for him;
and rudeness to him was courtesy.'"

"But he promised, you said."

"He did; and yet he did not do it. Pity and truth had abandoned him
together. One would think little of it comparatively, were it not that
Dante is so full of tenderness and grand religion. It is very awful, and
may teach us many things."

"But what made you think of that now?"

"Merely what Coombes was about. The visual image was all. He was scooping
the green moss out of the eyes of the death's-head on the gravestone."

By this time we were on the top of the downs, and the wind was buffeting
us, and every other minute assailing us with a blast of rain. Wynnie drew
her cloak closer about her, bent her head towards the blast, and struggled
on bravely by my side. No one who wants to enjoy a walk in the rain must
carry an umbrella; it is pure folly. When we came to one of the stone
fences, we cowered down by its side for a few moments to recover our
breath, and then struggled on again. Anything like conversation was out of
the question. At length we dropped into a hollow, which gave us a little
repose. Down below the sea was dashing into the mouth of the glen, or
coomb, as they call it there. On the opposite side of the hollow, the
little house to which we were going stood up against the gray sky.

"I begin to doubt whether I ought to have brought you, Wynnie. It was
thoughtless of me; I don't mean for your sake, but because your presence
may be embarrassing in a small house; for probably the poor woman may
prefer seeing me alone."

"I will go back, papa. I sha'n't mind it a bit."

"No; you had better come on. I shall not be long with her, I daresay. We
may find some place that you can wait in. Are you wet?"

"Only my cloak. I am as dry as a tortoise inside."

"Come along, then. We shall soon be there."

When we reached the house I found that Wynnie would not be in the way. I
left her seated by the kitchen-fire, and was shown into the room where Mrs.
Stokes lay. I cannot say I perceived. But I guessed somehow, the moment I
saw her that there was something upon her mind. She was a hard-featured
woman, with a cold, troubled black eye that rolled restlessly about. She
lay on her back, moving her head from side to side. When I entered she only
looked at me, and turned her eyes away towards the wall. I approached the
bedside, and seated myself by it. I always do so at once; for the patient
feels more at rest than if you stand tall up before her. I laid my hand on
hers.

"Are you very ill, Mrs. Stokes?" I said.

"Yes, very," she answered with a groan. "It be come to the last with me."

"I hope not, indeed, Mrs. Stokes. It's not come to the last with us, so
long as we have a Father in heaven."

"Ah! but it be with me. He can't take any notice of the like of me."

"But indeed he does, whether you think it or not. He takes notice of every
thought we think, and every deed we do, and every sin we commit."

I said the last words with emphasis, for I suspected something more than
usual upon her conscience. She gave another groan, but made no reply. I
therefore went on.

"Our Father in heaven is not like some fathers on earth, who, so long as
their children don't bother them, let them do anything they like. He will
not have them do what is wrong. He loves them too much for that."

"He won't look at me," she said half murmuring, half sighing it out, so
that I could hardly, hear what she said.

"It is because he _is_ looking at you that you are feeling uncomfortable,"
I answered. "He wants you to confess your sins. I don't mean to me, but to
himself; though if you would like to tell me anything, and I can help you,
I shall be _very_ glad. You know Jesus Christ came to save us from our
sins; and that's why we call him our Saviour. But he can't save us from our
sins if we won't confess that we have any."

"I'm sure I never said but what I be a great sinner, as well as other
people."

"You don't suppose that's confessing your sins?" I said. "I once knew a
woman of very bad character, who allowed to me she was a great sinner; but
when I said, 'Yes, you have done so and so,' she would not allow one of
those deeds to be worthy of being reckoned amongst her sins. When I asked
her what great sins she had been guilty of, then, seeing these counted for
nothing, I could get no more out of her than that she was a great sinner,
like other people, as you have just been saying."

"I hope you don't be thinking I ha' done anything of that sort," she said
with wakening energy. "No man or woman dare say I've done anything to be
ashamed of."

"Then you've committed no sins?" I returned. "But why did you send for me?
You must have something to say to me."

"I never did send for you. It must ha' been my husband."

"Ah, then I'm afraid I've no business here!" I returned, rising. "I thought
you had sent for me."

She returned no answer. I hoped that by retiring I should set her thinking,
and make her more willing to listen the next time I came. I think clergymen
may do much harm by insisting when people are in a bad mood, as if they
had everything to do, and the Spirit of God nothing at all. I bade her
good-day, hoped she would be better soon, and returned to Wynnie.

As we walked home together, I said:

"Wynnie, I was right. It would not have done at all to take you into the
sick-room. Mrs. Stokes had not sent for me herself, and rather resented my
appearance. But I think she will send for me before many days are over."






CHAPTER IV.

THE ART OF NATURE.





We had a week of hazy weather after this. I spent it chiefly in my study
and in Connie's room. A world of mist hung over the sea; it refused to hold
any communion with mortals. As if ill-tempered or unhappy, it folded itself
in its mantle and lay still.

What was it thinking about? All Nature is so full of meaning, that we
cannot help fancying sometimes that she knows her own meanings. She is
busy with every human mood in turn--sometimes with ten of them at
once--picturing our own inner world before us, that we may see, understand,
develop, reform it.

I was turning over some such thought in my mind one morning, when Dora
knocked at the door, saying that Mr. Percivale had called, and that mamma
was busy, and would I mind if she brought him up to the study.

"Not in the least, my dear," I answered; "I shall be very glad to see him."

"Not much of weather for your sacred craft, Percivale," I said as he
entered. "I suppose, if you were asked to make a sketch to-day, it would be
much the same as if a stupid woman were to ask you to take her portrait?"

"Not quite so bad as that," said Percivale.

"Surely the human face is more than nature."

"Nature is never stupid."

"The woman might be pretty."

"Nature is full of beauty in her worst moods; while the prettier such a
woman, the more stupid she would look, and the more irksome you would feel
the task; for you could not help making claims upon her which you would
never think of making upon Nature."

"I daresay you are right. Such stupidity has a good deal to do with moral
causes. You do not ever feel that Nature is to blame."

"Nature is never ugly. She may be dull, sorrowful, troubled; she may be
lost in tears and pallor, but she cannot be ugly. It is only when you rise
into animal nature that you find ugliness."

"True in the main only; for no lines of absolute division can be drawn in
nature. I have seen ugly flowers."

"I grant it; but they are exceptional; and none of them are without
beauty."

"Surely not. The ugliest soul even is not without some beauty. But I grant
you that the higher you rise the more is ugliness possible, just because
the greater beauty is possible. There is no ugliness to equal in its
repulsiveness the ugliness of a beautiful face."

A pause followed.

"I presume," I said, "you are thinking of returning to London now, there
seems so little to be gained by remaining here. When this weather begins to
show itself I could wish myself in my own parish; but I am sure the change,
even through the winter, will be good for my daughter."

"I must be going soon," he answered; "but it would be too bad to take
offence at the old lady's first touch of temper. I mean to wait and see
whether we shall not have a little bit of St. Martin's summer, as Shakspere
calls it; after which, hail London, queen of smoke and--"

"And what?" I asked, seeing he hesitated.

"'And soap,' I was fancying you would say; for you never will allow the
worst of things, Mr. Walton."

"No, surely I will not. For one thing, the worst has never been seen by
anybody yet. We have no experience to justify it."

We were chatting in this loose manner when Walter came to the door to tell
me that a messenger had come from Mrs. Stokes.

I went down to see him, and found her husband.

"My wife be very bad, sir," he said. "I wish you could come and see her."

"Does she want to see me?' I asked.

"She's been more uncomfortable than ever since you was there last," he
said.

"But," I repeated, "has she said she would like to see me?"

"I can't say it, sir," answered the man.

"Then it is you who want me to see her?"

"Yes, sir; but I be sure she do want to see you. I know her way, you see,
sir. She never would say she wanted anything in her life; she would always
leave you to find it out: so I got sharp at that, sir."

"And then would she allow she had wanted it when you got it her?"

"No, never, sir. She be peculiar--my wife; she always be."

"Does she know that you have come to ask me now?"

"No, sir."

"Have you courage to tell her?"

The man hesitated.

"If you haven't courage to tell her," I resumed, "I have nothing more to
say. I can't go; or, rather, I will not go."

"I will tell her, sir."

"Then you will tell her that I refused to come until she sent for me
herself."

"Ben't that rather hard on a dying woman, sir?"

"I have my reasons. Except she send for me herself, the moment I go she
will take refuge in the fact that she did not send for me. I know your
wife's peculiarity too, Mr. Stokes."

"Well, I _will_ tell her, sir. It's time to speak my own mind."

"I think so. It was time long ago. When she sends for me, if it be in the
middle of the night, I shall be with her at once."

He left me and I returned to Percivale.

"I was just thinking before you came," I said, "about the relation of
Nature to our inner world. You know I am quite ignorant of your art, but I
often think about the truths that lie at the root of it."

"I am greatly obliged to you," he said, "for talking about these things. I
assure you it is of more service to me than any professional talk. I always
think the professions should not herd together so much as they do; they
want to be shone upon from other quarters."

"I believe we have all to help each other, Percivale. The sun himself could
give us no light that would be of any service to us but for the reflective
power of the airy particles through which he shines. But anything I know I
have found out merely by foraging for my own necessities."

"That is just what makes the result valuable," he replied. "Tell me what
you were thinking."

"I was thinking," I answered, "how everyone likes to see his own thoughts
set outside of him, that he may contemplate them _objectively,_ as the
philosophers call it. He likes to see the other side of them, as it were."

"Yes, that is, of course, true; else, I suppose, there would be no art at
all."

"Surely. But that is not the aspect in which I was considering the
question. Those who can so set them forth are artists; and however they
may fail of effecting such a representation of their ideas as will satisfy
themselves, they yet experience satisfaction in the measure in which they
have succeeded. But there are many more men who cannot yet utter their
ideas in any form. Mind, I do expect that, if they will only be good, they
shall have this power some day; for I do think that many things we call
differences in kind, may in God's grand scale prove to be only differences
in degree. And indeed the artist--by artist, I mean, of course, architect,
musician, painter, poet, sculptor--in many things requires it just as much
as the most helpless and dumb of his brethren, seeing in proportion to the
things that he can do, he is aware of the things he cannot do, the thoughts
he cannot express. Hence arises the enthusiasm with which people hail the
work of an artist; they rejoice, namely, in seeing their own thoughts, or
feelings, or something like them, expressed; and hence it comes that of
those who have money, some hang their walls with pictures of their own
choice, others--"

"I beg your pardon," said Percivale, interrupting; "but most people, I
fear, hang their walls with pictures of other people's choice, for they
don't buy them at all till the artist has got a name."

"That is true. And yet there is a shadow of choice even there; for they
won't at least buy what they dislike. And again the growth in popularity
may be only what first attracted their attention--not determined their
choice."

"But there are others who only buy them for their value in the market."

"'Of such is not the talk,' as the Germans would say. In as far as your
description applies, such are only tradesmen, and have no claim to be
considered now."

"Then I beg your pardon for interrupting. I am punished more than I
deserve, if you have lost your thread."

"I don't think I have. Let me see. Yes. I was saying that people hang
their walls with pictures of their choice; or provide music, &c., of
their choice. Let me keep to the pictures: their choice, consciously or
unconsciously, is determined by some expression that these pictures give
to what is in themselves--the buyers, I mean. They like to see their own
feelings outside of themselves."

"Is there not another possible motive--that the pictures teach them
something?"

"That, I venture to think, shows a higher moral condition than the other,
but still partakes of the other; for it is only what is in us already
that makes us able to lay hold of a lesson. It is there in the germ, else
nothing from without would wake it up."

"I do not quite see what all this has to do with Nature and her
influences."

"One step more, and I shall arrive at it. You will admit that the pictures
and objects of art of all kinds, with which a man adorns the house he has
chosen or built to live in, have thenceforward not a little to do with the
education of his tastes and feelings. Even when he is not aware of it, they
are working upon him,--for good, if he has chosen what is good, which alone
shall be our supposition."

"Certainly; that is clear."

"Now I come to it. God, knowing our needs, built our house for our
needs--not as one man may build for another, but as no man can build for
himself. For our comfort, education, training, he has put into form for us
all the otherwise hidden thoughts and feelings of our heart. Even when he
speaks of the hidden things of the Spirit of God, he uses the forms or
pictures of Nature. The world is, as it were, the human, unseen world
turned inside out, that we may see it. On the walls of the house that he
has built for us, God has hung up the pictures--ever-living, ever-changing
pictures--of all that passes in our souls. Form and colour and motion are
there,--ever-modelling, ever-renewing, never wearying. Without this living
portraiture from within, we should have no word to utter that should
represent a single act of the inner world. Metaphysics could have no
existence, not to speak of poetry, not to speak of the commonest language
of affection. But all is done in such spiritual suggestion, portrait and
definition are so avoided, the whole is in such fluent evanescence, that
the producing mind is only aided, never overwhelmed. It never amounts to
representation. It affords but the material which the thinking, feeling
soul can use, interpret, and apply for its own purposes of speech. It is,
as it were, the forms of thought cast into a lovely chaos by the inferior
laws of matter, thence to be withdrawn by what we call the creative genius
that God has given to men, and moulded, and modelled, and arranged, and
built up to its own shapes and its own purposes."

"Then I presume you would say that no mere transcript, if I may use the
word, of nature is the worthy work of an artist."

"It is an impossibility to make a mere transcript. No man can help seeing
nature as he is himself, for she has all in her; but if he sees no meaning
in especial that he wants to give, his portrait of her will represent only
her dead face, not her living impassioned countenance."

"Then artists ought to interpret nature?"

"Indubitably; but that will only be to interpret themselves--something of
humanity that is theirs, whether they have discovered it already or not. If
to this they can add some teaching for humanity, then indeed they may claim
to belong to the higher order of art, however imperfect they may be in
their powers of representing--however lowly, therefore, their position may
be in that order."





CHAPTER V.

THE SORE SPOT.


We went on talking for some time. Indeed we talked so long that the
dinner-hour was approaching, when one of the maids came with the message
that Mr. Stokes had called again, wishing to see me. I could not help
smiling inwardly at the news. I went down at once, and found him smiling
too.

"My wife do send me for you this time, sir," he said. "Between you and me,
I cannot help thinking she have something on her mind she wants to tell
you, sir."

"Why shouldn't she tell you, Mr. Stokes? That would be most natural. And
then, if you wanted any help about it, why, of course, here I am."

"She don't think well enough of my judgment for that, sir; and I daresay
she be quite right. She always do make me give in before she have done
talking. But she have been a right good wife to me, sir."

"Perhaps she would have been a better if you hadn't given in quite so much.
It is very wrong to give in when you think you are right."

"But I never be sure of it when she talk to me awhile."

"Ah, then I have nothing to say except that you ought to have been
surer--_sometimes;_ I don't say _always."_

"But she do want you very bad now, sir. I don't think she'll behave to you
as she did before. Do come, sir."

"Of course I will--instantly."

I returned to the study, and asked Percivale if he would like to go with
me. He looked, I thought, as if he would rather not. I saw that it was
hardly kind to ask him.

"Well, perhaps it is better not," I said; "for I do not know how long I may
have to be with the poor woman. You had better wait here and take my place
at the dinner-table. I promise not to depose you if I should return before
the meal is over."

He thanked me very heartily. I showed him into the drawing-room, told my
wife where I was going, and not to wait dinner for me--I would take my
chance--and joined Mr. Stokes.

"You have no idea, then," I said, after we had gone about half-way, "what
makes your wife so uneasy?"

"No, I haven't," he answered; "except it be," he resumed, "that she was too
hard, as I thought, upon our Mary, when she wanted to marry beneath her, as
wife thought."

"How beneath her? Who was it she wanted to marry?"

"She did marry him, sir. She has a bit of her mother's temper, you see, and
she would take her own way."

"Ah, there's a lesson to mothers, is it not? If they want to have their own
way, they mustn't give their own temper to their daughters."

"But how are they to help it, sir?"

"Ah, how indeed? But what is your daughter's husband?"

"A labourer, sir. He works on a farm out by Carpstone."

"But you have worked on Mr. Barton's farm for many years, if I don't
mistake?"

"I have, sir; but I am a sort of a foreman now, you see."

"But you weren't so always; and your son-in-law, whether he work his way up
or not, is, I presume, much where you were when you married Mrs. Stokes?"

"True as you say, sir; and it's not me that has anything to say about it. I
never gave the man a nay. But you see, my wife, she always do be wanting to
get her head up in the world; and since she took to the shopkeeping--"

"The shopkeeping!" I said, with some surprise; "I didn't know that."

"Well, you see, sir, it's only for a quarter or so of the year. You know
it's a favourite walk for the folks as comes here for the bathing--past our
house, to see the great cave down below; and my wife, she got a bit of a
sign put up, and put a few ginger-beer bottles in the window, and--"

"A bad place for the ginger-beer," I said.

"They were only empty ones, with corks and strings, you know, sir. My wife,
she know better than put the ginger-beer its own self in the sun. But I do
think she carry her head higher after that; and a farm-labourer, as they
call them, was none good enough for her daughter."

"And hasn't she been kind to her since she married, then?"

"She's never done her no harm, sir."

"But she hasn't gone to see her very often, or asked her to come and see
you very often, I suppose?"

"There's ne'er a one o' them crossed the door of the other," he answered,
with some evident feeling of his own in the matter.

"Ah; but you don't approve of that yourself, Stokes?"

"Approve of it? No, sir. I be a farm-labourer once myself; and so I do want
to see my own daughter now and then. But she take after her mother, she do.
I don't know which of the two it is as does it, but there's no coming and
going between Carpstone and this."

We were approaching the house. I told Stokes he had better let her know I
was there; for that, if she had changed her mind, it was not too late for
me to go home again without disturbing her. He came back saying she was
still very anxious to see me.

"Well, Mrs. Stokes, how do you feel to-day?" I asked, by way of opening the
conversation. "I don't think you look much worse."

"I he much worse, sir. You don't know what I suffer, or you wouldn't make
so little of it. I be very bad."

"I know you are very ill, but I hope you are not too ill to tell me why you
are so anxious to see me. You have got something to tell me, I suppose."

With pale and death-like countenance, she appeared to be fighting more with
herself than with the disease which yet had nearly overcome her. The drops
stood upon her forehead, and she did not speak. Wishing to help her, if I
might, I said--

"Was it about your daughter you wanted to speak to me?"

"No," she muttered. "I have nothing to say about my daughter. She was my
own. I could do as I pleased with her."

I thought with myself, we must have a word about that by and by, but
meantime she must relieve her heart of the one thing whose pressure she
feels.

"Then," I said, "you want to tell me about something that was not your
own?"

"Who said I ever took what was not my own?" she returned fiercely. "Did
Stokes dare to say I took anything that wasn't my own?"

"No one has said anything of the sort. Only I cannot help thinking, from
your own words and from your own behaviour, that that must be the cause of
your misery."

"It is very hard that the parson should think such things," she muttered
again.

"My poor woman," I said, "you sent for me because you had something to
confess to me. I want to help you if I can. But you are too proud to
confess it yet, I see. There is no use in my staying here. It only does you
harm. So I will bid you good-morning. If you cannot confess to me, confess
to God."

"God knows it, I suppose, without that."

"Yes. But that does not make it less necessary for you to confess it. How
is he to forgive you, if you won't allow that you have done wrong?"

"It be not so easy that as you think. How would you like to say you had
took something that wasn't your own?"

"Well, I shouldn't like it, certainly; but if I had it to do, I think I
should make haste and do it, and so get rid of it."

"But that's the worst of it; I can't get rid of it."

"But," I said, laying my hand on hers, and trying to speak as kindly as I
could, although her whole behaviour would have been exceedingly repulsive
but for her evidently great suffering, "you have now all but confessed
taking something that did not belong to you. Why don't you summon courage
and tell me all about it? I want to help you out of the trouble as easily
as ever I can; but I can't if you don't tell me what you've got that isn't
yours."

"I haven't got anything," she muttered.

"You had something, then, whatever may have become of it now."

She was again silent.

"What did you do with it?"

"Nothing."

I rose and took up my hat. She stretched out her hand, as if to lay hold of
me, with a cry.

"Stop, stop. I'll tell you all about it. I lost it again. That's the worst
of it. I got no good of it."

"What was it?"

"A sovereign," she said, with a groan. "And now I'm a thief, I suppose."

"No more a thief than you were before. Rather less, I hope. But do you
think it would have been any better for you if you hadn't lost it, and had
got some good of it, as you say?"

She was silent yet again.

"If you hadn't lost it you would most likely have been a great deal worse
for it than you are--a more wicked woman altogether."

"I'm not a wicked woman."

"It is wicked to steal, is it not?"

"I didn't steal it."

"How did you come by it, then?"

"I found it."

"Did you try to find out the owner?"

"No. I knew whose it was."

"Then it was very wicked not to return it. And I say again, that if you had
not lost the sovereign you would have been most likely a more wicked woman
than you are."

"It was very hard to lose it. I could have given it back. And then I
wouldn't have lost my character as I have done this day."

"Yes, you could; but I doubt if you would."

"I would."

"Now, if you had it, you are sure you would give it back?"

"Yes, that I would," she said, looking me so full in the face that I was
sure she meant it.

"How would you give it back? Would you get your husband to take it?"

"No; I wouldn't trust him."

"With the story, you mean I You do not wish to imply that he would not
restore it?"

"I don't mean that. He would do what I told him."

"How would you return it, then?"

"I should make a parcel of it, and send it."

"Without saying anything about it?"

"Yes. Where's the good? The man would have his own."

"No, he would not. He has a right to your confession, for you have wronged
him. That would never do."

"You are too hard upon me," she said, beginning to weep angrily.

"Do you want to get the weight of this sin off your mind?" I said.

"Of course I do. I am going to die. O dear! O dear!"

"Then that is just what I want to help you in. You must confess, or the
weight of it will stick there."

"But, if I confess, I shall be expected to pay it back?"

"Of course. That is only reasonable."

"But I haven't got it, I tell you. I have lost it."

"Have you not a sovereign in your possession?"

"No, not one."

"Can't you ask your husband to let you have one?"

"There! I knew it was no use. I knew you would only make matters worse. I
do wish I had never seen that wicked money."

"You ought not to abuse the money; it was not wicked. You ought to wish
that you had returned it. But that is no use; the thing is to return it
now. Has your husband got a sovereign?"

"No. He may ha' got one since I be laid up. But I never can tell him about
it; and I should be main sorry to spend one of his hard earning in that
way, poor man."

"Well, I'll tell him, and we'll manage it somehow."

I thought for a few moments she would break out in opposition; but she hid
her face with the sheet instead, and burst into a great weeping.

I took this as a permission to do as I had said, and went to the room-door
and called her husband. He came, looking scared. His wife did not look up,
but lay weeping. I hoped much for her and him too from this humiliation
before him, for I had little doubt she needed it.

"Your wife, poor woman," I said, "is in great distress because--I do not
know when or how--she picked up a sovereign that did not belong to her,
and, instead of returning, put it away somewhere and lost it. This is what
is making her so miserable."

"Deary me!" said Stokes, in the tone with which he would have spoken to a
sick child; and going up to his wife, he sought to draw down the sheet from
her face, apparently that he might kiss her; but she kept tight hold of
it, and he could not. "Deary me!" he went on; "we'll soon put that all to
rights. When was it, Jane, that you found it?"

"When we wanted so to have a pig of our own; and I thought I could soon
return it," she sobbed from under the sheet.

"Deary me! Ten years ago! Where did you find it, old woman?"

"I saw Squire Tresham drop it, as he paid me for some ginger-beer he got
for some ladies that was with him. I do believe I should ha' given it back
at the time; but he made faces at the ginger-beer, and said it was very
nasty; and I thought, well, I would punish him for it."

"You see it was your temper that made a thief of you, then," I said.

"My old man won't be so hard on me as you, sir. I wish I had told him
first."

"I would wish that too," I said, "were it not that I am afraid you might
have persuaded him to be silent about it, and so have made him miserable
and wicked too. But now, Stokes, what is to be done? This money must be
paid. Have you got it?"

The poor man looked blank.

"She will never be at ease till this money is paid," I insisted.

"Well, sir, I ain't got it, but I'll borrow it of someone; I'll go to
master, and ask him."

"No, my good fellow, that won't do. Your master would want to know what
you were going to do with it, perhaps; and we mustn't let more people know
about it than just ourselves and Squire Tresham. There is no occasion for
that. I'll tell you what: I'll give you the money, and you must take it;
or, if you like, I will take it to the squire, and tell him all about it.
Do you authorise me to do this, Mrs. Stokes?"

"Please, sir. It's very kind of you. I will work hard to pay you again, if
it please God to spare me. I am very sorry I was so cross-tempered to you,
sir; but I couldn't bear the disgrace of it."

She said all this from under the bed-clothes.

"Well, I'll go," I said; "and as soon as I've had my dinner I'll get a
horse and ride over to Squire Tresham's. I'll come back to-night and tell
you about it. And now I hope you will be able to thank God for forgiving
you this sin; but you must not hide and cover it up, but confess it clean
out to him, you know."

She made me no answer, but went on sobbing.

I hastened home, and as I entered sent Walter to ask the loan of a horse
which a gentleman, a neighbour, had placed at my disposal.

When I went into the dining-room, I found that they had not sat down to
dinner. I expostulated: it was against the rule of the house, when my
return was uncertain.

"But, my love," said my wife, "why should you not let us please ourselves
sometimes?" Dinner is so much nicer when you are with us."

"I am very glad you think so," I answered. "But there are the children: it
is not good for growing creatures to be kept waiting for their meals."

"You see there are no children; they have had their dinner."

"Always in the right, wife; but there's Mr. Percivale."

"I never dine till seven o'clock, to save daylight," he said.

"Then I am beaten on all points. Let us dine."

During dinner I could scarcely help observing how Percivale's eyes followed
Wynnie, or, rather, every now and then settled down upon her face. That she
was aware, almost conscious of this, I could not doubt. One glance at her
satisfied me of that. But certain words of the apostle kept coming again
and again into my mind; for they were winged words those, and even when
they did not enter they fluttered their wings at my window: "Whatsoever is
not of faith is sin." And I kept reminding myself that I must heave the
load of sin off me, as I had been urging poor Mrs. Stokes to do; for God
was ever seeking to lift it, only he could not without my help, for that
would be to do me more harm than good by taking the one thing in which I
was like him away from me--my action. Therefore I must have faith in
him, and not be afraid; for surely all fear is sin, and one of the most
oppressive sins from which the Lord came to save us.

Before dinner was over the horse was at the door. I mounted, and set out
for Squire Tresham's.


I found him a rough but kind-hearted elderly man. When I told him the story
of the poor woman's misery, he was quite concerned at her suffering. When I
produced the sovereign he would not receive it at first, but requested me
to take it back to her and say she must keep it by way of an apology for
his rudeness about her ginger-beer; for I took care to tell him the whole
story, thinking it might be a lesson to him too. But I begged him to take
it; for it would, I thought, not only relieve her mind more thoroughly, but
help to keep her from coming to think lightly of the affair afterwards. Of
course I could not tell him that I had advanced the money, for that would
have quite prevented him from receiving it. I then got on my horse again,
and rode straight to the cottage.

"Well, Mrs. Stokes," I said, "it's all over now. That's one good thing
done. How do you feel yourself now?"

"I feel better now, sir. I hope God will forgive me."

"God does forgive you. But there are more things you need forgiveness for.
It is not enough to get rid of one sin. We must get rid of all our sins,
you know. They're not nice things, are they, to keep in our hearts? It is
just like shutting up nasty corrupting things, dead carcasses, under lock
and key, in our most secret drawers, as if they were precious jewels."

"I wish I could be good, like some people, but I wasn't made so. There's my
husband now. I do believe he never do anything wrong in his life. But then,
you see, he would let a child take him in."

"And far better too. Infinitely better to be taken in. Indeed there is no
harm in being taken in; but there is awful harm in taking in."

She did not reply, and I went on:

"I think you would feel a good deal better yet, if you would send for your
daughter and her husband now, and make it up with them, especially seeing
you are so ill."

"I will, sir. I will directly. I'm tired of having my own way. But I was
made so."

"You weren't made to continue so, at all events. God gives us the necessary
strength to resist what is bad in us. He is making at you now; only you
must give in, else he cannot get on with the making of you. I think very
likely he made you ill now, just that you might bethink yourself, and feel
that you had done wrong."

"I have been feeling that for many a year."

"That made it the more needful to make you ill; for you had been feeling
your duty, and yet not doing it; and that was worst of all. You know Jesus
came to lift the weight of our sins, our very sins themselves, off our
hearts, by forgiving them and helping us to cast them away from us.
Everything that makes you uncomfortable must have sin in it somewhere, and
he came to save you from it. Send for your daughter and her husband, and
when you have done that you will think of something else to set right
that's wrong."

"But there would be no end to that way of it, sir."

"Certainly not, till everything was put right."

"But a body might have nothing else to do, that way."

"Well, that's the very first thing that has to be done. It is our business
in this world. We were not sent here to have our own way and try to enjoy
ourselves."

"That is hard on a poor woman that has to work for her bread."

"To work for your bread is not to take your own way, for it is God's way.
But you have wanted many things your own way. Now, if you would just take
his way, you would find that he would take care you should enjoy your
life."

"I'm sure I haven't had much enjoyment in mine."

"That was just because you would not trust him with his own business, but
must take it into your hands. If you will but do his will, he will take
care that you have a life to be very glad of and very thankful for. And the
longer you live, the more blessed you will find it. But I must leave you
now, for I have talked to you long enough. You must try and get a sleep. I
will come and see you again to-morrow, if you like."

"Please do, sir; I shall be very grateful."

As I rode home I thought, if the lifting of one sin off the human heart was
like a resurrection, what would it be when every sin was lifted from every
heart! Every sin, then, discovered in one's own soul must be a pledge of
renewed bliss in its removing. And when the thought came again of what St.
Paul had said somewhere, "whatsoever is not of faith is sin," I thought
what a weight of sin had to be lifted from the earth, and how blessed it
might be. But what could I do for it? I could just begin with myself, and
pray God for that inward light which is his Spirit, that so I might see him
in everything and rejoice in everything as his gift, and then all things
would be holy, for whatsoever is of faith must be the opposite of sin; and
that was my part towards heaving the weight of sin, which, like myriads
of gravestones, was pressing the life out of us men, off the whole world.
Faith in God is life and righteousness--the faith that trusts so that it
will obey--none other. Lord, lift the people thou hast made into holy
obedience and thanksgiving, that they may be glad in this thy world.






CHAPTER VI.

THE GATHERING STORM.





The weather cleared up again the next day, and for a fortnight it was
lovely. In this region we saw less of the sadness of the dying year than in
our own parish, for there being so few trees in the vicinity of the ocean,
the autumn had nowhere to hang out her mourning flags. But there, indeed,
so mild is the air, and so equable the temperature all the winter through,
compared with the inland counties, that the bitterness of the season is
almost unknown. This, however, is no guarantee against furious storms of
wind and rain.

Not long after the occurrence last recorded, Turner paid us another visit.
I confess I was a little surprised at his being able to get away so soon
again; for of all men a country surgeon can least easily find time for a
holiday; but he had managed it, and I had no doubt, from what I knew of
him, had made thorough provision for his cure in his absence.

He brought us good news from home. Everything was going on well. Weir was
working as hard as usual; and everybody agreed that I could not have got a
man to take my place better.

He said he found Connie much improved; and, from my own observations, I was
sure he was right. She was now able to turn a good way from one side to the
other, and finding her health so steady besides, Turner encouraged her in
making gentle and frequent use of her strength, impressing it upon her,
however, that everything depended on avoiding everything like a jerk or
twist of any sort. I was with them when he said this. She looked up at him
with a happy smile.

"I will do all I can, Mr. Turner," she said, "to get out of people's way as
soon as possible."

Perhaps she saw something in our faces that made her add--

"I know you don't mind the bother I am; but I do. I want to help, and not
be helped--more than other people--as soon as possible. I will therefore be
as gentle as mamma and as brave as papa, and see if we don't get well, Mr.
Turner. I mean to have a ride on old Spry next summer.--I do," she added,
nodding her pretty head up from the pillow, when she saw the glance the
doctor and I exchanged. "Look here," she went on, poking the eider-down
quilt up with her foot.

"Magnificent!" said Turner; "but mind, you must do nothing out of bravado.
That won't do at all."

"I have done," said Connie, putting on a face of mock submission.

That day we carried her out for a few minutes, but hardly laid her down,
for we were afraid of the damp from the earth. A few feet nearer or farther
from the soil will make a difference. It was the last time for many weeks.
Anyone interested in my Connie need not be alarmed: it was only because of
the weather, not because of her health.

One day I was walking home from a visit I had been paying to Mrs. Stokes.
She was much better, in a fair way to recover indeed, and her mental health
was improved as well. Her manner to me was certainly very different, and
the tone of her voice, when she spoke to her husband especially, was
changed: a certain roughness in it was much modified, and I had good
hopes that she had begun to climb up instead of sliding down the hill of
difficulty, as she had been doing hitherto.

It was a cold and gusty afternoon. The sky eastward and overhead was
tolerably clear when I set out from home; but when I left the cottage to
return, I could see that some change was at hand. Shaggy vapours of light
gray were blowing rapidly across the sky from the west. A wind was blowing
fiercely up there, although the gusts down below came from the east.
The clouds it swept along with it were formless, with loose
fringes--disreputable, troubled, hasty clouds they were, looking like
mischief. They reminded me of Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," in which
he compares the "loose clouds" to hair, and calls them "the locks of the
approaching storm." Away to the west, a great thick curtain of fog, of a
luminous yellow, covered all the sea-horizon, extending north and south as
far as the eye could reach. It looked ominous. A surly secret seemed to
lie in its bosom. Now and then I could discern the dim ghost of a vessel
through it, as tacking for north or south it came near enough to the edge
of the fog to show itself for a few moments, ere it retreated again
into its bosom. There was exhaustion, it seemed to me, in the air,
notwithstanding the coolness of the wind, and I was glad when I found
myself comfortably seated by the drawing-room fire, and saw Wynnie
bestirring herself to make the tea.

"It looks stormy, I think, Wynnie," I said.

Her eye lightened, as she looked out to sea from the window.

"You seem to like the idea of it," I added.

"You told me I was like you, papa; and you look as if you liked the idea of
it too."

"_Per se_, certainly, a storm is pleasant to me. I should not like a world
without storms any more than I should like that Frenchman's idea of the
perfection of the earth, when all was to be smooth as a trim-shaven lawn,
rocks and mountains banished, and the sea breaking on the shore only in
wavelets of ginger-beer or lemonade, I forget which. But the older
you grow, the more sides of a thing will present themselves to your
contemplation. The storm may be grand and exciting in itself, but you
cannot help thinking of the people that are in it. Think for a moment of
the multitude of vessels, great and small, which are gathered within the
skirts of that angry vapour out there. I fear the toils of the storm are
around them. Look at the barometer in the hall, my dear, and tell me what
it says."

She went and returned.

"It was not very low, papa--only at rain; but the moment I touched it, the
hand dropped an inch."

"Yes, I thought so. All things look stormy. It may not be very bad here,
however."

"That doesn't make much difference though, does it, papa?"

"No further than that being creatures in time and space, we must think of
things from our own standpoint."

"But I remember very well how, when we were children, you would not let
nurse teach us Dr. Watts's hymns for children, because you said they tended
to encourage selfishness."

"Yes; I remember it very well. Some of them make the contrast between the
misery of others and our own comforts so immediately the apparent--mind,
I only say apparent--ground of thankfulness, that they are not fit for
teaching. I do think that if you could put Dr. Watts to the question, he
would abjure any such intention, saying that only he meant to heighten
the sense of our obligation. But it does tend to selfishness and, what is
worse, self-righteousness, and is very dangerous therefore. What right have
I to thank God that I am not as other men are in anything? I have to thank
God for the good things he has given to me; but how dare I suppose that he
is not doing the same for other people in proportion to their capacity? I
don't like to appear to condemn Dr. Watts's hymns. Certainly he has written
the very worst hymns I know; but he has likewise written the best--for
public worship, I mean."

"Well, but, papa, I have heard you say that any simple feeling that comes
of itself cannot be wrong in itself. If I feel a delight in the idea of a
storm, I cannot help it coming."

"I never said you could, my dear. I only said that as we get older, other
things we did not feel at first come to show themselves more to us, and
impress us more."

Thus my child and I went on, like two pendulums crossing each other in
their swing, trying to reach the same dead beat of mutual intelligence.

"But," said Wynnie, "you say everybody is in God's hands as well as we."

"Yes, surely, my dear; as much out in yon stormy haze as here beside the
fire."

"Then we ought not to be miserable about them, even if there comes a storm,
ought we?"

"No, surely. And, besides, I think if we could help any of them, the very
persons that enjoyed the storm the most would be the busiest to rescue them
from it. At least, I fancy so. But isn't the tea ready?"

"Yes, papa. I'll just go and tell mamma."

When she returned with her mother, and the children had joined us, Wynnie
resumed the talk.

"I know what I am going to say is absurd, papa, and yet I don't see my
way out of it--logically, I suppose you would call it. What is the use of
taking any trouble about them if they are in God's hands? Why should we try
to take them out of God's hands?"

"Ah, Wynnie! at least you do not seek to hide your bad logic, or whatever
you call it. Take them out of God's hands! If you could do that, it would
be perdition indeed. God's hands is the only safe place in the universe;
and the universe is in his hands. Are we not in God's hands on the shore
because we say they are in his hands who go down to the sea in ships? If we
draw them on shore, surely they are not out of God's hands."

"I see--I see. But God could save them without us."

"Yes; but what would become of us then? God is so good to us, that we must
work our little salvation in the earth with him. Just as a father lets his
little child help him a little, that the child may learn to be and to do,
so God puts it in our hearts to save this life to our fellows, because we
would instinctively save it to ourselves, if we could. He requires us to do
our best."

"But God may not mean to save them."

"He may mean them to be drowned--we do not know. But we know that we must
try our little salvation, for it will never interfere with God's great and
good and perfect will. Ours will be foiled if he sees that best."

"But people always say, when anyone escapes unhurt from an accident, 'by
the mercy of God.' They don't say it is by the mercy of God when he is
drowned."

"But _people_ cannot be expected, ought not, to say what they do not feel.
Their own first sensation of deliverance from impending death would break
out in a 'thank God,' and therefore they say it is God's mercy when another
is saved. If they go farther, and refuse to consider it God's mercy when a
man is drowned, that is just the sin of the world--the want of faith. But
the man who creeps out of the drowning, choking billows into the glory of
the new heavens and the new earth--do you think his thanksgiving for the
mercy of God which has delivered him is less than that of the man who
creeps, exhausted and worn, out of the waves on to the dreary, surf-beaten
shore? In nothing do we show less faith than the way in which we think and
speak about death. 'O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy
victory?' says the apostle. 'Here, here, here,' cry the Christian people,
'everywhere. It is an awful sting, a fearful victory. But God keeps it away
from us many a time when we ask him--to let it pierce us to the heart, at
last, to be sure; but that can't be helped.' I mean this is how they feel
in their hearts who do not believe that God is as merciful when he sends
death as when he sends life; who, Christian people as they are, yet look
upon death as an evil thing which cannot be avoided, and would, if they
might live always, be content to live always. Death or Life--each is God's;
for he is not the God of the dead, but of the living: there are no dead,
for all live to him."

"But don't you think we naturally shrink from death, Harry?" said my wife.

"There can be no doubt about that, my dear."

"Then, if it be natural, God must have meant that it should be so."

"Doubtless, to begin with, but not to continue or end with. A child's sole
desire is for food--the very best possible to begin with. But how would it
be if the child should reach, say, two years of age, and refuse to share
this same food with his little brother? Or what comes of the man who never
so far rises above the desire for food that _nothing_ could make him forget
his dinner-hour? Just so the life of Christians should be strong enough to
overcome the fear of death. We ought to love and believe him so much, that
when he says we shall not die, we should at least believe that death must
be something very different from what it looks to us to be--so different,
that what we mean by the word does not apply to the reality at all; and so
Jesus cannot use the word, because it would seem to us that he meant what
we mean by it, which he, seeing it all round, cannot mean."

"That does seem quite reasonable," said Ethelwyn.

Turner had taken no part in the conversation. He, too, had just come in
from a walk over the hills. He was now standing looking out at the sea.

"She looks uneasy, does she not?" I said.

"You mean the Atlantic?" he returned, looking round. "Yes, I think so. I am
glad she is not a patient of mine. I fear she is going to be very feverish,
probably delirious before morning. She won't sleep much, and will talk
rather loud when the tide comes in."

"Disease has often an ebb and flow like the tide, has it not?"

"Often. Some diseases are like a plant that has its time to grow and
blossom, then dies; others, as you say, ebb and flow again and again before
they vanish."

"It seems to me, however, that the ebb and flow does not belong to the
disease, but to Nature, which works through the disease. It seems to
me that my life has its tides, just like the ocean, only a little more
regularly. It is high water with me always in the morning and the evening;
in the afternoon life is at its lowest; and I believe it is lowest again
while we sleep, and hence it comes that to work the brain at night has such
an injurious effect on the system. But this is perhaps all a fancy."

"There may be some truth in it. But I was just thinking when you spoke to
me what a happy thing it is that the tide does not vary by an even six
hours, but has the odd minutes; whence we see endless changes in the
relation of the water to the times of the day. And then the spring-tides
and the neap-tides! What a provision there is in the world for change!"

"Yes. Change is one of the forms that infinitude takes for the use of us
human immortals. But come and have some tea, Turner. You will not care to
go out again. What shall we do this evening? Shall we all go to Connie's
room and have some Shakspere?"

"I could wish nothing better. What play shall we have?"

"Let us have the _Midsummer Night's Dream,"_ said Ethelwyn.

"You like to go by contraries, apparently, Ethel. But you're quite right.
It is in the winter of the year that art must give us its summer. I suspect
that most of the poetry about spring and summer is written in the winter.
It is generally when we do not possess that we lay full value upon what we
lack."

"There is one reason," said Wynnie with a roguish look, "why I like that
play."

"I should think there might be more than one," Wynnie."

"But one reason is enough for a woman at once; isn't it, papa?"

"I'm not sure of that. But what is your reason?"

"That the fairies are not allowed to play any tricks with the women. _They_
are true throughout."

"I might choose to say that was because they were not tried."

"And I might venture to answer that Shakspere--being true to nature always,
as you say, papa--knew very well how absurd it would be to represent a
woman's feelings as under the influence of the juice of a paltry flower."

"Capital, Wynnie!" said her mother; and Turner and I chimed in with our
approbation.

"Shall I tell you what I like best in the play?" said Turner. "It is the
common sense of Theseus in accounting for all the bewilderments of the
night."

"But," said Ethelwyn, "he was wrong after all. What is the use of common
sense if it leads you wrong? The common sense of Theseus simply amounted to
this, that he would only believe his own eyes."

"I think Mrs. Walton is right, Turner," I said. "For my part, I have more
admired the open-mindedness of Hippolyta, who would yield more weight
to the consistency of the various testimony than could be altogether
counterbalanced by the negation of her own experience. Now I will tell you
what I most admire in the play: it is the reconciling power of the poet. He
brings together such marvellous contrasts, without a single shock or jar
to your feeling of the artistic harmony of the conjunction. Think for a
moment--the ordinary commonplace courtiers; the lovers, men and women in
the condition of all conditions in which fairy-powers might get a hold of
them; the quarrelling king and queen of Fairyland, with their courtiers,
Blossom, Cobweb, and the rest, and the court-jester, Puck; the ignorant,
clownish artisans, rehearsing their play,--fairies and clowns, lovers and
courtiers, are all mingled in one exquisite harmony, clothed with a night
of early summer, rounded in by the wedding of the king and queen. But I
have talked enough about it. Let us get our books."

As we sat in Connie's room, delighting ourselves with the reflex of
the poet's fancy, the sound of the rising tide kept mingling with the
fairy-talk and the foolish rehearsal. "Musk roses," said Titania; and the
first of the blast, going round by south to west, rattled the window. "Good
hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow," said Bottom; and the roar of the waters
was in our ears. "So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle Gently
entwist," said Titania; and the blast poured the rain in a spout against
the window. "Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells," said
Theseus; and the wind whistled shrill through the chinks of the bark-house
opening from the room. We drew the curtains closer, made up the fire
higher, and read on. It was time for supper ere we had done; and when
we left Connie to have hers and go to sleep, it was with the hope that,
through all the rising storm, she would dream of breeze-haunted summer
woods.






CHAPTER VII.

THE GATHERED STORM.





I woke in the middle of the night and the darkness to hear the wind
howling. It was wide awake now, and up with intent. It seized the house,
and shook it furiously; and the rain kept pouring, only I could not hear it
save in the _rallentondo_ passages of the wind; but through all the wind
I could hear the roaring of the big waves on the shore. I did not wake my
wife; but I got up, put on my dressing-gown, and went softly to Connie's
room, to see whether she was awake; for I feared, if she were, she would be
frightened. Wynnie always slept in a little bed in the same room. I opened
the door very gently, and peeped in. The fire was burning, for Wynnie was
an admirable stoker, and could generally keep the fire in all night. I
crept to the bedside: there was just light enough to see that Connie was
fast asleep, and that her dreams were not of storms. It was a marvel how
well the child always slept. But, as I turned to leave the room, Wynnie's
voice called me in a whisper. Approaching her bed, I saw her wide eyes,
like the eyes of the darkness, for I could scarcely see anything of her
face.

"Awake, darling?" I said.

"Yes, papa. I have been awake a long time; but isn't Connie sleeping
delightfully? She does sleep so well! Sleep is surely very good for her."

"It is the best thing for us all, next to God's spirit, I sometimes think,
my dear. But are you frightened by the storm? Is that what keeps you
awake?"

"I don't think that is what keeps me awake; but sometimes the house shakes
so that I do feel a little nervous. I don't know how it is. I never felt
afraid of anything natural before."

"What our Lord said about not being afraid of anything that could only hurt
the body applies here, and in all the terrors of the night. Think about
him, dear."

"I do try, papa. Don't you stop; you will get cold. It is a dreadful storm,
is it not? Suppose there should be people drowning out there now!"

"There may be, my love. People are dying almost every other moment, I
suppose, on the face of the earth. Drowning is only an easy way of dying.
Mind, they are all in God's hands."

"Yes, papa. I will turn round and shut my eyes, and fancy that his hand is
over them, making them dark with his care."

"And it will not be fancy, my darling, if you do. You remember those
odd but no less devout lines of George Herbert? Just after he says, so
beautifully, 'And now with darkness closest weary eyes,' he adds:

  Thus in thy ebony box
  Thou dost enclose us, till the day
  Put our amendment in our way,
  And give new wheels to our disordered clocks."

"He is very fond of boxes, by the way. So go to sleep, dear. You are a good
clock of God's making; but you want new wheels, according to our beloved
brother George Herbert. Therefore sleep. Good-night."

This was tiresome talk--was it--in the middle of the night, reader? Well,
but my child did not think so, I know.

Dark, dank, weeping, the morning dawned. All dreary was the earth and sky.
The wind was still hunting the clouds across the heavens. It lulled a
little while we sat at breakfast, but soon the storm was up again, and
the wind raved. I went out. The wind caught me as if with invisible human
hands, and shook me. I fought with it, and made my way into the village.
The streets were deserted. I peeped up the inn-yard as I passed: not a man
or horse was to be seen. The little shops looked as if nobody had crossed
their thresholds for a week. Not a door was open. One child came out of the
baker's with a big loaf in her apron. The wind threatened to blow the hair
off her head, if not herself first into the canal. I took her by the hand
and led her, or rather, let her lead me home, while I kept her from being
carried away by the wind. Having landed her safely inside her mother's
door, I went on, climbed the heights above the village, and looked abroad
over the Atlantic. What a waste of aimless tossing to and fro! Gray mist
above, full of falling rain; gray, wrathful waters underneath, foaming and
bursting as billow broke upon billow. The tide was ebbing now, but almost
every other wave swept the breakwater. They burst on the rocks at the end
of it, and rushed in shattered spouts and clouds of spray far into the air
over their heads. "Will the time ever come," I thought, "when man shall
be able to store up even this force for his own ends? Who can tell?" The
solitary form of a man stood at some distance gazing, as I was gazing, out
on the ocean. I walked towards him, thinking with myself who it could be
that loved Nature so well that he did not shrink from her even in her most
uncompanionable moods. I suspected, and soon found I was right; it was
Percivale.

"What a clashing of water-drops!" I said, thinking of a line somewhere in
Coleridge's Remorse. They are but water-drops, after all, that make this
great noise upon the rocks; only there is a great many of them."

"Yes," said Percivale. "But look out yonder. You see a single sail,
close-reefed--that is all I can see--away in the mist there? As soon as you
think of the human struggle with the elements, as soon as you know that
hearts are in the midst of it, it is a clashing of water-drops no more. It
is an awful power, with which the will and all that it rules have to fight
for the mastery, or at least for freedom."

"Surely you are right. It is the presence of thought, feeling, effort that
gives the majesty to everything. It is even a dim attribution of human
feelings to this tormented, passionate sea that gives it much of its awe;
although, as we were saying the other day, it is only _a picture_ of the
troubled mind. But as I have now seen how matters are with the elements,
and have had a good pluvial bath as well, I think I will go home and change
my clothes."

"I have hardly had enough of it yet," returned Percivale. "I shall have a
stroll along the heights here, and when the tide has fallen a little way
from the foot of the cliffs I shall go down on the sands and watch awhile
there."

"Well, you're a younger man than I am; but I've seen the day, as Lear says.
What an odd tendency we old men have to boast of the past: we would be
judged by the past, not by the present. We always speak of the strength
that is withered and gone, as if we had some claim upon it still. But I am
not going to talk in this storm. I am always talking."

"I will go with you as far as the village, and then I will turn and take my
way along the downs for a mile or two; I don't mind being wet."

"I didn't once."

"Don't you think," resumed Percivale, "that in some sense the old man--not
that I can allow _you that dignity yet, Mr. Walton--has a right to regard
the past as his own?"

"That would be scanned," I answered, as we walked towards the village.
"Surely the results of the past are the man's own. Any action of the man's,
upon which the life in him reposes, remains his. But suppose a man had done
a good deed once, and instead of making that a foundation upon which to
build more good, grew so vain of it that he became incapable of doing
anything more of the same sort, you could not say that the action belonged
to him still. Therein he has severed his connection with the past. Again,
what has never in any deep sense been a man's own, cannot surely continue
to be his afterwards. Thus the things that a man has merely possessed once,
the very people who most admired him for their sakes when he had them,
give him no credit for after he has lost them. Riches that have taken
to themselves wings leave with the poor man only a surpassing poverty.
Strength, likewise, which can so little depend on any exercise of the will
in man, passes from him with the years. It was not his all the time; it was
but lent him, and had nothing to do with his inward force. A bodily feeble
man may put forth a mighty life-strength in effort, and show nothing to the
eyes of his neighbour; while the strong man gains endless admiration for
what he could hardly help. But the effort of the one remains, for it was
his own; the strength of the other passes from him, for it was never his
own. So with beauty, which the commonest woman acknowledges never to have
been hers in seeking to restore it by deception. So, likewise, in a great
measure with intellect."

"But if you take away intellect as well, what do you leave a man that can
in any way be called his own?"

"Certainly his intellect is not his own. One thing only is his own--to will
the truth. This, too, is as much God's gift as everything else: I ought to
say is more God's gift than anything else, for he gives it to be the man's
own more than anything else can be. And when he wills the truth, he has
God himself. Man _can_ possess God: all other things follow as necessary
results. What poor creatures we should have been if God had not made us to
do something--to look heavenwards--to lift up the hands that hang down, and
strengthen the feeble knees! Something like this was in the mind of the
prophet Jeremiah when he said, 'Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man
glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not
the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth glory in this,
that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise
loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth: for in these
things I delight, saith the Lord.' My own conviction is, that a vague sense
of a far higher life in ourselves than we yet know anything about is at the
root of all our false efforts to be able to think something of ourselves.
We cannot commend ourselves, and therefore we set about priding ourselves.
We have little or no strength of mind, faculty of operation, or worth of
will, and therefore we talk of our strength of body, worship the riches
we have, or have not, it is all one, and boast of our paltry intellectual
successes. The man most ambitious of being considered a universal genius
must at last confess himself a conceited dabbler, and be ready to part with
all he knows for one glimpse more of that understanding of God which the
wise men of old held to be essential to every man, but which the growing
luminaries of the present day will not allow to be even possible for any
man."

We had reached the brow of the heights, and here we parted. A fierce blast
of wind rushed at me, and I hastened down the hill. How dreary the streets
did look!--how much more dreary than the stormy down! I saw no living
creature as I returned but a terribly draggled dog, a cat that seemed to
have a bad conscience, and a lovely little girl-face, which, forgetful of
its own rights, would flatten the tip of the nose belonging to it against a
window-pane. Every rain-pool was a mimic sea, and had a mimic storm within
its own narrow bounds. The water went hurrying down the kennels like a long
brown snake anxious to get to its hole and hide from the tormenting wind,
and every now and then the rain came in full rout before the conquering
blast.

When I got home, I peeped in at Connie's door the first thing, and saw that
she was raised a little more than usual; that is, the end of the conch
against which she leaned was at a more acute angle. She was sitting
staring, rather than gazing, out at the wild tumult which she could see
over the shoulder of the down on which her window immediately looked. Her
face was paler and keener than usual.

"Why, Connie, who set you up so straight?"

"Mr. Turner, papa. I wanted to see out, and he raised me himself. He says I
am so much better, I may have it in the seventh notch as often as I like."

"But you look too tired for it. Hadn't you better lie down again?"

"It's only the storm, papa."

"The more reason you should not see it if it tires you so."

"It does not tire me, papa. Only I keep constantly wondering what is going
to come out of it. It looks so as if something must follow."

"You didn't hear me come into your room last night, Connie. The storm was
raging then as loud as it is now, but you were out of its reach--fast
asleep. Now it is too much for you. You must lie down."

"Very well, papa."

I lowered the support, and when I returned from changing my wet garments
she was already looking much better.

After dinner I went to my study, but when evening began to fall I went out
again. I wanted to see how our next neighbours, the sexton and his wife,
were faring. The wind had already increased in violence. It threatened to
blow a hurricane. The tide was again rising, and was coming in with great
rapidity. The old mill shook to the foundation as I passed through it to
reach the lower part where they lived. When I peeped in from the bottom
of the stair, I saw no one; but, hearing the steps of someone overhead, I
called out.

Agnes's voice made answer, as she descended an inner stair which led to the
bedrooms above--

"Mother's gone to church, sir."

"Gone to church!" I said, a vague pang darting through me as I thought
whether I had forgotten any service; but the next moment I recalled what
the old woman had herself told me of her preference for the church during a
storm.

"O yes, Agnes, I remember!" I said; "your mother thinks the weather bad
enough to take to the church, does she? How do you come to be here now?
Where is your husband?"

"He'll be here in an hour or so, sir. He don't mind the wet. You see, we
don't like the old people to be left alone when it blows what the sailors
call 'great guns.'"

"And what becomes of his mother then?"

"There don't be any sea out there, sir. Leastways," she added with a quiet
smile, and stopped.

"You mean, I suppose, Agnes, that there is never any perturbation of the
elements out there?"

She laughed; for she understood me well enough. The temper of Joe's mother
was proverbial.

"But really, sir," she said, "she don't mind the weather a bit; and though
we don't live in the same cottage with her, for Joe wouldn't hear of that,
we see her far oftener than we see my mother, you know."

"I'm sure it's quite fair, Agnes. Is Joe very sorry that he married you,
now?"

She hung her head, and blushed so deeply through all her sallow complexion,
that I was sorry I had teased her, and said so. This brought a reply.

"I don't think he be, sir. I do think he gets better. He's been working
very hard the last week or two, and he says it agrees with him."

"And how are you?"

"Quite well, thank you, sir."

I had never seen her look half so well. Life was evidently a very different
thing to both of them now. I left her, and took my way to the church.

When I reached the churchyard, there, in the middle of the rain and the
gathering darkness, was the old man busy with the duties of his calling. A
certain headstone stood right under a drip from the roof of the southern
transept; and this drip had caused the mould at the foot of the stone, on
the side next the wall, to sink, so that there was a considerable crack
between the stone and the soil. The old man had cut some sod from another
part of the churchyard, and was now standing, with the rain pouring on him
from the roof, beating this sod down in the crack. He was sheltered from
the wind by the church, but he was as wet as he could be. I may mention
that he never appeared in the least disconcerted when I came upon him in
the discharge of his functions: he was so content with his own feeling in
the matter, that no difference of opinion could disturb him.

"This will never do, Coombes," I said. "You will get your death of cold.
You must be as full of water as a sponge. Old man, there's rheumatism in
the world!"

"It be only my work, sir. But I believe I ha' done now for a night. I think
he'll be a bit more comfortable now. The very wind could get at him through
that hole."

"Do go home, then," I said, "and change your clothes. Is your wife in the
church?"

"She be, sir. This door, sir--this door," he added, as he saw me going
round to the usual entrance. "You'll find her in there."

I lifted the great latch and entered. I could not see her at first, for it
was much darker inside the church. It felt very quiet in there somehow,
although the place was full of the noise of winds and waters. Mrs. Coombes
was not sitting on the bell-keys, where I looked for her first, for the
wind blew down the tower in many currents and draughts--how it did roar up
there--as if the louvres had been a windsail to catch the wind and send
it down to ventilate the church!--she was sitting at the foot of the
chancel-rail, with her stocking as usual.

The sight of her sweet old face, lighted up by a moonlike smile as I drew
near her, in the middle of the ancient dusk filled with sounds, but only
sounds of tempest, gave me a sense of one dwelling in the secret place of
the Most High, such as I shall never forget. It was no time to say much,
however.

"How long do you mean to stay here, Mrs. Coombes?" I asked. "Not all
night?"

"No, not all night, surely, sir. But I hadn't thought o' going yet for a
bit."

"Why there's Coombes out there, wet to the skin; and I'm afraid he'll go on
pottering at the churchyard bed-clothes till he gets his bones as full of
rheumatism as they can hold."

"Deary me! I didn't know as my old man was there. He tould me he had them
all comforble for the winter a week ago. But to be sure there's always some
mendin' to do."

I heard the voice of Joe outside, and the next moment he came into the
church. After speaking to me, he turned to Mrs. Coombes.

"You be comin' home with me, mother. This will never do. Father's as wet as
a mop. I ha' brought something for your supper, and Aggy's a-cookin' of it;
and we're going to be comfortable over the fire, and have a chapter or two
of the New Testament to keep down the noise of the sea. There! Come along."

The old woman drew her cloak over her head, put her knitting carefully in
her pocket, and stood aside for me to lead the way.

"No, no," I said; "I'm the shepherd and you're the sheep, so I'll drive you
before me--at least, you and Coombes. Joe here will be offended if I take
on me to say I am _his_ shepherd."


"Nay, nay, don't say that, sir. You've been a good shepherd to me when I
was a very sulky sheep. But if you'll please to go, sir, I'll lock the door
behind; for you know in them parts the shepherd goes first and the sheep
follow the shepherd. And I'll follow like a good sheep," he added,
laughing.

"You're right, Joe," I said, and took the lead without more ado.

I was struck by his saying _them parts_, which seemed to indicate a habit
of pondering on the places as well as circumstances of the gospel-story.
The sexton joined us at the door, and we all walked to his cottage, Joe
taking care of his mother-in-law and I taking what care I could of Coombes
by carrying his tools for him. But as we went I feared I had done ill in
that, for the wind blew so fiercely that I thought the thin feeble little
man would have got on better if he had been more heavily weighted against
it. But I made him take a hold of my arm, and so we got in. The old man
took his tools from me and set them down in the mill, for the roof of which
I felt some anxiety as we passed through, so full of wind was the whole
space. But when we opened the inner door the welcome of a glowing fire
burst up the stair as if that had been a well of warmth and light below. I
went down with them. Coombes departed to change his clothes, and the rest
of us stood round the fire, where Agnes was busy cooking something like
white puddings for their supper.

"Did you hear, sir," said Joe, "that the coastguard is off to the
Goose-pot? There's a vessel ashore there, they say. I met them on the road
with the rocket-cart."

"How far off is that, Joe?"

"Some five or six miles, I suppose, along the coast nor'ards."

"What sort of a vessel is she?"

"That I don't know. Some say she be a schooner, others a brigantine. The
coast-guard didn't know themselves."

"Poor things!" said Mrs. Coombes. "If any of them comes ashore, they'll be
sadly knocked to pieces on the rocks in a night like this."

She had caught a little infection of her husband's mode of thought.

"It's not likely to clear up before morning, I fear; is it, Joe?"

"I don't think so, sir. There's no likelihood."

"Will you condescend to sit down and take a share with us, sir?" said the
old woman.

"There would be no condescension in that, Mrs. Coombes. I will another time
with all my heart; but in such a night I ought to be at home with my own
people. They will be more uneasy if I am away."

"Of coorse, of coorse, sir."

"So I'll bid you good-night. I wish this storm were well over."

I buttoned my great-coat, pulled my hat down on my head, and set out. It
was getting on for high water. The night was growing very dark. There would
be a moon some time, but the clouds were so dense she could not do much
while they came between. The roaring of the waves on the shore was
terrible; all I could see of them now was the whiteness of their breaking,
but they filled the earth and the air with their furious noises. The wind
roared from the sea; two oceans were breaking on the land, only to the one
had been set a hitherto--to the other none. Ere the night was far gone,
however, I had begun to doubt whether the ocean itself had not broken its
bars.

I found the whole household full of the storm. The children kept pressing
their faces to the windows, trying to pierce, as by force of will, through
the darkness, and discover what the wild thing out there was doing. They
could see nothing: all was one mass of blackness and dismay, with a soul in
it of ceaseless roaring. I ran up to Connie's room, and found that she was
left alone. She looked restless, pale, and frightened. The house quivered,
and still the wind howled and whistled through the adjoining bark-hut.

"Connie, darling, have they left you alone?" I said.

"Only for a few minutes, papa. I don't mind it."

"Don't he frightened at the storm, my dear. He who could walk on the sea
of Galilee, and still the storm of that little pool, can rule the Atlantic
just as well. Jeremiah says he 'divideth the sea when the waves thereof
roar.'"

The same moment Dora came running into the room.

"Papa," she cried, "the spray--such a lot of it--came dashing on the
windows in the dining-room. Will it break them?"

"I hope not, my dear. Just stay with Connie while I run down."

"O, papa! I do want to see."

"What do you want to see, Dora?"

"The storm, papa."

"It is as black as pitch. You can't see anything."

"O, but I want to--to--be beside it."

"Well, you sha'n't stay with Connie, if you are not willing. Go along. Ask
Wynnie to come here."

The child was so possessed by the commotion without that she did not
seem even to see my rebuke, not to say feel it. She ran off, and Wynnie
presently came. I left her with Connie, put on a long waterproof cloak,
and went down to the dining-room. A door led from it immediately on to the
little green in front of the house, between it and the sea. The dining-room
was dark, for they had put out the lights that they might see better from
the windows. The children and some of the servants were there looking out.
I opened the door cautiously. It needed the strength of two of the women
to shut it behind me. The moment I opened it a great sheet of spray rushed
over me. I went down the little grassy slope. The rain had ceased, and it
was not quite so dark as I had expected. I could see the gleaming whiteness
all before me. The next moment a wave rolled over the low wall in front of
me, breaking on it and wrapping me round in a sheet of water. Something
hurt me sharply on the leg; and I found, on searching, that one of the
large flat stones that lay for coping on the top of the wall was on the
grass beside me. If it had struck me straight, it must have broken my leg.

There came a little lull in the wind, and just as I turned to go into the
house again, I thought I heard a gun. I stood and listened, but heard
nothing more, and fancied I must have been mistaken. I returned and tapped
at the door; but I had to knock loudly before they heard me within. When I
went up to the drawing-room, I found that Percivale had joined our party.
He and Turner were talking together at one of the windows.

"Did you hear a gun?" I asked them.

"No. Was there one?"

"I'm not sure. I half-fancied I heard one, but no other followed. There
will be a good many fired to-night, though, along this awful coast."

"I suppose they keep the life-boat always ready," said Turner.

"No life-boat even, I fear, would live in such a sea," I said, remembering
what the officer of the coast-guard had told me.

"They would try, though, I suppose," said Turner.

"I do not know," said Percivale. "I don't know the people. But I have seen
a life-boat out in as bad a night--whether in as bad a sea, I cannot tell:
that depends on the coast, I suppose."

We went on chatting for some time, wondering how the coast-guard had fared
with the vessel ashore at the Goose-pot. Wynnie joined us.

"How is Connie, now, my dear?"

"Very restless and excited, papa. I came down to say, that if Mr. Turner
didn't mind, I wish he would go up and see her."

"Of course--instantly," said Turner, and moved to follow Winnie.

But the same moment, as if it had been beside us in the room, so clear, so
shrill was it, we heard Connie's voice shrieking, "Papa, papa! There's a
great ship ashore down there. Come, come!"

Turner and I rushed from the room in fear and dismay. "How? What? Where
could the voice come from?" was the unformed movement of our thoughts. But
the moment we left the drawing-room the thing was clear, though not the
less marvellous and alarming. We forgot all about the ship, and thought
only of our Connie. So much does the near hide the greater that is afar!
Connie kept on calling, and her voice guided our eyes.

A, little stair led immediately from this floor up to the bark-hut, so that
it might be reached without passing through the bedroom. The door at the
top of it was open. The door that led from Connie's room into the bark-hut
was likewise open, and light shone through it into the place--enough to
show a figure standing by the furthest window with face pressed against the
glass. And from this figure came the cry, "Papa, papa! Quick, quick! The
waves will knock her to pieces!"

In very truth it was Connie standing there.






CHAPTER VIII.

THE SHIPWRECK.





Things that happen altogether have to be told one after the other. Turner
and I both rushed at the narrow stair. There was not room for more than one
upon it. I was first, but stumbled on the lowest step and fell. Turner
put his foot on my back, jumped over me, sprang up the stair, and when I
reached the top of it after him, he was meeting me with Connie in his arms,
carrying her back to her room. But the girl kept crying--"Papa, papa, the
ship, the ship!"

My duty woke in me. Turner could attend to Connie far better than I could.
I made one spring to the window. The moon was not to be seen, but the
clouds were thinner, and light enough was soaking through them to show a
wave-tormented mass some little way out in the bay; and in that one moment
in which I stood looking, a shriek pierced the howling of the wind, cutting
through it like a knife. I rushed bare-headed from the house. When or
how the resolve was born in me I do not know, but I flew straight to the
sexton's, snatched the key from the wall, crying only "ship ashore!" and
rushed to the church.

I remember my hand trembled so that I could hardly get the key into the
lock. I made myself quieter, opened the door, and feeling my way to the
tower, knelt before the keys of the bell-hammers, opened the chest, and
struck them wildly, fiercely. An awful jangling, out of tune and harsh,
burst into monstrous being in the storm-vexed air. Music itself was
untuned, corrupted, and returning to chaos. I struck and struck at the
keys. I knew nothing of their normal use. Noise, outcry, _reveill_ was all
I meant.

In a few minutes I heard voices and footsteps. From some parts of the
village, out of sight of the shore, men and women gathered to the summons.
Through the door of the church, which I had left open, came voices in
hurried question. "Ship ashore!" was all I could answer, for what was to be
done I was helpless to think.

I wondered that so few appeared at the cry of the bells. After those first
nobody came for what seemed a long time. I believe, however, I was beating
the alarum for only a few minutes altogether, though when I look back upon
the time in the dark church, it looks like half-an-hour at least. But
indeed I feel so confused about all the doings of that night that in
attempting to describe them in order, I feel as if I were walking in a
dream. Still, from comparing mine with the recollected impressions of
others, I think I am able to give a tolerably correct result. Most of the
incidents seem burnt into my memory so that nothing could destroy the depth
of the impression; but the order in which they took place is none the less
doubtful.

A hand was laid on my shoulder.

"Who is there?" I said; for it was far too dark to know anyone.

"Percivale. What is to be done? The coastguard is away. Nobody seems to
know about anything. It is of no use to go on ringing more. Everybody is
out, even to the maid-servants. Come down to the shore, and you will see."

"But is there not the life-boat?"

"Nobody seems to know anything about it, except 'it's no manner of use to
go trying of that with such a sea on.'"

"But there must be someone in command of it," I said.

"Yes," returned Percivale; "but there doesn't seem to be one of the crew
amongst the crowd. All the sailor-like fellows are going about with their
hands in their pockets."

"Let us make haste, then," I said; "perhaps we can find out. Are you sure
the coastguard have nothing to do with the life-boat?"

"I believe not. They have enough to do with their rockets."

"I remember now that Roxton told me he had far more confidence in his
rockets than in anything a life-boat could do, upon this coast at least."

While we spoke we came to the bank of the canal. This we had to cross, in
order to reach that part of the shore opposite which the wreck lay. To my
surprise the canal itself was in a storm, heaving and tossing and dashing
over its banks.

"Percivale," I exclaimed, "the gates are gone; the sea has torn them away."

"Yes, I suppose so. Would God I could get half-a-dozen men to help me. I
have been doing what I could; but I have no influence amongst them."

"What do you mean?" I asked. "What could you do if you had a thousand men
at your command?"

He made me no answer for a few moments, during which we were hurrying on
for the bridge over the canal. Then he said:

"They regard me only as a meddling stranger, I suppose; for I have been
able to get no useful answer. They are all excited; but nobody is doing
anything."

"They must know about it a great deal better than we," I returned; "and we
must take care not to do them the injustice of supposing they are not ready
to do all that can be done."

Percivale was silent yet again.

The record of our conversation looks as quiet on the paper as if we had
been talking in a curtained room; but all the time the ocean was raving in
my very ear, and the awful tragedy was going on in the dark behind us. The
wind was almost as loud as ever, but the rain had quite ceased, and when we
reached the bridge the moon shone out white, as if aghast at what she had
at length succeeded in pushing the clouds aside that she might see. Awe
and helplessness oppressed us. Having crossed the canal, we turned to the
shore. There was little of it left; for the waves had rushed up almost to
the village. The sand and the roads, every garden wall, every window that
looked seaward was crowded with gazers. But it was a wonderfully quiet
crowd, or seemed so at least; for the noise of the wind and the waves
filled the whole vault, and what was spoken was heard only in the ear to
which it was spoken. When we came amongst them we heard only a murmur as of
more articulated confusion. One turn, and we saw the centre of strife and
anxiety--the heart of the storm that filled heaven and earth, upon which
all the blasts and the billows broke and raved.

Out there in the moonlight lay a mass of something whose place was
discernible by the flashing of the waves as they burst over it. She was far
above low-water mark--lay nearer the village by a furlong than the spot
where we had taken our last dinner on the shore. It was strange to think
that yesterday the spot lay bare to human feet, where now so many men and
women were isolated in a howling waste of angry waters; for the cry of
women came plainly to our ears, and we were helpless to save them. It was
terrible to have to do nothing. Percivale went about hurriedly, talking to
this one and that one, as if he still thought something might be done. He
turned to me.

"Do try, Mr. Walton, and find out for me where the captain of the life-boat
is."

I turned to a sailor-like man who stood at my elbow and asked him.

"It's no use, I assure you, sir," he answered; "no boat could live in such
a sea. It would be throwing away the men's lives."

"Do you know where the captain lives?" Percivale asked.

"If I did, I tell you it is of no use."

"Are you the captain yourself?" returned Percivale.

"What is that to you?" he answered, surly now. "I know my own business."

The same moment several of the crowd nearest the edge of the water made a
simultaneous rush into the surf, and laid hold of something, which, as they
returned drawing it to the shore, I saw to be a human form. It was the body
of a woman--alive or dead I could not tell. I could just see the long hair
hanging from the head, which itself hung backward helplessly as they bore
her up the bank. I saw, too, a white face, and I can recall no more.

"Run, Percivale," I said, "and fetch Turner. She may not be dead yet."

"I can't," answered Percivale. "You had better go yourself, Mr. Walton."

He spoke hurriedly. I saw he must have some reason for answering me so
abruptly. He was talking to a young fellow whom I recognised as one of the
most dissolute in the village; and just as I turned to go they walked away
together.

I sped home as fast as I could. It was easier to get along now that the
moon shone. I found that Turner had given Connie a composing draught, and
that he had good hopes she would at least be nothing the worse for the
marvellous result of her excitement. She was asleep exhausted, and her
mother was watching by her side. It, seemed strange that she could sleep;
but Turner said it was the safest reaction, partly, however, occasioned by
what he had given her. In her sleep she kept on talking about the ship.

We hurried back to see if anything could be done for the woman. As we went
up the side of the canal we perceived a dark body meeting us. The clouds
had again obscured, though not quite hidden the moon, and we could not at
first make out what it was. When we came nearer it showed itself a body
of men hauling something along. Yes, it was the life-boat, afloat on the
troubled waves of the canal, each man seated in his own place, his hands
quiet upon his oar, his cork-jacket braced about him, his feet out before
him, ready to pull the moment they should pass beyond the broken gates of
the lock out on the awful tossing of the waves. They sat very silent, and
the men on the path towed them swiftly along. The moon uncovered her face
for a moment, and shone upon the faces of two of the rowers.

"Percivale! Joe!" I cried.

"All right, sir!" said Joe.

"Does your wife know of it, Joe?" I almost gasped.

"To be sure," answered Joe. "It's the first chance I've had of returning
thanks for her. Please God, I shall see her again to-night."

"That's good, Joe. Trust in God, my men, whether you sink or swim."

"Ay, ay, sir!" they answered as one man.

"This is your doing, Percivale," I said, turning and walking alongside of
the boat for a little way.

"It's more Jim Allen's," said Percivale. "If I hadn't got a hold of him I
couldn't have done anything."

"God bless you, Jim Allen!" I said. "You'll be a better man after this, I
think."

"Donnow, sir," returned Jim cheerily. "It's harder work than pulling an
oar."

The captain himself was on board. Percivale having persuaded Jim Allen, the
two had gone about in the crowd seeking proselytes. In a wonderfully short
space they had found almost all the crew, each fresh one picking up another
or more; till at length the captain, protesting against the folly of it,
gave in, and once having yielded, was, like a true Englishman, as much in
earnest as any of them. The places of two who were missing were supplied by
Percivale and Joe, the latter of whom would listen to no remonstrance.

"I've nothing to lose," Percivale had said. "You have a young wife, Joe."

"I've everything to win," Joe had returned. "The only thing that makes me
feel a bit faint-hearted over it, is that I'm afraid it's not my duty that
drives me to it, but the praise of men, leastways of a woman. What would
Aggy think of me if I was to let them drown out there and go to my bed and
sleep? I must go."

"Very well, Joe," returned Percivale, "I daresay you are right. You can
row, of course?"

"I can row hard, and do as I'm told," said Joe.

"All right," said Percivale; "come along."

This I heard afterwards. We were now hurrying against the wind towards the
mouth of the canal, some twenty men hauling on the tow-rope. The critical
moment would be in the clearing of the gates, I thought, some parts of
which might remain swinging; but they encountered no difficulty there, as
I heard afterwards. For I remembered that this was not my post, and turned
again to follow the doctor.

"God bless you, my men!" I said, and left them.

They gave a great hurrah, and sped on to meet their fate. I found Turner in
the little public-house, whither they had carried the body. The woman was
quite dead.

"I fear it is an emigrant vessel," he said.

"Why do you think so?" I asked, in some consternation.

"Come and look at the body," he said.

It was that of a woman about twenty, tall, and finely formed. The face was
very handsome, but it did not need the evidence of the hands to prove that
she was one of our sisters who have to labour for their bread.

"What should such a girl be doing on board ship but going out to America or
Australia--to her lover, perhaps," said Turner. "You see she has a locket
on her neck; I hope nobody will dare to take it off. Some of these people
are not far derived from those who thought a wreck a Godsend."

A sound of many feet was at the door just as we turned to leave the house.
They were bringing another body--that of an elderly woman--dead, quite
dead. Turner had ceased examining her, and we were going out together,
when, through all the tumult of the wind and waves, a fierce hiss,
vindictive, wrathful, tore the air over our heads. Far up, seawards,
something like a fiery snake shot from the high ground on the right side of
the bay, over the vessel, and into the water beyond it.

"Thank God! that's the coastguard," I cried.

We rushed through the village, and up on the heights, where they had
planted their apparatus. A little crowd surrounded them. How dismal the sea
looked in the struggling moonlight! I felt as if I were wandering in the
mazes of an evil dream. But when I approached the cliff, and saw down below
the great mass, of the vessel's hulk, with the waves breaking every moment
upon her side, I felt the reality awful indeed. Now and then there would
come a kind of lull in the wild sequence of rolling waters, and then I
fancied for a moment that I saw how she rocked on the bottom. Her masts had
all gone by the board, and a perfect chaos of cordage floated and swung in
the waves that broke over her. But her bowsprit remained entire, and shot
out into the foamy dark, crowded with human beings. The first rocket
had missed. They were preparing to fire another. Roxton stood with his
telescope in his hand, ready to watch the result.

"This is a terrible job, sir," he said when I approached him; "I doubt if
we shall save one of them."

"There's the life-boat!" I cried, as a dark spot appeared on the waters
approaching the vessel from the other side.

"The life-boat!" he returned with contempt. "You don't mean to say they've
got _her_ out! She'll only add to the mischief. We'll have to save her
too."

She was still some way from the vessel, and in comparatively smooth water.
But between her and the hull the sea raved in madness; the billows rode
over each other, in pursuit, as it seemed, of some invisible prey. Another
hiss, as of concentrated hatred, and the second rocket was shooting its
parabola through the dusky air. Roxton raised his telescope to his eye the
same moment.

"Over her starn!" he cried. "There's a fellow getting down from the
cat-head to run aft.--Stop, stop!" he shouted involuntarily. "There's an
awful wave on your quarter."

His voice was swallowed in the roaring of the storm. I fancied I could
distinguish a dark something shoot from the bows towards the stern. But the
huge wave fell upon the wreck. The same moment Roxton exclaimed--so coolly
as to amaze me, forgetting how men must come to regard familiar things
without discomposure--

"He's gone! I said so. The next'll have better luck, I hope."

That man came ashore alive, though.

All were forward of the foremast. The bowsprit, when I looked through
Roxton's telescope, was shapeless as with a swarm of bees. Now and then a
single shriek rose upon the wild air. But now my attention was fixed on the
life-boat. She had got into the wildest of the broken water; at one
moment she was down in a huge cleft, the next balanced like a beam on the
knife-edge of a wave, tossed about hither and thither, as if the waves
delighted in mocking the rudder; but hitherto she had shipped no water. I
am here drawing upon the information I have since received; but I did
see how a huge wave, following close upon the back of that on which she
floated, rushed, towered up over her, toppled, and fell upon the life-boat
with tons of water: the moon was shining brightly enough to show this with
tolerable distinctness. The boat vanished. The next moment, there she was,
floating helplessly about, like a living thing stunned by the blow of the
falling wave. The struggle was over. As far as I could see, every man was
in his place; but the boat drifted away before the storm shore-wards, and
the men let her drift. Were they all killed as they sat? I thought of my
Wynnie, and turned to Roxton.

"That wave has done for them," he said. "I told you it was no use. There
they go."

"But what is the matter?" I asked. "The men are sitting every man in his
place."

"I think so," he answered. "Two were swept overboard, but they caught the
ropes and got in again. But don't you see they have no oars?"

That wave had broken every one of them off at the rowlocks, and now they
were as helpless as a sponge.

I turned and ran. Before I reached the brow of the hill another rocket was
fired and fell wide shorewards, partly because the wind blew with fresh
fury at the very moment. I heard Roxton say--"She's breaking up. It's no
use. That last did for her;" but I hurried off for the other side of the
bay, to see what became of the life-boat. I heard a great cry from the
vessel as I reached the brow of the hill, and turned for a parting glance.
The dark mass had vanished, and the waves were rushing at will over the
space. When I got to the shore the crowd was less. Many were running, like
myself, towards the other side, anxious about the life-boat. I hastened
after them; for Percivale and Joe filled my heart.

They led the way to the little beach in front of the parsonage. It would
be well for the crew if they were driven ashore there, for it was the only
spot where they could escape being dashed on rocks.

There was a crowd before the garden-wall, a bustle, and great confusion of
speech. The people, men and women, boys and girls, were all gathered about
the crew of the life-boat,--which already lay, as if it knew of nothing but
repose, on the grass within.

"Percivale!" I cried, making my way through the crowd.

There was no answer.

"Joe Harper!" I cried again, searching with eager eyes amongst the crew, to
whom everybody was talking.

Still there was no answer; and from the disjointed phrases I heard, I could
gather nothing. All at once I saw Wynnie looking over the wall, despair in
her face, her wide eyes searching wildly through the crowd. I could not
look at her till I knew the worst. The captain was talking to old Coombes.
I went up to him. As soon as he saw me, he gave me his attention.

"Where is Mr. Percivale?" I asked, with all the calmness I could assume.

He took me by the arm, and drew me out of the crowd, nearer to the waves,
and a little nearer to the mouth of the canal. The tide had fallen
considerably, else there would not have been standing-room, narrow as it
was, which the people now occupied. He pointed in the direction of the
Castle-rock.

"If you mean the stranger gentleman--"

"And Joe Harper, the blacksmith," I interposed.

"They're there, sir."

"You don't mean those two--just those two--are drowned?" I said.

"No, sir; I don't say that; but God knows they have little chance."

I could not help thinking that God might know they were not in the smallest
danger. But I only begged him to tell me where they were.

"Do you see that schooner there, just between you and the Castle-rock?"

"No," I answered; "I can see nothing. Stay. I fancy I can. But I am always
ready to fancy I see a thing when I am told it is there. I can't say I see
it."

"I can, though. The gentleman you mean, and Joe Harper too, are, I believe,
on board of that schooner."

"Is she aground?"

"O dear no, sir. She's a light craft, and can swim there well enough. If
she'd been aground, she'd ha' been ashore in pieces hours ago. But whether
she'll ride it out, God only knows, as I said afore."

"How ever did they get aboard of her? I never saw her from the heights
opposite."

"You were all taken up by the ship ashore, you see, sir. And she don't make
much show in this light. But there she is, and they're aboard of her. And
this is how it was."

He went on to give me his part of the story; but I will now give the whole
of it myself, as I have gathered and pieced it together.

Two men had been swept overboard, as Roxton said--one of them was
Percivale--but they had both got on board again, to drift, oarless, with
the rest--now in a windless valley--now aloft on a tempest-swept hill of
water--away towards a goal they knew not, neither had chosen, and which yet
they could by no means avoid.

A little out of the full force of the current, and not far from the channel
of the small stream, which, when the tide was out, flowed across the sands
nearly from the canal gates to the Castle-rock, lay a little schooner,
belonging to a neighbouring port, Boscastle, I think, which, caught in
the storm, had been driven into the bay when it was almost dark, some
considerable time before the great ship. The master, however, knew the
ground well. The current carried him a little out of the wind, and would
have thrown him upon the rocks next, but he managed to drop anchor just in
time, and the cable held; and there the little schooner hung in the skirts
of the storm, with the jagged teeth of the rocks within an arrow flight. In
the excitement of the great wreck, no one had observed the danger of the
little coasting bird. If the cable held till the tide went down, and the
anchor did not drag, she would be safe; if not, she must be dashed to
pieces.

In the schooner were two men and a boy: two men had been washed overboard
an hour or so before they reached the bay. When they had dropped their
anchor, they lay down exhausted on the deck. Indeed they were so worn out
that they had been unable to drop their sheet anchor, and were holding on
only by their best bower. Had they not been a good deal out of the wind,
this would have been useless. Even if it held she was in danger of having
her bottom stove in by bumping against the sands as the tide went out. But
that they had not to think of yet. The moment they lay down they fell
fast asleep in the middle of the storm. While they slept it increased in
violence.

Suddenly one of them awoke, and thought he saw a vision of angels. For over
his head faces looked down upon him from the air--that is, from the top of
a great wave. The same moment he heard a voice, two of the angels dropped
on the deck beside him, and the rest vanished. Those angels were Percivale
and Joe. And angels they were, for they came just in time, as all angels
do--never a moment too soon or a moment too late: the schooner _was_
dragging her anchor. This was soon plain even to the less experienced eyes
of the said angels.

But it did not take them many minutes now to drop their strongest anchor,
and they were soon riding in perfect safety for some time to come.

One of the two men was the son of old Coombes, the sexton, who was engaged
to marry the girl I have spoken of in the end of the fourth chapter in the
second volume.

Percivale's account of the matter, as far as he was concerned, was, that as
they drifted helplessly along, he suddenly saw from the top of a huge wave
the little vessel below him. They were, in fact, almost upon the rigging.
The wave on which they rode swept the quarter-deck of the schooner.

Percivale says the captain of the lifeboat called out "Aboard!" The captain
said he remembered nothing of the sort. If he did, he must have meant
it for the men on the schooner to get on board the lifeboat. Percivale,
however, who had a most chivalrous (ought I not to say Christian?) notion
of obedience, fancying the captain meant them to board the schooner, sprang
at her fore-shrouds. Thereupon the wave sweeping them along the schooner's
side, Joe sprang at the main-shrouds, and they dropped on the deck
together.

But although my reader is at ease about their fate, we who were in the
affair were anything but easy at the time corresponding to this point of
the narrative. It was a terrible night we passed through.

When I returned, which was almost instantly, for I could do nothing by
staring out in the direction of the schooner, I found that the crowd was
nearly gone. One little group alone remained behind, the centre of which
was a woman. Wynnie had disappeared. The woman who remained behind was
Agnes Harper.

The moon shone out clear as I approached the group; indeed, the clouds were
breaking-up and drifting away off the heavens. The storm had raved out its
business, and was departing into the past.

"Agnes," I said.

"Yes, sir," she answered, and looked up as if waiting for a command. There
was no colour in her cheeks or in her lips--at least it seemed so in the
moonlight--only in her eyes. But she was perfectly calm. She was leaning
against the low wall, with her hands clasped, but hanging quietly down
before her.

"The storm is breaking-up, Agnes," I said.

"Yes, sir," she answered in the same still tone. Then, after just a
moment's pause, she spoke out of her heart.

"Joe's at his duty, sir?"

I have given the utterance a point of interrogation; whether she meant that
point I am not quite sure.

"Indubitably," I returned. "I have such faith in Joe, that I should be sure
of that in any case. At all events, he's not taking care of his own life.
And if one is to go wrong, I would ten thousand times rather err on that
side. But I am sure Joe has been doing right, and nothing else."

"Then there's nothing to be said, sir, is there?" she returned, with a sigh
that sounded as of relief.

I presume some of the surrounding condolers had been giving her Job's
comfort by blaming her husband.

"Do you remember, Agnes, what the Lord said to his mother when she
reproached him with having left her and his father?"

"I can't remember anything at this moment, sir," was her touching answer.

"Then I will tell you. He said, 'Why did you look for me? Didn't you know
that I must be about something my Father had given me to do?' Now, Joe was
and is about his Father's business, and you must not be anxious about him.
There could be no better reason for not being anxious."

Agnes was a very quiet woman. When without a word she took my hand and
kissed it, I felt what a depth there was in the feeling she could not
utter. I did not withdraw my hand, for I knew that would be to rebuke her
love for Joe.

"Will you come in and wait?" I said indefinitely.

"No, thank you, sir. I must go to my mother. God will look after Joe, won't
he, sir?"

"As sure as there is a God, Agnes," I said; and she went away without
another word.

I put my hand on the top of the wall and jumped over. I started back with
terror, for I had almost alighted on the body of a woman lying there. The
first insane suggestion was that it had been cast ashore; but the next
moment I knew that it was my own Wynnie.

She had not even fainted. She was lying with her handkerchief stuffed into
her mouth to keep her from screaming. When I uttered her name she rose,
and, without looking at me, walked away towards the house. I followed. She
went straight to her own room and shut the door. I went to find her mother.
She was with Connie, who was now awake, lying pale and frightened. I told
Ethelwyn that Percivale and Joe were on board the little schooner, which
was holding on by her anchor, that Wynnie was in terror about Percivale,
that I had found her lying on the wet grass, and that she must get her into
a warm bath and to bed. We went together to her room.

She was standing in the middle of the floor, with her hands pressed against
her temples.

"Wynnie," I said, "our friends are not drowned. I think you will see them
quite safe in the morning. Pray to God for them."

She did not hear a word.

"Leave her with me," said Ethelwyn, proceeding to undress her; "and tell
nurse to bring up the large bath. There is plenty of hot water in the
boiler. I gave orders to that effect, not knowing what might happen."

Wynnie shuddered as her mother said this; but I waited no longer, for when
Ethelwyn spoke everyone felt her authority. I obeyed her, and then went to
Connie's room.

"Do you mind being left alone a little while?" I asked her.

"No, papa; only--are they all drowned?" she said with a shudder.

"I hope not, my dear; but be sure of the mercy of God, whatever you fear.
You must rest in him, my love; for he is life, and will conquer death both
in the soul and in the body."

"I was not thinking of myself, papa."

"I know that, my dear. But God is thinking of you and every creature that
he has made. And for our sakes you must be quiet in heart, that you may get
better, and be able to help us."

"I will try, papa," she said; and, turning slowly on her side, she lay
quite still.

Dora and the boys were all fast asleep, for it was very late. I cannot,
however, say what hour it was.

Telling nurse to be on the watch because Connie was alone, I went again to
the beach. I called first, however, to inquire after Agnes. I found her
quite composed, sitting with her parents by the fire, none of them doing
anything, scarcely speaking, only listening intently to the sounds of the
storm now beginning to die away.

I next went to the place where I had left Turner. Five bodies lay there,
and he was busy with a sixth. The surgeon of the place was with him, and
they quite expected to recover this man.

I then went down to the sands. An officer of the revenue was taking charge
of all that came ashore--chests, and bales, and everything. For a week the
sea went on casting out the fragments of that which she had destroyed. I
have heard that, for years after, the shifting of the sands would now and
then discover things buried that night by the waves.

All the next day the bodies kept coming ashore, some peaceful as in sleep,
others broken and mutilated. Many were cast upon other parts of the coast.
Some four or five only, all men, were recovered. It was strange to me how
I got used to it. The first horror over, the cry that yet another body had
come awoke only a gentle pity--no more dismay or shuddering. But, finding
I could be of no use, I did not wait longer than just till the morning
began to dawn with a pale ghastly light over the seething raging sea; for
the sea raged on, although the wind had gone down. There were many strong
men about, with two surgeons and all the coastguard, who were well
accustomed to similar though not such extensive destruction. The houses
along the shore were at the disposal of any who wanted aid; the Parsonage
was at some distance; and I confess that when I thought of the state of my
daughters, as well as remembered former influences upon my wife, I was very
glad to think there was no necessity for carrying thither any of those whom
the waves cast on the shore.

When I reached home, and found Wynnie quieter and Connie again asleep, I
walked out along our own downs till I came whence I could see the little
schooner still safe at anchor. From her position I concluded--correctly as
I found afterwards--that they had let out her cable far enough to allow her
to reach the bed of the little stream, where the tide would leave her more
gently. She was clearly out of all danger now; and if Percivale and Joe had
got safe on board of her, we might confidently expect to see them before
many hours were passed. I went home with the good news.

For a few moments I doubted whether I should tell Wynnie, for I could not
know with any certainty that Percivale was in the schooner. But presently I
recalled former conclusions to the effect that we have no right to modify
God's facts for fear of what may be to come. A little hope founded on a
present appearance, even if that hope should never be realised, may be the
very means of enabling a soul to bear the weight of a sorrow past the point
at which it would otherwise break down. I would therefore tell Wynnie, and
let her share my expectation of deliverance.

I think she had been half-asleep, for when I entered her room she started
up in a sitting posture, looking wild, and putting her hands to her head.

"I have brought you good news, Wynnie," I said. "I have been out on the
downs, and there is light enough now to see that the little schooner is
quite safe."

"What schooner?" she asked listlessly, and lay down again, her eyes still
staring, awfully unappeased.

"Why the schooner they say Percivale got on board."

"He isn't drowned then!" she cried with a choking voice, and put her hands
to her face and burst into tears and sobs.

"Wynnie," I said, "look what your faithlessness brings upon you. Everybody
but you has known all night that Percivale and Joe Harper are probably
quite safe. They may be ashore in a couple of hours."

"But you don't know it. He may be drowned yet."

"Of course there is room for doubt, but none for despair. See what a poor
helpless creature hopelessness makes you."

"But how can I help it, papa?" she asked piteously. "I am made so."

But as she spoke the dawn was clear upon the height of her forehead.

"You are not made yet, as I am always telling you; and God has ordained
that you shall have a hand in your own making. You have to consent, to
desire that what you know for a fault shall be set right by his loving will
and spirit."

"I don't know God, papa."

"Ah, my dear, that is where it all lies. You do not know him, or you would
never be without hope."

"But what am I to do to know him!" she asked, rising on her elbow.

The saving power of hope was already working in her. She was once more
turning her face towards the Life.

"Read as you have never read before about Christ Jesus, my love. Read with
the express object of finding out what God is like, that you may know him
and may trust him. And now give yourself to him, and he will give you
sleep."

"What are we to do," I said to my wife, "if Percivale continue silent? For
even if he be in love with her, I doubt if he will speak."

"We must leave all that, Harry," she answered.

She was turning on myself the counsel I had been giving Wynnie. It is
strange how easily we can tell our brother what he ought to do, and yet,
when the case comes to be our own, do precisely as we had rebuked him for
doing. I lay down and fell fast asleep.






CHAPTER IX.

THE FUNERAL.





It was a lovely morning when I woke once more. The sun was flashing back
from the sea, which was still tossing, but no longer furiously, only as if
it wanted to turn itself every way to flash the sunlight about. The madness
of the night was over and gone; the light was abroad, and the world was
rejoicing. When I reached the drawing-room, which afforded the best outlook
over the shore, there was the schooner lying dry on the sands, her two
cables and anchors stretching out yards behind her; but half way between
the two sides of the bay rose a mass of something shapeless, drifted over
with sand. It was all that remained together of the great ship that had the
day before swept over the waters like a live thing with wings--of all the
works of man's hands the nearest to the shape and sign of life. The wind
had ceased altogether, only now and then a little breeze arose which
murmured "I am very sorry," and lay down again. And I knew that in the
houses on the shore dead men and women were lying.

I went down to the dining-room. The three children were busy at their
breakfast, but neither wife, daughter, nor visitor had yet appeared. I made
a hurried meal, and was just rising to go and inquire further into the
events of the night, when the door opened, and in walked Percivale, looking
very solemn, but in perfect health and well-being. I grasped his hand
warmly.

"Thank God," I said, "that you are returned to us, Percivale."

"I doubt if that is much to give thanks for," he said.

"We are the judges of that," I rejoined. "Tell me all about it."

While he was narrating the events I have already communicated, Wynnie
entered. She started, turned pale and then very red, and for a moment
hesitated in the doorway.

"Here is another to rejoice at your safety, Percivale," I said.

Thereupon he stepped forward to meet her, and she gave him her hand with an
emotion so evident that I felt a little distressed--why, I could not easily
have told, for she looked most charming in the act,--more lovely than I had
ever seen her. Her beauty was unconsciously praising God, and her heart
would soon praise him too. But Percivale was a modest man, and I think
attributed her emotion to the fact that he had been in danger in the way of
duty,--a fact sufficient to move the heart of any good woman.

She sat down and began to busy herself with the teapot. Her hand trembled.
I requested Percivale to begin his story once more; and he evidently
enjoyed recounting to her the adventures of the night.

I asked him to sit down and have a second breakfast while I went into the
village, whereto he seemed nothing loth.

As I crossed the floor of the old mill to see how Joe was, the head of
the sexton appeared emerging from it. He looked full of weighty solemn
business. Bidding me good-morning, he turned to the corner where his tools
lay, and proceeded to shoulder spade and pickaxe.

"Ah, Coombes! you'll want them," I said.

"A good many o' my people be come all at once, you see, sir," he returned.
"I shall have enough ado to make 'em all comfortable like."

"But you must get help, you know; you can never make them all comfortable
yourself alone."

"We'll see what I can do," he returned. "I ben't a bit willin' to let no
one do my work for me, I do assure you, sir."

"How many are there wanting your services?" I asked.

"There be fifteen of them now, and there be more, I don't doubt, on the
way."

"But you won't think of making separate graves for them all," I said. "They
died together: let them lie together."

The old man set down his tools, and looked me in the face with indignation.
The face was so honest and old, that, without feeling I had deserved it, I
yet felt the rebuke.

"How would you like, sir," he said, at length, "to be put in the same bed
with a lot of people you didn't know nothing about?"

I knew the old man's way, and that any argument which denied the premiss
of his peculiar fancy was worse than thrown away upon him. I therefore
ventured no farther than to say that I had heard death was a leveller.

"That be very true; and, mayhap, they mightn't think of it after they'd
been down awhile--six weeks, mayhap, or so. But anyhow, it can't be
comfortable for 'em, poor things. One on 'em be a baby: I daresay he'd
rather lie with his mother. The doctor he say one o' the women be a mother.
I don't know," he went on reflectively, "whether she be the baby's own
mother, but I daresay neither o' them 'll mind it if I take it for granted,
and lay 'em down together. So that's one bed less."

One thing was clear, that the old man could not dig fourteen graves within
the needful time. But I would not interfere with his office in the church,
having no reason to doubt that he would perform its duties to perfection.
He shouldered his tools again and walked out. I descended the stair,
thinking to see Joe; but there was no one there but the old woman.

"Where are Joe and Agnes?" I asked.

"You see, sir, Joe had promised a little job of work to be ready to-day,
and so he couldn't stop. He did say Agnes needn't go with him; but she
thought she couldn't part with him so soon, you see, sir."

"She had received him from the dead--raised to life again," I said; "it was
most natural. But what a fine fellow Joe is; nothing will make him neglect
his work!"

"I tried to get him to stop, sir, saying he had done quite enough last
night for all next day; but he told me it was his business to get the tire
put on Farmer Wheatstone's cart-wheel to-day just as much as it was his
business to go in the life-boat yesterday. So he would go, and Aggy
wouldn't stay behind."

"Fine fellow, Joe!" I said, and took my leave.

As I drew near the village, I heard the sound of hammering and sawing, and
apparently everything at once in the way of joinery; they were making the
coffins in the joiners' shops, of which there were two in the place.

I do not like coffins. They seem to me relics of barbarism. If I had my
way, I would have the old thing decently wound in a fair linen cloth, and
so laid in the bosom of the earth, whence it was taken. I would have it
vanish, not merely from the world of vision, but from the world of form, as
soon as may be. The embrace of the fine life-hoarding, life-giving mould,
seems to me comforting, in the vague, foolish fancy that will sometimes
emerge from the froth of reverie--I mean, of subdued consciousness
remaining in the outworn frame. But the coffin is altogether and vilely
repellent. Of this, however, enough, I hate even the shadow of sentiment,
though some of my readers, who may not yet have learned to distinguish
between sentiment and feeling, may wonder how I dare to utter such a
barbarism.

I went to the house of the county magistrate hard by, for I thought
something might have to be done in which I had a share. I found that he had
sent a notice of the loss of the vessel to the Liverpool papers, requesting
those who might wish to identify or claim any of the bodies to appear
within four days at Kilkhaven.

This threw the last upon Saturday, and before the end of the week it was
clear that they must not remain above ground over Sunday. I therefore
arranged that they should be buried late on the Saturday night.

On the Friday morning, a young woman and an old man, unknown to each other,
arrived by the coach from Barnstaple. They had come to see the last of
their friends in this world; to look, if they might, at the shadow left
behind by the departing soul. For as the shadow of any object remains a
moment upon the magic curtain of the eye after the object itself has gone,
so the shadow of the soul, namely, the body, lingers a moment upon the
earth after the object itself has gone to the "high countries." It was
well to see with what a sober sorrow the dignified little old man bore his
grief. It was as if he felt that the loss of his son was only for a moment.
But the young woman had taken on the hue of the corpse she came to seek.
Her eyes were sunken as if with the weight of the light she cared not for,
and her cheeks had already pined away as if to be ready for the grave. A
being thus emptied of its glory seized and possessed my thoughts. She never
even told us whom she came seeking, and after one involuntary question,
which simply received no answer, I was very careful not even to approach
another. I do not think the form she sought was there; and she may have
gone home with the lingering hope to cast the gray aurora of a doubtful
dawn over her coming days, that, after all, that one had escaped.

On the Friday afternoon, with the approbation of the magistrate, I had
all the bodies removed to the church. Some in their coffins, others on
stretchers, they were laid in front of the communion-rail. In the evening
these two went to see them. I took care to be present. The old man soon
found his son. I was at his elbow as he walked between the rows of the
dead. He turned to me and said quietly--

"That's him, sir. He was a good lad. God rest his soul. He's with his
mother; and if I'm sorry, she's glad."

With that he smiled, or tried to smile. I could only lay my hand on his
arm, to let him know that I understood him, and was with him. He walked
out of the church, sat down, upon a stone, and stared at the mould of a
new-made grave in front of him. What was passing behind those eyes God only
knew--certainly the man himself did not know. Our lightest thoughts are of
more awful significance than the most serious of us can imagine.

For the young woman, I thought she left the church with a little light in
her eyes; but she had said nothing. Alas! that the body was not there could
no more justify her than Milton in letting her

  "frail thoughts dally with false surmise."

With him, too, she might well add--

  "Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away."

But God had them in his teaching, and all I could do was to ask them to be
my guests till the funeral and the following Sunday were over. To this
they kindly consented, and I took them to my wife, who received them like
herself, and had in a few minutes made them at home with her, to which no
doubt their sorrow tended, for that brings out the relations of humanity
and destroys its distinctions.

The next morning a Scotchman of a very decided type, originally from
Aberdeen, but resident in Liverpool, appeared, seeking the form of his
daughter. I had arranged that whoever came should be brought to me first. I
went with him to the church. He was a tall, gaunt, bony man, with long arms
and huge hands, a rugged granite-like face, and a slow ponderous utterance,
which I had some difficulty in understanding. He treated the object of his
visit with a certain hardness, and at the same time lightness, which also I
had some difficulty in understanding.

"You want to see the--" I said, and hesitated.

"Ow ay--the boadies," he answered. "She winna be there, I daursay, but I
wad jist like to see; for I wadna like her to be beeried gin sae be 'at she
was there, wi'oot biddin' her good-bye like."

When we reached the church, I opened the door and entered. An awe fell upon
me fresh and new. The beautiful church had become a tomb: solemn, grand,
ancient, it rose as a memorial of the dead who lay in peace before her
altar-rail, as if they had fled thither for sanctuary from a sea of
troubles. And I thought with myself, Will the time ever come when the
churches shall stand as the tombs of holy things that have passed away,
when Christ shall have rendered up the kingdom to his Father, and no man
shall need to teach his neighbour or his brother, saying, "Know the Lord"?
The thought passed through my mind and vanished, as I led my companion up
to the dead. He glanced at one and another, and passed on. He had looked
at ten or twelve ere he stopped, gazing on the face of the beautiful form
which had first come ashore. He stooped and stroked the white cheeks,
taking the head in his great rough hands, and smoothed the brown hair
tenderly, saying, as if he had quite forgotten that she was dead--

"Eh, Maggie! hoo cam _ye_ here, lass?"

Then, as if for the first time the reality had grown comprehensible, he put
his hands before his face, and burst into tears. His huge frame was shaken
with sobs for one long minute, while I stood looking on with awe and
reverence. He ceased suddenly, pulled a blue cotton handkerchief with
yellow spots on it--I see it now--from his pocket, rubbed his face with
it as if drying it with a towel, put it back, turned, and said, without
looking at me, "I'll awa' hame."

"Wouldn't you like a piece of her hair?" I asked.

"Gin ye please," he answered gently, as if his daughter's form had been
mine now, and her hair were mine to give.

By the vestry door sat Mrs. Coombes, watching the dead, with her sweet
solemn smile, and her constant ministration of knitting.

"Have you got a pair of scissors there, Mrs. Coombes?" I asked.

"Yes, to be sure, sir," she answered, rising, and lifting a huge pair by
the string suspending them from her waist.

"Cut off a nice piece of this beautiful hair," I said.

She lifted the lovely head, chose, and cut off a long piece, and handed it
respectfully to the father.

He took it without a word, sat down on the step before the communion-rail,
and began to smooth out the wonderful sleave of dusky gold. It was, indeed,
beautiful hair. As he drew it out, I thought it must be a yard long. He
passed his big fingers through and through it, but tenderly, as if it had
been still growing on the live lovely head, stopping every moment to pick
out the bits of sea-weed and shells, and shake out the sand that had been
wrought into its mass. He sat thus for nearly half-an-hour, and we stood
looking on with something closely akin to awe. At length he folded it up,
drew from his pocket an old black leather book, laid it carefully in the
innermost pocket, and rose. I led the way from the church, and he followed
me.

Outside the church, he laid his hand on my arm, and said, groping with his
other hand in his trousers-pocket--

"She'll hae putten ye to some expense--for the coffin an' sic like."

"We'll talk about that afterwards," I answered. "Come home with me now, and
have some refreshment."

"Na, I thank ye. I hae putten ye to eneuch o' tribble already. I'll jist
awa' hame."

"We are going to lay them down this evening. You won't go before the
funeral. Indeed, I think you can't get away till Monday morning. My wife
and I will be glad of your company till then."

"I'm no company for gentle-fowk, sir."

"Come and show me in which of these graves you would like to have her
laid," I said.

He yielded and followed me.

Coombes had not dug many spadefuls before he saw what had been plain
enough--that ten such men as he could not dig the graves in time. But there
was plenty of help to be had from the village and the neighbouring farms.
Most of them were now ready, but a good many men were still at work. The
brown hillocks lay all about the church-yard--the mole-heaps of burrowing
Death.

The stranger looked around him. His face grew critical. He stepped a little
hither and thither. At length he turned to me and said--

"I wadna like to be greedy; but gin ye wad lat her lie next the kirk
there--i' that neuk, I wad tak' it kindly. And syne gin ever it cam' aboot
that I cam' here again, I wad ken whaur she was. Could ye get a sma' bit
heidstane putten up? I wad leave the siller wi' ye to pay for't."

"To be sure I can. What will you have put on the stone?"

"Ow jist--let me see--Maggie Jamieson--nae Marget, but jist Maggie. She was
aye Maggie at home. Maggie Jamieson, frae her father. It's the last thing I
can gie her. Maybe ye micht put a verse o' Scripter aneath't, ye ken."

"What verse would you like?"

He thought for a little.

"Isna there a text that says, 'The deid shall hear his voice'?"

"Yes: 'The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God.'"

"Ay. That's it. Weel, jist put that on.--They canna do better than hear his
voice," he added, with a strange mixture of Scotch ratiocination.

I led the way home, and he accompanied me without further objection or
apology. After dinner, I proposed that we should go upon the downs, for the
day was warm and bright. We sat on the grass. I felt that I could not talk
to them as from myself. I knew nothing of the possible gulfs of sorrow in
their hearts. To me their forms seemed each like a hill in whose unseen
bosom lay a cavern of dripping waters, perhaps with a subterranean torrent
of anguish raving through its hollows and tumbling down hidden precipices,
whose voice God only heard, and God only could still. This daughter
_might_, though from her face I did not think it, have gone away against
her father's will. That son _might_ have been a ne'er-do-well at home--how
could I tell? The woman _might_ be looking for the lover that had forsaken
her--I could not divine. I would speak no words of my own. The Son of
God had spoken words of comfort to his mourning friends, when he was the
present God and they were the forefront of humanity; I would read some of
the words he spoke. From them the human nature in each would draw what
comfort it could. I took my New Testament from my pocket, and said, without
any preamble,

"When our Lord was going to die, he knew that his friends loved him enough
to be very wretched about it. He knew that they would be overwhelmed for a
time with trouble. He knew, too, that they could not believe the glad end
of it all, to which end he looked, across the awful death that awaited
him--a death to which that of our friends in the wreck was ease itself. I
will just read to you what he said."

I read from the fourteenth to the seventeenth chapter of St. John's Gospel.
I knew there were worlds of meaning in the words into which I could hardly
hope any of them would enter. But I knew likewise that the best things are
just those from which the humble will draw the truth they are capable of
seeing. Therefore I read as for myself, and left it to them to hear for
themselves. Nor did I add any word of comment, fearful of darkening counsel
by words without knowledge. For the Bible is awfully set against what is
not wise.

When I had finished, I closed the book, rose from the grass, and walked
towards the brow of the shore. They rose likewise and followed me. I talked
of slight things; the tone was all that communicated between us. But little
of any sort was said. The sea lay still before us, knowing nothing of the
sorrow it had caused.

We wandered a little way along the cliff. The burial-service was at seven
o'clock.

"I have an invalid to visit out in this direction," I said; "would you mind
walking with me? I shall not stay more than five minutes, and we shall get
back just in time for tea."

They assented kindly. I walked first with one, then with another; heard a
little of the story of each; was able to say a few words of sympathy, and
point, as it were, a few times towards the hills whence cometh our aid. I
may just mention here, that since our return to Marshmallows I have had two
of them, the young woman and the Scotchman, to visit us there.

The bell began to toll, and we went to church. My companions placed
themselves near the dead. I went into the vestry till the appointed hour.
I thought as I put on my surplice how, in all religions but the Christian,
the dead body was a pollution to the temple. Here the church received it,
as a holy thing, for a last embrace ere it went to the earth.

As the dead were already in the church, the usual form could not be carried
out. I therefore stood by the communion-table, and there began to read, "I
am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me,
though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth
in me shall never die."

I advanced, as I read, till I came outside the rails and stood before the
dead. There I read the Psalm, "Lord, thou hast been our refuge," and
the glorious lesson, "Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the
first-fruits of them that slept." Then the men of the neighbourhood came
forward, and in long solemn procession bore the bodies out of the church,
each to its grave. At the church-door I stood and read, "Man that is born
of a woman;" then went from one to another of the graves, and read over
each, as the earth fell on the coffin-lid, "Forasmuch as it hath pleased
Almighty God, of his great mercy." Then again, I went back to the
church-door and read, "I heard a voice from heaven;" and so to the end of
the service.

Leaving the men to fill up the graves, I hastened to lay aside my
canonicals, that I might join my guests; but my wife and daughter had
already prevailed on them to leave the churchyard.

A word now concerning my own family. Turner insisted on Connie's remaining
in bed for two or three days. She looked worse in face--pale and worn; but
it was clear, from the way she moved in bed, that the fresh power called
forth by the shock had not vanished with the moment.

Wynnie was quieter almost than ever; but there was a constant _secret_
light, if I may use the paradox, in her eyes. Percivale was at the
house every day, always ready to make himself useful. My wife bore up
wonderfully. As yet the much greater catastrophe had come far short of the
impression made by the less. When quieter hours should come, however, I
could not help fearing that the place would be dreadfully painful to
all but the younger ones, who, of course, had the usual child-gift of
forgetting. The servants--even Walter--looked thin and anxious.

That Saturday night I found myself, as I had once or twice found myself
before, entirely unprepared to preach. I did not feel anxious, because I
did not feel that I was to blame: I had been so much occupied. I had again
and again turned my thoughts thitherward, but nothing recommended itself to
me so that I could say "I must take that;" nothing said plainly, "This is
what you have to speak of."

As often as I had sought to find fitting matter for my sermon, my mind
had turned to death and the grave; but I shrunk from every suggestion, or
rather nothing had come to me that interested myself enough to justify me
in giving it to my people. And I always took it as my sole justification,
in speaking of anything to the flock of Christ, that I cared heartily in my
own soul for that thing. Without this consciousness I was dumb. And I do
think, highly as I value prophecy, that a clergyman ought to be at liberty
upon occasion to say, "My friends, I cannot preach to-day." What a riddance
it would be for the Church, I do not say if every priest were to speak
sense, but only if every priest were to abstain from speaking of that in
which, at the moment, he feels little or no interest!

I went to bed, which is often the very best thing a man can do; for sleep
will bring him from God that which no effort of his own will can compass.
I have read somewhere--I will verify it by present search--that Luther's
translation, of the verse in the psalm, "So he giveth to his beloved
sleep," is, "He giveth his beloved sleeping," or while asleep. Yes, so it
is, literally, in English, "It is in vain that ye rise early, and then
sit long, and eat your bread with care, for to his friends he gives it
sleeping." This was my experience in the present instance; for the thought
of which I was first conscious when I awoke was, "Why should I talk about
death? Every man's heart is now full of death. We have enough of that--even
the sum that God has sent us on the wings of the tempest. What I have to
do, as the minister of the new covenant, is to speak of life." It flashed
in on my mind: "Death is over and gone. The resurrection comes next. I will
speak of the raising of Lazarus."

The same moment I knew that I was ready to speak. Shall I or shall I not
give my reader the substance of what I said? I wish I knew how many of them
would like it, and how many would not. I do not want to bore them with
sermons, especially seeing I have always said that no sermons ought to
be printed; for in print they are but what the old alchymists would have
called a _caput mortuum_, or death's head, namely, a lifeless lump of
residuum at the bottom of the crucible; for they have no longer the living
human utterance which gives all the power on the minds of the hearers. But
I have not, either in this or in my preceding narrative, attempted to give
a sermon as I preached it. I have only sought to present the substance of
it in a form fitter for being read, somewhat cleared of the unavoidable,
let me say necessary--yes, I will say _valuable_--repetitions and
enforcements by which the various considerations are pressed upon the minds
of the hearers. These are entirely wearisome in print--useless too, for
the reader may ponder over every phrase till he finds out the purport of
it--if indeed there be such readers nowadays.

I rose, went down to the bath in the rocks, had a joyous physical ablution,
and a swim up and down the narrow cleft, from which I emerged as if myself
newly born or raised anew, and then wandered about on the downs full of
hope and thankfulness, seeking all I could to plant deep in my mind the
long-rooted truths of resurrection, that they might be not only ready to
blossom in the warmth of the spring-tides to come, but able to send out
some leaves and promissory buds even in the wintry time of the soul, when
the fogs of pain steam up from the frozen clay soil of the body, and make
the monarch-will totter dizzily upon his throne, to comfort the eyes of the
bewildered king, reminding him that the King of kings hath conquered Death
and the Grave. There is no perfect faith that cannot laugh at winters and
graveyards, and all the whole array of defiant appearances. The fresh
breeze of the morning visited me. "O God," I said in my heart, "would that
when the dark day comes, in which I can feel nothing, I may be able to
front it with the memory of this day's strength, and so help myself to
trust in the Father! I would call to mind the days of old, with David the
king."

When I returned to the house, I found that one of the sailors, who had been
cast ashore with his leg broken, wished to see me. I obeyed, and found him
very pale and worn.

"I think I am going, sir," he said; "and I wanted to see you before I die."

"Trust in Christ, and do not be afraid," I returned.

"I prayed to him to save me when I was hanging to the rigging, and if I
wasn't afraid then, I'm not going to be afraid now, dying quietly in my
bed. But just look here, sir."

He took from under his pillow something wrapped up in paper, unfolded the
envelope, and showed a lump of something--I could not at first tell what.
He put it in my hand, and then I saw that it was part of a bible, with
nearly the upper half of it worn or cut away, and the rest partly in a
state of pulp.

"That's the bible my mother gave me when I left home first," he said. "I
don't know how I came to put it in my pocket, but I think the rope that cut
through that when I was lashed to the shrouds would a'most have cut through
my ribs if it hadn't been for it."

"Very likely," I returned. "The body of the Bible has saved your bodily
life: may the spirit of it save your spiritual life."

"I think I know what you mean, sir," he panted out. "My mother was a good
woman, and I know she prayed to God for me."

"Would you like us to pray for you in church to-day?"

"If you please, sir; me and Bob Fox. He's nearly as bad as I am."

"We won't forget you," I said. "I will come in after church and see how you
are."

I knelt and offered the prayers for the sick, and then took my leave. I did
not think the poor fellow was going to die.

I may as well mention here, that he has been in my service ever since. We
took him with us to Marshmallows, where he works in the garden and stables,
and is very useful. We have to look after him though, for his health
continues delicate.






CHAPTER X.

THE SERMON.





When I stood up to preach, I gave them no text; but, with the eleventh
chapter of the Gospel of St. John open before me, to keep me correct, I
proceeded to tell the story in the words God gave me; for who can dare to
say that he makes his own commonest speech?

"When Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and therefore our elder brother,
was going about on the earth, eating and drinking with his brothers and
sisters, there was one family he loved especially--a family of two sisters
and a brother; for, although he loves everybody as much as they can be
loved, there are some who can be loved more than others. Only God is always
trying to make us such that we can be loved more and more. There are
several stories--O, such lovely stories!--about that family and Jesus; and
we have to do with one of them now.

"They lived near the capital of the country, Jerusalem, in a village they
called Bethany; and it must have been a great relief to our Lord, when he
was worn out with the obstinacy and pride of the great men of the city, to
go out to the quiet little town and into the refuge of Lazarus's house,
where everyone was more glad at the sound of his feet than at any news that
could come to them.

"They had at this time behaved so ill to him in Jerusalem--taking up stones
to stone him even, though they dared not quite do it, mad with anger as
they were--and all because he told them the truth--that he had gone away to
the other side of the great river that divided the country, and taught the
people in that quiet place. While he was there his friend Lazarus was taken
ill; and the two sisters, Martha and Mary, sent a messenger to him, to say
to him, 'Lord, your friend is very ill.' Only they said it more beautifully
than that: 'Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.' You know, when
anyone is ill, we always want the person whom he loves most to come to him.
This is very wonderful. In the worst things that can come to us the first
thought is of love. People, like the Scribes and Pharisees, might say,
'What good can that do him?' And we may not in the least suppose that the
person we want knows any secret that can cure his pain; yet love is the
first thing we think of. And here we are more right than we know; for, at
the long last, love will cure everything: which truth, indeed, this story
will set forth to us. No doubt the heart of Lazarus, ill as he was, longed
after his friend; and, very likely, even the sight of Jesus might have
given him such strength that the life in him could have driven out the
death which had already got one foot across the threshold. But the sisters
expected more than this: they believed that Jesus, whom they knew to have
driven disease and death out of so many hearts, had only to come and touch
him--nay, only to speak a word, to look at him, and their brother was
saved. Do you think they presumed in thus expecting? The fact was, they did
not believe enough; they had not yet learned to believe that he could cure
him all the same whether he came to them or not, because he was always with
them. We cannot understand this; but our understanding is never a measure
of what is true.

"Whether Jesus knew exactly all that was going to take place I cannot tell.
Some people may feel certain upon points that I dare not feel certain upon.
One thing I am sure of: that he did not always know everything beforehand,
for he said so himself. It is infinitely more valuable to us, because more
beautiful and godlike in him, that he should trust his Father than that he
should foresee everything. At all events he knew that his Father did not
want him to go to his friends yet. So he sent them a message to the effect
that there was a particular reason for this sickness--that the end of it
was not the death of Lazarus, but the glory of God. This, I think, he told
them by the same messenger they sent to him; and then, instead of going to
them, he remained where he was.

"But O, my friends, what shall I say about this wonderful message? Think of
being sick for the glory of God! of being shipwrecked for the glory of God!
of being drowned for the glory of God! How can the sickness, the fear, the
broken-heartedness of his creatures be for the glory of God? What kind of
a God can that be? Why just a God so perfectly, absolutely good, that the
things that look least like it are only the means of clearing our eyes to
let us see how good he is. For he is so good that he is not satisfied with
_being_ good. He loves his children, so that except he can make them good
like himself, make them blessed by seeing how good he is, and desiring the
same goodness in themselves, he is not satisfied. He is not like a fine
proud benefactor, who is content with doing that which will satisfy his
sense of his own glory, but like a mother who puts her arm round her child,
and whose heart is sore till she can make her child see the love which is
her glory. The glorification of the Son of God is the glorification of the
human race; for the glory of God is the glory of man, and that glory is
love. Welcome sickness, welcome sorrow, welcome death, revealing that
glory!

"The next two verses sound very strangely together, and yet they almost
seem typical of all the perplexities of God's dealings. The old painters
and poets represented Faith as a beautiful woman, holding in her hand a cup
of wine and water, with a serpent coiled up within. Highhearted Faith!
she scruples not to drink of the life-giving wine and water; she is not
repelled by the upcoiled serpent. The serpent she takes but for the type of
the eternal wisdom that looks repellent because it is not understood. The
wine is good, the water is good; and if the hand of the supreme Fate put
that cup in her hand, the serpent itself must be good too,--harmless, at
least, to hurt the truth of the water and the wine. But let us read the
verses.

"'Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When he had heard
therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where
he was.'

"Strange! his friend was sick: he abode two days where he was! But remember
what we have already heard. The glory of God was infinitely more for the
final cure of a dying Lazarus, who, give him all the life he could have,
would yet, without that glory, be in death, than the mere presence of the
Son of God. I say _mere_ presence, for, compared with the glory of God, the
very presence of his Son, so dissociated, is nothing. He abode where he was
that the glory of God, the final cure of humanity, the love that triumphs
over death, might shine out and redeem the hearts of men, so that death
could not touch them.

"After the two days, the hour had arrived. He said to his disciples, 'Let
us go back to Juda.' They expostulated, because of the danger, saying,
'Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither
again?' The answer which he gave them I am not sure whether I can
thoroughly understand; but I think, in fact I know, it must bear on the
same region of life--the will of God. I think what he means by walking
in the day is simply doing the will of God. That was the sole, the
all-embracing light in which Jesus ever walked. I think he means that now
he saw plainly what the Father wanted him to do. If he did not see that the
Father wanted him to go back to Juda, and yet went, that would be to
go stumblingly, to walk in the darkness. There are twelve hours in the
day--one time to act--a time of light and the clear call of duty; there is
a night when a man, not seeing where or hearing how, must be content to
rest. Something not inharmonious with this, I think, he must have intended;
but I do not see the whole thought clearly enough to be sure that I am
right. I do think, further, that it points at a clearer condition of human
vision and conviction than I am good enough to understand; though I hope
one day to rise into this upper stratum of light.

"Whether his scholars had heard anything of Lazarus yet, I do not know. It
looks a little as if Jesus had not told them the message he had had from
the sisters. But he told them now that he was asleep, and that he was going
to wake him. You would think they might have understood this. The idea of
going so many miles to wake a man might have surely suggested death. But
the disciples were sorely perplexed with many of his words. Sometimes they
looked far away for the meaning when the meaning lay in their very hearts;
sometimes they looked into their hands for it when it was lost in the
grandeur of the ages. But he meant them to see into all that he said by
and by, although they could not see into it now. When they understood him
better, then they would understand what he said better. And to understand
him better they must be more like him; and to make them more like him he
must go away and give them his spirit--awful mystery which no man but
himself can understand.

"Now he had to tell them plainly that Lazarus was dead. They had not
thought of death as a sleep. I suppose this was altogether a new and
Christian idea. Do not suppose that it applied more to Lazarus than to
other dead people. He was none the less dead that Jesus meant to take a
weary two days' journey to his sepulchre and wake him. If death is not a
sleep, Jesus did not speak the truth when he said Lazarus slept. You may
say it was a figure; but a figure that is not like the thing it figures is
simply a lie.

"They set out to go back to Juda. Here we have a glimpse of the faith of
Thomas, the doubter. For a doubter is not without faith. The very fact
that he doubts, shows that he has some faith. When I find anyone hard upon
doubters, I always doubt the _quality_ of his faith. It is of little use to
have a great cable, if the hemp is so poor that it breaks like the painter
of a boat. I have known people whose power of believing chiefly consisted
in their incapacity for seeing difficulties. Of what fine sort a faith must
be that is founded in stupidity, or far worse, in indifference to the truth
and the mere desire to get out of hell! That is not a grand belief in the
Son of God, the radiation of the Father. Thomas's want of faith was shown
in the grumbling, self-pitying way in which he said, 'Let us also go that
we may die with him.' His Master had said that he was going to wake
him. Thomas said, 'that we may die with him.' You may say, 'He did not
understand him.' True, it may be, but his unbelief was the cause of his not
understanding him. I suppose Thomas meant this as a reproach to Jesus for
putting them all in danger by going back to Juda; if not, it was only a
poor piece of sentimentality. So much for Thomas's unbelief. But he had
good and true faith notwithstanding; for _he went with his Master_.

"By the time they reached the neighbourhood of Bethany, Lazarus had been
dead four days. Someone ran to the house and told the sisters that Jesus
was coming. Martha, as soon as she heard it, rose and went to meet him.
It might be interesting at another time to compare the difference of the
behaviour of the two sisters upon this occasion with the difference of
their behaviour upon another occasion, likewise recorded; but with the man
dead in his sepulchre, and the hope dead in these two hearts, we have no
inclination to enter upon fine distinctions of character. Death and grief
bring out the great family likenesses in the living as well as in the dead.

"When Martha came to Jesus, she showed her true though imperfect faith by
almost attributing her brother's death to Jesus' absence. But even in the
moment, looking in the face of the Master, a fresh hope, a new budding of
faith, began in her soul. She thought--'What if, after all, he were
to bring him to life again!' O, trusting heart, how thou leavest the
dull-plodding intellect behind thee! While the conceited intellect is
reasoning upon the impossibility of the thing, the expectant faith beholds
it accomplished. Jesus, responding instantly to her faith, granting her
half-born prayer, says, 'Thy brother shall rise again;' not meaning the
general truth recognised, or at least assented to by all but the Sadducees,
concerning the final resurrection of the dead, but meaning, 'Be it unto
thee as thou wilt. I will raise him again.' For there is no steering for a
fine effect in the words of Jesus. But these words are too good for Martha
to take them as he meant them. Her faith is not quite equal to the belief
that he actually will do it. The thing she could hope for afar off she
could hardly believe when it came to her very door. 'O, yes,' she said, her
mood falling again to the level of the commonplace, 'of course, at the last
day.' Then the Lord turns away her thoughts from the dogmas of her faith
to himself, the Life, saying, 'I am the resurrection and the life: he that
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever
liveth and believeth in me, shall never die. Believest thou this ?' Martha,
without understanding what he said more than in a very poor part, answered
in words which preserved her honesty entire, and yet included all he asked,
and a thousandfold more than she could yet believe: 'Yea, Lord; I believe
that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the
world.'

"I dare not pretend to have more than a grand glimmering of the truth of
Jesus' words 'shall never die;' but I am pretty sure that when Martha came
to die, she found that there was indeed no such thing as she had meant when
she used the ghastly word _death_, and said with her first new breath,
'Verily, Lord, I am not dead.'

"But look how this declaration of her confidence in the Christ operated
upon herself. She instantly thought of her sister; the hope that the Lord
would do something swelled within her, and, leaving Jesus, she went to find
Mary. Whoever has had a true word with the elder brother, straightway
will look around him to find his brother, his sister. The family feeling
blossoms: he wants his friend to share the glory withal. Martha wants Mary
to go to Jesus too.

"Mary heard her, forgot her visitors, rose, and went. They thought she went
to the grave: she went to meet its conqueror. But when she came to him, the
woman who had chosen the good part praised of Jesus, had but the same words
to embody her hope and her grief that her careful and troubled sister had
uttered a few minutes before. How often during those four days had not the
self-same words passed between them! 'Ah, if he had been here, our brother
had not died!' She said so to himself now, and wept, and her friends who
had followed her wept likewise. A moment more, and the Master groaned; yet
a moment, and he too wept. 'Sorrow is catching;' but this was not the mere
infection of sorrow. It went deeper than mere sympathy; for he groaned in
his spirit and was troubled. What made him weep? It was when he saw them
weeping that he wept. But why should he weep, when he knew how soon their
weeping would be turned into rejoicing? It was not for their weeping, so
soon to be over, that he wept, but for the human heart everywhere swollen
with tears, yea, with griefs that can find no such relief as tears; for
these, and for all his brothers and sisters tormented with pain for lack of
faith in his Father in heaven, Jesus wept. He saw the blessed well-being
of Lazarus on the one side, and on the other the streaming eyes from whose
sight he had vanished. The veil between was so thin! yet the sight of those
eyes could not pierce it: their hearts must go on weeping--without cause,
for his Father was so good. I think it was the helplessness he felt in
the impossibility of at once sweeping away the phantasm death from their
imagination that drew the tears from the eyes of Jesus. Certainly it was
not for Lazarus; it could hardly be for these his friends--save as they
represented the humanity which he would help, but could not help even as he
was about to help them.

"The Jews saw herein proof that he loved Lazarus; but they little thought
it was for them and their people, and for the Gentiles whom they despised,
that his tears were now flowing--that the love which pressed the fountains
of his weeping was love for every human heart, from Adam on through the
ages.

"Some of them went a little farther, nearly as far as the sisters, saying,
'Could he not have kept the man from dying?' But it was such a poor thing,
after all, that they thought he might have done. They regarded merely this
unexpected illness, this early death; for I daresay Lazarus was not much
older than Jesus. They did not think that, after all, Lazarus must die some
time; that the beloved could be saved, at best, only for a little while.
Jesus seems to have heard the remark, for he again groaned in himself.

"Meantime they were drawing near the place where he was buried. It was a
hollow in the face of a rock, with a stone laid against it. I suppose the
bodies were laid on something like shelves inside the rock, as they are in
many sepulchres. They were not put into coffins, but wound round and round
with linen.

"When they came before the door of death, Jesus said to them, 'Take away
the stone.' The nature of Martha's reply--the realism of it, as they would
say now-a-days--would seem to indicate that her dawning faith had sunk
again below the horizon, that in the presence of the insignia of death, her
faith yielded, even as the faith of Peter failed him when he saw around him
the grandeur of the high-priest, and his Master bound and helpless. Jesus
answered--O, what an answer!--To meet the corruption and the stink which
filled her poor human fancy, 'the glory of God' came from his lips: human
fear; horror speaking from the lips of a woman in the very jaws of the
devouring death; and the 'said I not unto thee?' from the mouth of him who
was so soon to pass worn and bloodless through such a door! 'He stinketh,'
said Martha. 'The glory of God,' said Jesus. 'Said I not unto thee, that,
if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?'

"Before the open throat of the sepulchre Jesus began to speak to his Father
aloud. He had prayed to him in his heart before, most likely while he
groaned in his spirit. Now he thanked him that he had comforted him, and
given him Lazarus as a first-fruit from the dead. But he will be true to
the listening people as well as to his ever-hearing Father; therefore he
tells why he said the word of thanks aloud--a thing not usual with him, for
his Father was always hearing, him. Having spoken it for the people, he
would say that it was for the people.

"The end of it all was that they might believe that God had sent him--a far
grander gift than having the dearest brought back from the grave; for he is
the life of men.

"'Lazarus, come forth!"

"And Lazarus came forth, creeping helplessly with inch-long steps of his
linen-bound limbs. 'Ha, ha! brother, sister!' cries the human heart. The
Lord of Life hath taken the prey from the spoiler; he hath emptied the
grave. Here comes the dead man, welcome as never was child from the
womb--new-born, and in him all the human race new-born from the grave!
'Loose him and let him go,' and the work is done. The sorrow is over, and
the joy is come. Home, home, Martha, Mary, with your Lazarus! He too will
go with you, the Lord of the Living. Home and get the feast ready, Martha!
Prepare the food for him who comes hungry from the grave, for him who has
called him thence. Home, Mary, to help Martha! What a household will yours
be! What wondrous speech will pass between the dead come to life and the
living come to die!

"But what pang is this that makes Lazarus draw hurried breath, and turns
Martha's cheek so pale? Ah, at the little window of the heart the pale eyes
of the defeated Horror look in. What! is he there still! Ah, yes, he will
come for Martha, come for Mary, come yet again for Lazarus--yea, come for
the Lord of Life himself, and carry all away. But look at the Lord: he
knows all about it, and he smiles. Does Martha think of the words he spoke,
'He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die'? Perhaps she does,
and, like the moon before the sun, her face returns the smile of her Lord.

"This, my friends, is a fancy in form, but it embodies a dear truth. What
is it to you and me that he raised Lazarus? We are not called upon to
believe that he will raise from the tomb that joy of our hearts which lies
buried there beyond our sight. Stop! Are we not? We are called upon to
believe this; else the whole story were for us a poor mockery. What is it
to us that the Lord raised Lazarus?--Is it nothing to know that our Brother
is Lord over the grave? Will the harvest be behind the first-fruits? If he
tells us he cannot, for good reasons, raise up our vanished love to-day, or
to-morrow, or for all the years of our life to come, shall we not mingle
the smile of faithful thanks with the sorrow of present loss, and walk
diligently waiting? That he called forth Lazarus showed that he was in his
keeping, that he is Lord of the living, and that all live to him, that he
has a hold of them, and can draw them forth when he will. If this is not
true, then the raising of Lazarus is false; I do not mean merely false in
fact, but false in meaning. If we believe in him, then in his name, both
for ourselves and for our friends, we must deny death and believe in life.
Lord Christ, fill our hearts with thy Life!"






CHAPTER XI.

CHANGED PLANS.





In a day or two Connie was permitted to rise and take to her couch once
more. It seemed strange that she should look so much worse, and yet be so
much stronger. The growth of her power of motion was wonderful. As they
carried her, she begged to be allowed to put her feet to the ground. Turner
yielded, though without quite ceasing to support her. He was satisfied,
however, that she could have stood upright for a moment at least. He would
not, of course, risk it, and made haste to lay her down.

The time of his departure was coming near, and he seemed more anxious the
nearer it came; for Connie continued worn-looking and pale; and her smile,
though ever ready to greet me when I entered, had lost much of its light. I
noticed, too, that she had the curtain of her window constantly so arranged
as to shut out the sea. I said something to her about it once. Her reply
was:

"Papa, I can't bear it. I know it is very silly; but I think I can make you
understand how it is: I was so fond of the sea when I came down; it seemed
to lie close to my window, with a friendly smile ready for me every morning
when I looked out. I daresay it is all from want of faith, but I can't help
it: it looks so far away now, like a friend that had failed me, that I
would rather not see it."

I saw that the struggling life within her was grievously oppressed, that
the things which surrounded her were no longer helpful. Her life had been
driven as to its innermost cave; and now, when it had been enticed to
venture forth and look abroad, a sudden pall had descended upon nature. I
could not help thinking that the good of our visit to Kilkhaven had come,
and that evil, from which I hoped we might yet escape, was following. I
left her, and sought Turner.

"It strikes me, Turner," I said, "that the sooner we get out of this the
better for Connie."

"I am quite of your opinion. I think the very prospect of leaving the place
would do something to restore her. If she is so uncomfortable now, think
what it will be in the many winter nights at hand."

"Do you think it would be safe to move her?"

"Far safer than to let her remain. At the worst, she is now far better than
when she came. Try her. Hint at the possibility of going home, and see how
she will take it."

"Well, I sha'n't like to be left alone; but if she goes they must all go,
except, perhaps, I might keep Wynnie. But I don't know how her mother would
get on without her."

"I don't see why you should stay behind. Mr. Weir would be as glad to come
as you would be to go; and it can make no difference to Mr. Shepherd."

It seemed a very sensible suggestion. I thought a moment. Certainly it was
a desirable thing for both my sister and her husband. They had no such
reasons as we had for disliking the place; and it would enable her to avoid
the severity of yet another winter. I said as much to Turner, and went back
to Connie's room.

The light of a lovely sunset was lying outside her window. She was sitting
so that she could not see it. I would find out her feeling in the matter
without any preamble.

"Would you like to go back to Marshmallows, Connie?" I asked.

Her countenance flashed into light.

"O, dear papa, do let us go," she said; "that would be delightful."

"Well, I think we can manage it, if you will only get a little stronger for
the journey. The weather is not so good to travel in as when we came down."

"No; but I am ever so much better, you know, than I was then."

The poor girl was already stronger from the mere prospect of going home
again. She moved restlessly on her couch, half mechanically put her hand to
the curtain, pulled it aside, looked out, faced the sun and the sea, and
did not draw back. My mind was made up. I left her, and went to find
Ethelwyn. She heartily approved of the proposal for Connie's sake, and said
that it would be scarcely less agreeable to herself. I could see a certain
troubled look above her eyes, however.

"You are thinking of Wynnie," I said.

"Yes. It is hard to make one sad for the sake of the rest."

"True. But it is one of the world's recognised necessities."

"No doubt."

"Besides, you don't suppose Percivale can stay here the whole winter. They
must part some time."

"Of course. Only they did not expect it so soon."

But here my wife was mistaken.

I went to my study to write to Weir. I had hardly finished my letter when
Walter came to say that Mr. Percivale wished to see me. I told him to show
him in.

"I am just writing home to say that I want my curate to change places with
me here, which I know he will be glad enough to do. I see Connie had better
go home."

"You will all go, then, I presume?" returned Percivale.

"Yes, yes; of course."

"Then I need not so much regret that I can stay no longer. I came to tell
you that I must leave to-morrow."

"Ah! Going to London?"

"Yes. I don't know how to thank you for all your kindness. You have made my
summer something like a summer; very different, indeed, from what it would
otherwise have been."

"We have had our share of advantage, and that a large one. We are all glad
to have made your acquaintance, Mr. Percivale."

He made no answer.

"We shall be passing through London within a week or ten days in all
probability. Perhaps you will allow us the pleasure of looking at some of
your pictures then?"

His face flushed. What did the flush mean? It was not one of mere pleasure.
There was confusion and perplexity in it. But he answered at once:

"I will show you them with pleasure. I fear, however, you will not care for
them."

Would this fear account for his embarrassment? I hardly thought it would;
but I could not for a moment imagine, with his fine form and countenance
before me, that he had any serious reason for shrinking from a visit.

He began to search for a card.

"O, I have your address. I shall be sure to pay you a visit. But you will
dine with us to-day, of course?" I said.

"I shall have much pleasure," he answered; and took his leave.

I finished my letter to Weir, and went out for a walk.

I remember particularly the thoughts that moved in me and made that walk
memorable. Indeed, I think I remember all outside events chiefly by virtue
of the inward conditions with which they were associated. Mere outside
things I am very ready to forget. Moods of my own mind do not so readily
pass away; and with the memory of some of them every outward circumstance
returns; for a man's life is where the kingdom of heaven is--within him.
There are people who, if you ask the story of their lives, have nothing to
tell you but the course of the outward events that have constituted, as it
were, the clothes of their history. But I know, at the same time, that some
of the most important crises in my own history (by which word _history_ I
mean my growth towards the right conditions of existence) have been beyond
the grasp and interpretation of my intellect. They have passed, as it were,
without my consciousness being awake enough to lay hold of their phenomena.
The wind had been blowing; I had heard the sound of it, but knew not whence
it came nor whither it went; only, when it was gone, I found myself more
responsible, more eager than before.

I remember this walk from the thoughts I had about the great change hanging
over us all. I had now arrived at the prime of middle life; and that change
which so many would escape if they could, but which will let no man pass,
had begun to show itself a real fact upon the horizon of the future. Death
looks so far away to the young, that while they acknowledge it unavoidable,
the path stretches on in such vanishing perspective before them, that they
see no necessity for thinking about the end of it yet; and far would I be
from saying they ought to think of it. Life is the true object of a man's
care: there is no occasion to make himself think about death. But when
the vision of the inevitable draws nigh, when it appears plainly on the
horizon, though but as a cloud the size of a man's hand, then it is equally
foolish to meet it by refusing to meet it, to answer the questions that
will arise by declining to think about them. Indeed, it is a question of
life then, and not of death. We want to keep fast hold of our life, and, in
the strength of that, to look the threatening death in the face. But to my
walk that morning.

I wandered on the downs till I came to the place where a solitary rock
stands on the top of a cliff looking seaward, in the suggested shape of a
monk praying. On the base on which he knelt I seated myself, and looked out
over the Atlantic. How faded the ocean appeared! It seemed as if all the
sunny dyes of the summer had been diluted and washed with the fogs of the
coming winter, when I thought of the splendour it wore when first from
these downs I gazed on the outspread infinitude of space and colour.

"What," I said to myself at length, "has she done since then? Where is
her work visible? She has riven, and battered, and destroyed, and her
destruction too has passed away. So worketh Time and its powers! The
exultation of my youth is gone; my head is gray; my wife is growing old;
our children are pushing us from our stools; we are yielding to the new
generation; the glory for us hath departed; our life lies weary before us
like that sea; and the night cometh when we can no longer work."

Something like this was passing vaguely through my mind. I sat in a
mournful stupor, with a half-consciousness that my mood was false, and that
I ought to rouse myself and shake it off. There is such a thing as a state
of moral dreaming, which closely resembles the intellectual dreaming in
sleep. I went on in this false dreamful mood, pitying myself like a child
tender over his hurt and nursing his own cowardice, till, all at once, "a
little pipling wind" blew on my cheek. The morning was very still: what
roused that little wind I cannot tell; but what that little wind roused I
will try to tell. With that breath on my cheek, something within me began
to stir. It grew, and grew, until the memory of a certain glorious sunset
of red and green and gold and blue, which I had beheld from these same
heights, dawned within me. I knew that the glory of my youth had not
departed, that the very power of recalling with delight that which I had
once felt in seeing, was proof enough of that; I knew that I could believe
in God all the night long, even if the night were long. And the next moment
I thought how I had been reviling in my fancy God's servant, the sea. To
how many vessels had she not opened a bounteous highway through the waters,
with labour, and food, and help, and ministration, glad breezes and
swelling sails, healthful struggle, cleansing fear and sorrow, yea, and
friendly death! Because she had been commissioned to carry this one or that
one, this hundred or that thousand of his own creatures from one world to
another, was I to revile the servant of a grand and gracious Master? It was
blameless in Connie to feel the late trouble so deeply that she could not
be glad: she had not had the experience of life, yea, of God, that I had
had; she must be helped from without. But for me, it was shameful that I,
who knew the heart of my Master, to whom at least he had so often shown his
truth, should ever be doleful and oppressed. Yet even me he had now helped
from within. The glory of existence as the child of the Infinite had
again dawned upon me. The first hour of the evening of my life had indeed
arrived; the shadows had begun to grow long--so long that I had begun to
mark their length; this last little portion of my history had vanished,
leaving its few gray ashes behind in the crucible of my life; and the final
evening must come, when all my life would lie behind me, and all the memory
of it return, with its mornings of gold and red, with its evenings of
purple and green; with its dashes of storm, and its foggy glooms; with its
white-winged aspirations, its dull-red passions, its creeping envies in
brown and black and earthy yellow. But from all the accusations of my
conscience, I would turn me to the Lord, for he was called Jesus because he
should save his people from their sins. Then I thought what a grand gift it
would be to give his people the power hereafter to fight the consequences
of their sins. Anyhow, I would trust the Father, who loved me with a
perfect love, to lead the soul he had made, had compelled to be, through
the gates of the death-birth, into the light of life beyond. I would cast
on him the care, humbly challenge him with the responsibility he had
himself undertaken, praying only for perfect confidence in him, absolute
submission to his will.

I rose from my seat beside the praying monk, and walked on. The thought of
seeing my own people again filled me with gladness. I would leave those
I had here learned to love with regret; but I trusted I had taught them
something, and they had taught me much; therefore there could be no end
to our relation to each other--it could not be broken, for it was _in the
Lord_, which alone can give security to any tie. I should not, therefore,
sorrow as if I were to see their faces no more.

I now took my farewell of that sea and those cliffs. I should see them
often ere we went, but I should not feel so near them again. Even this
parting said that I must "sit loose to the world"--an old Puritan phrase,
I suppose; that I could gather up only its uses, treasure its best things,
and must let all the rest go; that those things I called mine--earth, sky,
and sea, home, books, the treasured gifts of friends--had all to leave
me, belong to others, and help to educate them. I should not need them. I
should have my people, my souls, my beloved faces tenfold more, and could
well afford to part with these. Why should I mind this chain passing to
my eldest boy, when it was only his mother's hair, and I should have his
mother still?

So my thoughts went on thinking themselves, until at length I yielded
passively to their flow.

I found Wynnie looking very grave when I went into the drawing-room. Her
mother was there, too, and Mr. Percivale. It seemed rather a moody party.
They wakened up a little, however, after I entered, and before dinner was
over we were all chatting together merrily.

"How is Connie?" I asked Ethelwyn.

"Wonderfully better already," she answered.

"I think everybody seems better," I said. "The very idea of home seems
reviving to us all."

Wynnie darted a quick glance at me, caught my eyes, which was more than
she had intended, and blushed; sought refuge in a bewildered glance at
Percivale, caught his eye in turn, and blushed yet deeper. He plunged
instantly into conversation, not without a certain involuntary sparkle in
his eye.

"Did you go to see Mrs. Stokes this morning?" he asked.

"No," I answered. "She does not want much visiting now; she is going about
her work, apparently in good health. Her husband says she is not like the
same woman; and I hope he means that in more senses than one, though I do
not choose to ask him any questions about his wife."

I did my best to keep up the conversation, but every now and then after
this it fell like a wind that would not blow. I withdrew to my study.
Percivale and Wynnie went out for a walk. The next morning he left by the
coach--early. Turner went with him.

Wynnie did not seem very much dejected. I thought that perhaps the prospect
of meeting him again in London kept her up.






CHAPTER XII.

THE STUDIO.





I will not linger over our preparations or our leave-takings. The most
ponderous of the former were those of the two boys, who, as they had wanted
to bring down a chest as big as a corn-bin, full of lumber, now wanted to
take home two or three boxes filled with pebbles, great oystershells, and
sea-weed.

Weir, as I had expected, was quite pleased to make the exchange. An early
day had been fixed for his arrival; for I thought it might be of service
to him to be introduced to the field of his labours. Before he came, I had
gone about among the people, explaining to them some of my reasons for
leaving them sooner than I had intended, and telling them a little about my
successor, that he might not appear among them quite as a stranger. He was
much gratified with their reception of him, and had no fear of not finding
himself quite at home with them. I promised, if I could comfortably manage
it, to pay them a short visit the following summer, and as the weather was
now getting quite cold, hastened our preparations for departure.

I could have wished that Turner had been with us on the journey, but he
had been absent from his cure to the full extent that his conscience would
permit, and I had not urged him. He would be there to receive us, and we
had got so used to the management of Connie, that we did not feel much
anxiety about the travelling. We resolved, if she seemed strong enough as
we went along, to go right through to London, making a few days there the
only break in the transit.

It was a bright, cold morning when we started. But Connie could now bear
the air so well, that we set out with the carriage open, nor had we
occasion to close it. The first part of our railway journey was very
pleasant. But when we drew near London, we entered a thick fog, and before
we arrived, a small dense November rain was falling. Connie looked a little
dispirited, partly from weariness, but no doubt from the change in the
weather.

"Not very cheerful, this, Connie, my dear," I said.

"No, papa," she answered; "but we are going home, you know."

_Going home._ It set me thinking--as I had often been set thinking before,
always with fresh discovery and a new colour on the dawning sky of hope. I
lay back in the carriage and thought how the November fog this evening in
London, was the valley of the shadow of death we had to go through on the
way _home._ A. shadow like this would fall upon me; the world would grow
dark and life grow weary; but I should know it was the last of the way
home.

Then I began to question myself wherein the idea of this home consisted. I
knew that my soul had ever yet felt the discomfort of strangeness, more or
less, in the midst of its greatest blessedness. I knew that as the thought
of water to the thirsty _soul_, for it is the soul far more than the body
that thirsts even for the material water, such is the thought of home to
the wanderer in a strange country. As the weary soul pines for sleep, and
every heart for the cure of its own bitterness, so my heart and soul had
often pined for their home. Did I know, I asked myself, where or what that
home was? It could consist in no change of place or of circumstance; no
mere absence of care; no accumulation of repose; no blessed communion even
with those whom my soul loved; in the midst of it all I should be longing
for a homelier home--one into which I might enter with a sense of
infinitely more absolute peace, than a conscious child could know in the
arms, upon the bosom of his mother. In the closest contact of human soul
with human soul, when all the atmosphere of thought was rosy with love,
again and yet again on the far horizon would the dun, lurid flame of unrest
shoot for a moment through the enchanted air, and Psyche would know that
not yet had she reached her home. As I thought this I lifted my eyes, and
saw those of my wife and Connie fixed on mine, as if they were reproaching
me for saying in my soul that I could not be quite at home with them. Then
I said in my heart, "Come home with me, beloved--there is but one home for
us all. When we find--in proportion as each of us finds--that home, shall
we be gardens of delight to each other--little chambers of rest--galleries
of pictures--wells of water."

Again, what was this home? God himself. His thoughts, his will, his love,
his judgment, are man's home. To think his thoughts, to choose his will, to
love his loves, to judge his judgments, and thus to know that he is in us,
with us, is to be at home. And to pass through the valley of the shadow of
death is the way home, but only thus, that as all changes have hitherto
led us nearer to this home, the knowledge of God, so this greatest of all
outward changes--for it is but an outward change--will surely usher us into
a region where there will be fresh possibilities of drawing nigh in heart,
soul, and mind to the Father of us. It is the father, the mother, that make
for the child his home. Indeed, I doubt if the home-idea is complete to the
parents of a family themselves, when they remember that their fathers and
mothers have vanished.

At this point something rose in me seeking utterance.

"Won't it be delightful, wife," I began, "to see our fathers and mothers
such a long way back in heaven?"

But Ethelwyn's face gave so little response, that I felt at once how
dreadful a thing it was not to have had a good father or mother. I do not
know what would have become of me but for a good father. I wonder how
anybody ever can be good that has not had a good father. How dreadful not
to be a good father or good mother! Every father who is not good, every
mother who is not good, just makes it as impossible to believe in God as
it can be made. But he is our one good Father, and does not leave us, even
should our fathers and mothers have thus forsaken us, and left him without
a witness.

Here the evil odour of brick-burning invaded my nostrils, and I knew that
London was about us. A few moments after, we reached the station, where a
carriage was waiting to take us to our hotel.

Dreary was the change from the stillness and sunshine of Kilkhaven to the
fog and noise of London; but Connie slept better that night than she had
slept for a good many nights before.

After breakfast the next morning, I said to Wynnie,

"I am going to see Mr. Percivale's studio, my dear: have you any objection
to going with me?"

"No, papa," she answered, blushing. "I have never seen an artist's studio
in my life."

"Come along, then. Get your bonnet at once. It rains, but we shall take a
cab, and it won't matter."

She ran off, and was ready in a few minutes. We gave the driver directions,
and set off. It was a long drive. At length he stopped at the door of a
very common-looking house, in a very dreary-looking street, in which no man
could possibly identify his own door except by the number. I knocked. A
woman who looked at once dirty and cross, the former probably the cause of
the latter, opened the door, gave a bare assent to my question whether Mr.
Percivale was at home, withdrew to her den with the words "second-floor,"
and left us to find our own way up the two flights of stairs. This,
however, involved no great difficulty. We knocked at the door of the front
room. A well-known voice cried, "Come in," and we entered.

Percivale, in a short velvet coat, with his palette on his thumb, advanced
to meet us cordially. His face wore a slight flush, which I attributed
solely to pleasure, and nothing to any awkwardness in receiving us in such
a poor place as he occupied. I cast my eyes round the room. Any romantic
notions Wynnie might have indulged concerning the marvels of a studio,
must have paled considerably at the first glance around Percivale's
room--plainly the abode if not of poverty, then of self-denial, although I
suspected both. A common room, with no carpet save a square in front of the
fireplace; no curtains except a piece of something like drugget nailed
flat across all the lower half of the window to make the light fall from
upwards; two or three horsehair chairs, nearly worn out; a table in a
corner, littered with books and papers; a horrible lay-figure, at the
present moment dressed apparently for a scarecrow; a large easel, on which
stood a half-finished oil-painting--these constituted almost the whole
furniture of the room. With his pocket-handkerchief Percivale dusted one
chair for Wynnie and another for me. Then standing before us, he said:

"This is a very shabby place to receive you in, Miss Walton, but it is all
I have got."

"A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesses,"
I ventured to say.

"Thank you," said Percivale. "I hope not. It is well for me it should not."

"It is well for the richest man in England that it should not," I returned.
"If it were not so, the man who could eat most would be the most blessed."

"There are people, even of my acquaintance, however, who seem to think it
does."

"No doubt; but happily their thinking so will not make it so even for
themselves."

"Have you been very busy since you left us, Mr. Percivale?" asked Wynnie.

"Tolerably," he answered. "But I have not much to show for it. That on the
easel is all. I hardly like to let you look at it, though."

"Why?" asked Wynnie.

"First, because the subject is painful. Next, because it is so unfinished
that none but a painter could do it justice."

"But why should you paint subjects you would not like people to look at?"

"I very much want people to look at them."

"Why not us, then?" said Wynnie.

"Because you do not need to be pained."

"Are you sure it is good for you to pain anybody?" I said.

"Good is done by pain--is it not?" he asked.

"Undoubtedly. But whether _we_ are wise enough to know when and where and
how much, is the question."

"Of course I do not make the pain my object."

"If it comes only as a necessary accompaniment, that may alter the matter
greatly," I said. "But still I am not sure that anything in which the pain
predominates can be useful in the best way."

"Perhaps not," he returned.--"Will you look at the daub?"

"With much pleasure," I replied, and we rose and stood before the easel.
Percivale made no remark, but left us to find out what the picture meant.
Nor had I long to look before I understood it--in a measure at least.

It represented a garret-room in a wretchedly ruinous condition. The plaster
had come away in several places, and through between the laths in one spot
hung the tail of a great rat. In a dark corner lay a man dying. A woman sat
by his side, with her eyes fixed, not on his face, though she held his hand
in hers, but on the open door, where in the gloom you could just see the
struggles of two undertaker's men to get the coffin past the turn of the
landing towards the door. Through the window there was one peep of the blue
sky, whence a ray of sunlight fell on the one scarlet blossom of a geranium
in a broken pot on the window-sill outside.

"I do not wonder you did not like to show it," I said. "How can you bear to
paint such a dreadful picture?"

"It is a true one. It only represents a fact."

"All facts have not a right to be represented."

"Surely you would not get rid of painful things by huddling them out of
sight?"

"No; nor yet by gloating upon them."

"You will believe me that it gives me anything but pleasure to paint such
pictures--as far as the subject goes," he said with some discomposure.

"Of course. I know you well enough by this time to know that. But no one
could hang it on his wall who would not either gloat on suffering or grow
callous to it. Whence, then, would come the good I cannot doubt you propose
to yourself as your object in painting the picture? If it had come into my
possession, I would--"

"Put it in the fire," suggested Percivale with a strange smile.

"No. Still less would I sell it. I would hang it up with a curtain before
it, and only look at it now and then, when I thought my heart was in danger
of growing hardened to the sufferings of my fellow-men, and forgetting that
they need the Saviour."

"I could not wish it a better fate. That would answer my end."

"Would it, now? Is it not rather those who care little or nothing about
such matters that you would like to influence? Would you be content with
one solitary person like me? And, remember, I wouldn't buy it. I would
rather not have it. I could hardly bear to know it was in my house. I am
certain you cannot do people good by showing them _only_ the painful. Make
it as painful as you will, but put some hope into it--something to show
that action is worth taking in the affair. From mere suffering people will
turn away, and you cannot blame them. Every show of it, without hinting at
some door of escape, only urges them to forget it all. Why should they be
pained if it can do no good?"

"For the sake of sympathy, I should say," answered Percivale.

"They would rejoin, 'It is only a picture. Come along.' No; give people
hope, if you would have them act at all, in anything."

"I was almost hoping you would read the picture rather differently. You see
there is a bit of blue sky up there, and a bit of sunshiny scarlet in the
window."

He looked at me curiously as he spoke.

"I can read it so for myself, and have metamorphosed its meaning so. But
you only put in the sky and the scarlet to heighten the perplexity, and
make the other look more terrible."

"Now I know that as an artist I have succeeded, however I may have failed
otherwise. I did so mean it; but knowing you would dislike the picture,
I almost hoped in my cowardice, as I said, that you would read your own
meaning into it."

Wynnie had not said a word. As I turned away from the picture, I saw that
she was looking quite distressed, but whether by the picture or the freedom
with which I had remarked upon it, I do not know. My eyes falling on a
little sketch in sepia, I began to examine it, in the hope of finding
something more pleasant to say. I perceived in a moment, however, that it
was nearly the same thought, only treated in a gentler and more poetic
mode. A girl lay dying on her bed. A youth held her hand. A torrent of
summer sunshine fell through the window, and made a lake of glory upon the
floor. I turned away.

"You like that better, don't you, papa?" said Wynnie tremulously.

"It is beautiful, certainly," I answered. "And if it were only one, I
should enjoy it--as a mood. But coming after the other, it seems but the
same thing more weakly embodied."

I confess I was a little vexed; for I had got much interested in Percivale,
for his own sake as well as for my daughter's, and I had expected better
things from him. But I saw that I had gone too far.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Percivale," I said.

"I fear I have been too free in my remarks. I know, likewise, that I am a
clergyman, and not a painter, and therefore incapable of giving the praise
which I have little doubt your art at least deserves."

"I trust that honesty cannot offend me, however much and justly it may pain
me."

"But now I have said my worst, I should much like to see what else you have
at hand to show me."

"Unfortunately I have too much at hand. Let me see."

He strode to the other end of the room, where several pictures were leaning
against the wall, with their faces turned towards it. From these he chose
one, but, before showing it, fitted it into an empty frame that stood
beside. He then brought it forward and set it on the easel. I will describe
it, and then my reader will understand the admiration which broke from me
after I had regarded it for a time.

A dark hill rose against the evening sky, which shone through a few thin
pines on its top. Along a road on the hill-side four squires bore a dying
knight--a man past the middle age. One behind carried his helm, and another
led his horse, whose fine head only appeared in the picture. The head and
countenance of the knight were very noble, telling of many a battle, and
ever for the right. The last had doubtless been gained, for one might read
victory as well as peace in the dying look. The party had just reached the
edge of a steep descent, from which you saw the valley beneath, with the
last of the harvest just being reaped, while the shocks stood all about in
the fields, under the place of the sunset. The sun had been down for some
little time. There was no gold left in the sky, only a little dull saffron,
but plenty of that lovely liquid green of the autumn sky, divided with a
few streaks of pale rose. The depth of the sky overhead, which you could
not see for the arrangement of the picture, was mirrored lovelily in a
piece of water that lay in the centre of the valley.

"My dear fellow," I cried, "why did you not show me this first, and save me
from saying so many unkind things? Here is a picture to my own heart; it is
glorious. Look here, Wynnie," I went on; "you see it is evening; the sun's
work is done, and he has set in glory, leaving his good name behind him in
a lovely harmony of colour. The old knight's work is done too; his day has
set in the storm of battle, and he is lying lapt in the coming peace. They
are bearing him home to his couch and his grave. Look at their faces in
the dusky light. They are all mourning for and honouring the life that is
ebbing away. But he is gathered to his fathers like a shock of corn fully
ripe; and so the harvest stands golden in the valley beneath. The picture
would not be complete, however, if it did not tell us of the deep heaven
overhead, the symbol of that heaven whither he who has done his work is
bound. What a lovely idea to represent it by means of the water, the heaven
embodying itself in the earth, as it were, that we may see it! And observe
how that dusky hill-side, and those tall slender mournful-looking pines,
with that sorrowful sky between, lead the eye and point the heart upward
towards that heaven. It is indeed a grand picture, full of feeling--a
picture and a parable."

[Footnote: This is a description, from memory only, of a picture painted by
Arthur Hughes.]

I looked at the girl. Her eyes were full of tears, either called forth
by the picture itself or by the pleasure of finding Percivale's work
appreciated by me, who had spoken so hardly of the others.

"I cannot tell you how glad I am that you like it," she said.

"Like it!" I returned; "I am simply delighted with it, more than I can
express--so much delighted that if I could have this alongside of it, I
should not mind hanging that other--that hopeless garret--on the most
public wall I have."

"Then," said Wynnie bravely, though in a tremulous voice, "you
confess--don't you, papa?--that you were _too_ hard on Mr. Percivale at
first?"

"Not too hard on his picture, my dear; and that was all he had yet given me
to judge by. No man should paint a picture like that. You are not bound to
disseminate hopelessness; for where there is no hope there can be no sense
of duty."

"But surely, papa, Mr. Percivale has _some_ sense of duty," said Wynnie in
an almost angry tone.

"Assuredly my love. Therefore I argue that he has some hope, and therefore,
again, that he has no right to publish such a picture."

At the word _publish_ Percivale smiled. But Wynnie went on with her
defence:

"But you see, papa, that Mr. Percivale does not paint such pictures only.
Look at the other."

"Yes, my dear. But pictures are not like poems, lying side by side in the
same book, so that the one can counteract the other. The one of these might
go to the stormy Hebrides, and the other to the Vale of Avalon; but even
then I should be strongly inclined to criticise the poem, whatever position
it stood in, that had _nothing_--positively nothing--of the aurora in it."

Here let me interrupt the course of our conversation to illustrate it by a
remark on a poem which has appeared within the last twelvemonth from the
pen of the greatest living poet, and one who, if I may dare to judge, will
continue the greatest for many, many years to come. It is only a little
song, "I stood on a tower in the wet." I have found few men who, whether
from the influence of those prints which are always on the outlook for
something to ridicule, or from some other cause, did not laugh at the poem.
I thought and think it a lovely poem, although I am not quite sure of the
transposition of words in the last two lines. But I do not _approve_ of the
poem, just because there is no hope in it. It lacks that touch or hint
of _red_ which is as essential, I think, to every poem as to every
picture--the life-blood--the one pure colour. In his hopeful moods, let a
man put on his singing robes, and chant aloud the words of gladness--or of
grief, I care not which--to his fellows; in his hours of hopelessness,
let him utter his thoughts only to his inarticulate violin, or in the
evanescent sounds of any his other stringed instrument; let him commune
with his own heart on his bed, and be still; let him speak to God face to
face if he may--only he cannot do that and continue hopeless; but let him
not sing aloud in such a mood into the hearts of his fellows, for he cannot
do them much good thereby. If it were a fact that there is no hope, it
would not be a _truth_. No doubt, if it were a fact, it ought to be known;
but who will dare be confident that there is no hope? Therefore, I say, let
the hopeless moods, at least, if not the hopeless men, be silent.

"He could refuse to let the one go without the other," said Wynnie.

"Now you are talking like a child, Wynnie, as indeed all partisans do at
the best. He might sell them together, but the owner would part them.--If
you will allow me, I will come and see both the pictures again to-morrow."

Percivale assured me of welcome, and we parted, I declining to look at any
more pictures that day, but not till we had arranged that he should dine
with us in the evening.






CHAPTER XIII.

HOME AGAIN.





I will not detain my readers with the record of the few days we spent in
London. In writing the account of it, as in the experience of the time
itself, I feel that I am near home, and grow the more anxious to reach it.
Ah! I am growing a little anxious after another home, too; for the house of
my tabernacle is falling to ruins about me. What a word _home_ is! To think
that God has made the world so that you have only to be born in a certain
place, and live long enough in it to get at the secret of it, and
henceforth that place is to you a _home_ with all the wonderful meaning in
the word. Thus the whole earth is a home to the race; for every spot of it
shares in the feeling: some one of the family loves it as _his_ home. How
rich the earth seems when we so regard it--crowded with the loves of home!
Yet I am now getting ready to _go home_--to leave this world of homes and
go home. When I reach that home, shall I even then seek yet to go home?
Even then, I believe, I shall seek a yet warmer, deeper, truer home in the
deeper knowledge of God--in the truer love of my fellow-man. Eternity will
be, my heart and my faith tell me, a travelling homeward, but in jubilation
and confidence and the vision of the beloved.

When we had laid Connie once more in her own room, at least the room which
since her illness had come to be called hers, I went up to my study. The
familiar faces of my books welcomed me. I threw myself in my reading-chair,
and gazed around me with pleasure. I felt it so homely here. All my old
friends--whom somehow I hoped to see some day--present there in the spirit
ready to talk with me any moment when I was in the mood, making no claim
upon my attention when I was not! I felt as if I should like, when the
hour should come, to die in that chair, and pass into the society of the
witnesses in the presence of the tokens they had left behind them.

I heard shouts on the stair, and in rushed the two boys.

"Papa, papa!" they were crying together.

"What is the matter?"

"We've found the big chest just where we left it."

"Well, did you expect it would have taken itself off?"

"But there's everything in it just as we left it."

"Were you afraid, then, that the moment you left it it would turn itself
upside down, and empty itself of all its contents on the floor?"

They laughed, but apparently with no very keen appreciation of the attempt
at a joke.

"Well, papa, I did not think anything about it; but--but--but--there
everything is as we left it."

With this triumphant answer they turned and hurried, a little abashed, out
of the room; but not many moments elapsed before the sounds that arose from
them were sufficiently reassuring as to the state of their spirits.
When they were gone, I forgot my books in the attempt to penetrate and
understand the condition of my boys' thoughts; and I soon came to see that
they were right and I was wrong. It was the movement of that undeveloped
something in us which makes it possible for us in everything to give
thanks. It was the wonder of the discovery of the existence of law. There
was nothing that they could understand, _ priori_, to necessitate the
remaining of the things where they had left them. No doubt there was a
reason in the nature of God, why all things should hold together, whence
springs the law of gravitation, as we call it; but as far as the boys could
understand of this, all things might as well have been arranged for flying
asunder, so that no one could expect to find anything where he had left it.
I began to see yet further into the truth that in everything we must give
thanks, and whatever is not of faith is sin. Even the laws of nature reveal
the character of God, not merely as regards their ends, but as regards
their kind, being of necessity fashioned after ideal facts of his own being
and will.

I rose and went down to see if everybody was getting settled, and how the
place looked. I found Ethel already going about the house as if she had
never left it, and as if we all had just returned from a long absence and
she had to show us home-hospitality. Wynnie had vanished; but I found her
by and by in the favourite haunt of her mother before her marriage--beside
the little pond called the Bishop's Basin, of which I do not think I have
ever told my readers the legend. But why should I mention it, for I cannot
tell it now? The frost lay thick in the hollow when I went down there to
find her; the branches, lately clothed with leaves, stood bare and icy
around her. Ethelwyn and I had almost forgotten that there was anything out
of the common in connection with the house. The horror of this mysterious
spot had laid hold upon Wynnie. I resolved that that night I would, in her
mother's presence, tell her all the legend of the place, and the whole
story of how I won her mother. I did so; and I think it made her trust us
more. But now I left her there, and went to Connie. She lay in her bed;
for her mother had got her thither at once, a perfect picture of blessed
comfort. There was no occasion to be uneasy about her. I was so pleased
to be at home again with such good hopes, that I could not rest, but went
wandering everywhere--into places even which I had not entered for ten
years at least, and found fresh interest in everything; for this was home,
and here I was.

Now I fancy my readers, looking forward to the end, and seeing what a small
amount of print is left, blaming me; some, that I have roused curiosity
without satisfying it; others, that I have kept them so long over a dull
book and a lame conclusion. But out of a life one cannot always cut
complete portions, and serve them up in nice shapes. I am well aware that I
have not told them the _fate_, as some of them would call it, of either of
my daughters. This I cannot develop now, even as far as it is known to me;
but, if it is any satisfaction to them to know this much--and it will be
all that some of them mean by _fate_, I fear--I may as well tell them now
that Wynnie has been Mrs. Percivale for many years, with a history well
worth recounting; and that Connie has had a quiet, happy life for nearly
as long, as Mrs. Turner. She has never got strong, but has very tolerable
health. Her husband watches her with the utmost care and devotion. My
Ethelwyn is still with me. Harry is gone home. Charlie is a barrister of
the Middle Temple. And Dora--I must not forget Dora--well, I will say
nothing about her _fate_, for good reasons--it is not quite determined yet.
Meantime she puts up with the society of her old father and mother, and is
something else than unhappy, I fully believe.

"And Connie's baby?" asks some one out of ten thousand readers. I have no
time to tell you about her now; but as you know her so little, it cannot be
such a trial to remain, for a time at least, unenlightened with regard to
her _fate._

The only other part of my history which could contain anything like
incident enough to make it interesting in print, is a period I spent in
London some few years after the time of which I have now been writing. But
I am getting too old to regard the commencement of another history with
composure. The labour of thinking into sequences, even the bodily labour of
writing, grows more and more severe. I fancy I can think correctly still;
but the effort necessary to express myself with corresponding correctness
becomes, in prospect, at least, sometimes almost appalling. I must
therefore take leave of my patient reader--for surely every one who
has followed me through all that I have here written, well deserves the
epithet--as if the probability that I shall write no more were a certainty,
bidding him farewell with one word: _"Friend, hope thou in God,"_ and for
a parting gift offering him a new, and, I think, a true rendering of the
first verse of the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews:

"Now faith is the essence of hopes, the trying of things unseen."

Good-bye.

THE END.





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