The Seaboard Parish, Complete
by George MacDonald · English · Gutenberg #8562 · 892,050 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Seaboard Parish, Complete
Author: George MacDonald
Release date: July 1, 2005 [eBook #8562]
Most recently updated: July 16, 2022
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEABOARD PARISH, COMPLETE ***
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team
THE SEABOARD PARISH
By George MacDonald, LL.D.
VOLUME 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. So 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 be 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 see
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