Project Gutenberg's The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3, by George MacDonald

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Title: The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3

Author: George MacDonald

Posting Date: March 29, 2014 [EBook #8553]
Release Date: July, 2005
First Posted: July 22, 2003

Language: English

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THE SEABOARD PARISH

BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, LL.D.

VOL. III.




CONTENTS OF VOL. III.


    I. A WALK WITH MY WIFE
   II. OUR LAST SHORE-DINNER
  III. A PASTORAL VISIT.
   IV. THE ART OF NATURE
    V. THE SORE SPOT
   VI. THE GATHERING STORM.
  VII. THE GATHERED STORM.
 VIII. THE SHIPWRECK
   IX. THE FUNERAL
    X. THE SERMON.
   XI. CHANGED PLANS.
  XII. THE STUDIO.
 XIII. HOME AGAIN.




CHAPTER I.

A WALK WITH MY WIFE.


The autumn was creeping up on the earth, with winter holding by its skirts
behind; but before I loose my hold of the garments of summer, I must write
a chapter about a walk and a talk I had one night with my wife. It had
rained a good deal during the day, but as the sun went down the air began
to clear, and when the moon shone out, near the full, she walked the
heavens, not "like one that hath been led astray," but as "queen and
huntress, chaste and fair."

"What a lovely night it is!" said Ethelwyn, who had come into my
study--where I always sat with unblinded windows, that the night and her
creatures might look in upon me--and had stood gazing out for a moment.

"Shall we go for a little turn?" I said.

"I should like it very much," she answered. "I will go and put on my bonnet
at once."

In a minute or two she looked in again, all ready. I rose, laid aside my
Plato, and went with her. We turned our steps along the edge of the down,
and descended upon the breakwater, where we seated ourselves upon the same
spot where in the darkness I had heard the voices of Joe and Agnes. What a
different night it was from that! The sea lay as quiet as if it could not
move for the moonlight that lay upon it. The glory over it was so mighty in
its peacefulness, that the wild element beneath was afraid to toss itself
even with the motions of its natural unrest. The moon was like the face of
a saint before which the stormy people has grown dumb. The rocks stood up
solid and dark in the universal aether, and the pulse of the ocean throbbed
against them with a lapping gush, soft as the voice of a passionate child
soothed into shame of its vanished petulance. But the sky was the glory.
Although no breath moved below, there was a gentle wind abroad in the upper
regions. The air was full of masses of cloud, the vanishing fragments of
the one great vapour which had been pouring down in rain the most of the
day. These masses were all setting with one steady motion eastward into the
abysses of space; now obscuring the fair moon, now solemnly sweeping away
from before her. As they departed, out shone her marvellous radiance, as
calm as ever. It was plain that she knew nothing of what we called her
covering, her obscuration, the dimming of her glory. She had been busy all
the time weaving her lovely opaline damask on the other side of the mass in
which we said she was swallowed up.

"Have you ever noticed, wifie," I said, "how the eyes of our minds--almost
our bodily eyes--are opened sometimes to the cubicalness of nature, as it
were?"

"I don't know, Harry, for I don't understand your question," she answered.

"Well, it was a stupid way of expressing what I meant. No human being could
have understood it from that. I will make you understand in a moment,
though. Sometimes--perhaps generally--we see the sky as a flat dome,
spangled with star-points, and painted blue. _Now_ I see it as an awful
depth of blue air, depth within depth; and the clouds before me are not
passing away to the left, but sinking away from the front of me into the
marvellous unknown regions, which, let philosophers say what they will
about time and space,--and I daresay they are right,--are yet very awful
to me. Thank God, my dear," I said, catching hold of her arm, as the terror
of mere space grew upon me, "for himself. He is deeper than space, deeper
than time; he is the heart of all the cube of history."

"I understand you now, husband," said my wife.

"I knew you would," I answered.

"But," she said again, "is it not something the same with the things inside
us? I can't put it in words as you do. Do you understand me now?"

"I am not sure that I do. You must try again."

"You understand me well enough, only you like to make me blunder where
you can talk," said my wife, putting her hand in mine. "But I will try.
Sometimes, after thinking about something for a long time, you come to a
conclusion about it, and you think you have settled it plain and clear to
yourself, for ever and a day. You hang it upon your wall, like a picture,
and are satisfied for a fortnight. But some day, when you happen to cast a
look at it, you find that instead of hanging flat on the wall, your picture
has gone through it--opens out into some region you don't know where--shows
you far-receding distances of air and sea--in short, where you thought one
question was settled for ever, a hundred are opened up for the present
hour."

"Bravo, wife!" I cried in true delight. "I do indeed understand you now.
You have said it better than I could ever have done. That's the plague of
you women! You have been taught for centuries and centuries that there is
little or nothing to be expected of you, and so you won't try. Therefore we
men know no more than you do whether it is in you or not. And when you do
try, instead of trying to think, you want to be in Parliament all at once."

"Do you apply that remark to me, sir?" demanded Ethelwyn.

"You must submit to bear the sins of your kind upon occasion," I answered.

"I am content to do that, so long as yours will help mine," she replied.

"Then I may go on?" I said, with interrogation.

"Till sunrise if you like. We were talking of the cubicalness--I believe
you called it--of nature."

"And you capped it with the cubicalness of thought. And quite right
too. There are people, as a dear friend of mine used to say, who are so
accustomed to regard everything in the _flat_, as dogma cut and--not
_always_ dried my moral olfactories aver--that if you prove to them the
very thing they believe, but after another mode than that they have been
accustomed to, they are offended, and count you a heretic. There is no help
for it. Even St. Paul's chief opposition came from the Judaizing Christians
of his time, who did not believe that God _could_ love the Gentiles, and
therefore regarded him as a teacher of falsehood. We must not be fierce
with them. Who knows what wickedness of their ancestors goes to account for
their stupidity? For that there are stupid people, and that they are, in
very consequence of their stupidity, conceited, who can deny? The worst of
it is, that no man who is conceited can be convinced of the fact."

"Don't say that, Harry. That is to deny conversion."

"You are right, Ethelwyn. The moment a man is convinced of his folly, he
ceases to be a fool. The moment a man is convinced of his conceit, he
ceases to be conceited. But there _must_ be a final judgment, and the true
man will welcome it, even if he is to appear a convicted fool. A man's
business is to see first that he is not acting the part of a fool, and
next, to help any honest people who care about the matter to take heed
likewise that they be not offering to pull the mote out of their brother's
eye. But there are even societies established and supported by good
people for the express purpose of pulling out motes.--'The Mote-Pulling
Society!'--That ought to take with a certain part of the public."

"Come, come, Harry. You are absurd. Such people don't come near you."

"They can't touch me. No. But they come near good people whom I know,
brandishing the long pins with which they pull the motes out, and
threatening them with judgment before their time. They are but pins, to be
sure--not daggers."

"But you have wandered, Harry, into the narrowest underground, musty ways,
and have forgotten all about 'the cubicalness of nature.'"

"You are right, my love, as you generally are," I answered, laughing. "Look
at that great antlered elk, or moose--fit quarry for Diana of the silver
bow. Look how it glides solemnly away into the unpastured depths of the
aerial deserts. Look again at that reclining giant, half raised upon his
arm, with his face turned towards the wilderness. What eyes they must be
under those huge brows! On what message to the nations is he borne as by
the slow sweep of ages, on towards his mysterious goal?"

"Stop, stop, Harry," said my wife. "It makes me unhappy to hear grand words
clothing only cloudy fancies. Such words ought to be used about the truth,
and the truth only."

"If I could carry it no further, my dear, then it would indeed be a
degrading of words. But there never was a vagary that uplifted the soul,
or made the grand words flow from the gates of speech, that had not its
counterpart in truth itself. Man can imagine nothing, even in the clouds of
the air, that God has not done, or is not doing. Even as that cloudy giant
yields, and is 'shepherded by the slow unwilling wind,' so is each of us
borne onward to an unseen destiny--a glorious one if we will but yield to
the Spirit of God that bloweth where it listeth--with a grand
listing--coming whence we know not, and going whither we know not. The
very clouds of the air are hung up as dim pictures of the thoughts and
history of man."

"I do not mind how long you talk like that, husband, even if you take the
clouds for your text. But it did make me miserable to think that what you
were saying had no more basis than the fantastic forms which the clouds
assume. I see I was wrong, though."

"The clouds themselves, in such a solemn stately march as this, used to
make me sad for the very same reason. I used to think, What is it all for?
They are but vapours blown by the wind. They come nowhence, and they go
nowhither. But now I see them and all things as ever moving symbols of the
motions of man's spirit and destiny."

A pause followed, during which we sat and watched the marvellous depth
of the heavens, deep as I do not think I ever saw them before or since,
covered with a stately procession of ever-appearing and ever-vanishing
forms--great sculpturesque blocks of a shattered storm--the icebergs of the
upper sea. These were not far off against a blue background, but floating
near us in the heart of a blue-black space, gloriously lighted by a golden
rather than silvery moon. At length my wife spoke.

"I hope Mr. Percivale is out to-night," she said. "How he must be enjoying
it if he is!"

"I wonder the young man is not returning to his professional labours," I
said. "Few artists can afford such long holidays as he is taking."

"He is laying in stock, though, I suppose," answered my wife.

"I doubt that, my dear. He said not, on one occasion, you may remember."

"Yes, I remember. But still he must paint better the more familiar he gets
with the things God cares to fashion."

"Doubtless. But I am afraid the work of God he is chiefly studying at
present is our Wynnie."

"Well, is she not a worthy object of his study?" returned Ethelwyn, looking
up in my face with an arch expression.

"Doubtless again, Ethel; but I hope she is not studying him quite so much
in her turn. I have seen her eyes following him about."

My wife made no answer for a moment. Then she said,

"Don't you like him, Harry?"

"Yes. I like him very much."

"Then why should you not like Wynnie to like him?"

"I should like to be surer of his principles, for one thing."

"I should like to be surer of Wynnie's."

I was silent. Ethelwyn resumed.

"Don't you think they might do each other good?"

Still I could not reply.

"They both love the truth, I am sure; only they don't perhaps know what it
is yet. I think if they were to fall in love with each other, it would very
likely make them both more desirous of finding it still."

"Perhaps," I said at last. "But you are talking about awfully serious
things, Ethelwyn."

"Yes, as serious as life," she answered.

"You make me very anxious," I said. "The young man has not, I fear, any
means of gaining a livelihood for more than himself."

"Why should he before he wanted it? I like to see a man who can be content
with an art and a living by it."

"I hope I have not been to blame in allowing them to see so much of each
other," I said, hardly heeding my wife's words.

"It came about quite naturally," she rejoined. "If you had opposed
their meeting, you would have been interfering just as if you had been
Providence. And you would have only made them think more about each other."

"He hasn't said anything--has he?" I asked in positive alarm.

"O dear no. It may be all my fancy. I am only looking a little ahead. I
confess I should like him for a son-in-law. I approve of him," she added,
with a sweet laugh.

"Well," I said, "I suppose sons-in-law are possible, however disagreeable,
results of having daughters."

I tried to laugh, but hardly succeeded.

"Harry," said my wife, "I don't like you in such a mood. It is not like you
at all. It is unworthy of you."

"How can I help being anxious when you speak of such dreadful things as the
possibility of having to give away my daughter, my precious wonder that
came to me through you, out of the infinite--the tender little darling!"

"'Out of the heart of God,' you used to say, Henry. Yes, and with a destiny
he had ordained. It is strange to me how you forget your best and noblest
teaching sometimes. You are always telling us to trust in God. Surely it is
a poor creed that will only allow us to trust in God for ourselves--a very
selfish creed. There must be something wrong there. I should say that the
man who can only trust God for himself is not half a Christian. Either he
is so selfish that that satisfies him, or he has such a poor notion of God
that he cannot trust him with what most concerns him. The former is not
your case, Harry: is the latter, then?--You see I must take my turn at the
preaching sometimes. Mayn't I, dearest?"

She took my hand in both of hers. The truth arose in my heart. I never
loved my wife more than at that moment. And now I could not speak for other
reasons. I saw that I had been faithless to my God, and the moment I could
command my speech, I hastened to confess it.

"You are right, my dear," I said, "quite right. I have been wicked, for I
have been denying my God. I have been putting my providence in the place
of his--trying, like an anxious fool, to count the hairs on Wynnie's head,
instead of being content that the grand loving Father should count them. My
love, let us pray for Wynnie; for what is prayer but giving her to God and
his holy, blessed will?"

We sat hand in hand. Neither spoke aloud for some minutes, but we spoke in
our hearts to God, talking to him about Wynnie. Then we rose together, and
walked homeward, still in silence. But my heart and hand clung to my wife
as to the angel whom God had sent to deliver me out of the prison of my
faithlessness. And as we went, lo! the sky was glorious again. It had faded
from my sight, had grown flat as a dogma, uninteresting as "a foul and
pestilent congregation of vapours;" the moon had been but a round thing
with the sun shining upon it, and the stars were only minding their own
business. But now the solemn march towards an unseen, unimagined goal had
again begun. Wynnie's life was hid with Christ in God. Away strode the
cloudy pageant with its banners blowing in the wind, which blew where it
grandly listed, marching as to a solemn triumphal music that drew them from
afar towards the gates of pearl by which the morning walks out of the New
Jerusalem to gladden the nations of the earth. Solitary stars, with all
their sparkles drawn in, shone, quiet as human eyes, in the deep solemn
clefts of dark blue air. They looked restrained and still, as if they
knew all about it--all about the secret of this midnight march. For the
moon--she saw the sun, and therefore made the earth glad.

"You have been a moon to me this night, my wife," I said. "You were looking
full at the truth, while I was dark. I saw its light in your face, and
believed, and turned my soul to the sun. And now I am both ashamed and
glad. God keep me from sinning so again."

"My dear husband, it was only a mood--a passing mood," said Ethelwyn,
seeking to comfort me.

"It was a mood, and thank God it is now past; but it was a wicked one. It
was a mood in which the Lord might have called me a devil, as he did St.
Peter. Such moods have to be grappled with and fought the moment they
appear. They must not have their way for a single thought even."

"But we can't help it always, can we, husband?"

"We can't help it out and out, because our wills are not yet free with the
freedom God is giving us as fast as we will let him. When we are able to
will thoroughly, then we shall do what we will. At least, I think we shall.
But there is a mystery in it God only understands. All we know is, that we
can struggle and pray. But a mood is an awful oppression sometimes when you
least believe in it and most wish to get rid of it. It is like a headache
in the soul."

"What do the people do that don't believe in God?" said Ethelwyn.

The same moment Wynnie, who had seen us pass the window, opened the door of
the bark-house for us, and we passed into Connie's chamber and found her
lying in the moonlight, gazing at the same heavens as her father and mother
had been revelling in.




CHAPTER II.

OUR LAST SHORE-DINNER.


The next day was very lovely. I think it is the last of the kind of which
I shall have occasion to write in my narrative of the Seaboard Parish. I
wonder if my readers are tired of so much about the common things of
Nature. I reason about it something in this way: We are so easily affected
by the smallest things that are of the unpleasant kind, that we ought to
train ourselves to the influence of those that are of an opposite nature.
The unpleasant ones are like the thorns which make themselves felt as we
scramble--for we often do scramble in a very undignified manner--through
the thickets of life; and, feeling the thorns, we grumble, and are blind
to all but the thorns. The flowers, and the lovely leaves, and the red
berries, and the clusters of filberts, and the birds'-nests do not force
themselves upon our attention as the thorns do, and the thorns make us
forget to look for them. But a scratch would be forgotten--and that in
mental hurts is often equivalent to a cure, for a forgotten scratch on the
mind or heart will never fester--if we but allowed our being a moment's
repose upon any of the quiet, waiting, unobtrusive beauties that lie
around the half-trodden way, offering their gentle healing. And when I
think how, not unfrequently, otherwise noble characters are anything but
admirable when under the influence of trifling irritations, the very
paltriness of which seems what the mind, which would at once rouse itself
to a noble endurance of any mighty evil, is unable to endure, I would
gladly help so with sweet antidotes to defeat the fly in the ointment of
the apothecary that the whole pot shall send forth a pure savour. We ought
for this to cultivate the friendships of little things. Beauty is one of
the surest antidotes to vexation. Often when life looked dreary about me,
from some real or fancied injustice or indignity, has a thought of truth
been flashed into my mind from a flower, a shape of frost, or even a
lingering shadow--not to mention such glories as angel-winged clouds,
rainbows, stars, and sunrises. Therefore I hope that in my loving delay
over such aspects of Nature as impressed themselves upon me in this most
memorable part of my history I shall not prove wearisome to my reader, for
therein I should utterly contravene my hope and intent in the recording of
them.

This day there was to be an unusually low tide, and we had reckoned on
enlarging our acquaintance with the bed of the ocean--of knowing a few
yards more of the millions of miles lapt in the mystery of waters. It was
to be low water about two o'clock, and we resolved to dine upon the sands.
But all the morning the children were out playing on the threshold of old
Neptune's palace; for in his quieter mood he will, like a fierce
mastiff, let children do with him what they will. I gave myself a whole
holiday--sometimes the most precious part of my life both for myself and
those for whom I labour--and wandered about on the shore, now passing the
children, and assailed with a volley of cries and entreaties to look at
this one's castle and that one's ditch, now leaving them behind, with what
in its ungraduated flatness might well enough personate an endless
desert of sand between, over the expanse of which I could imagine them
disappearing on a far horizon, whence however a faint occasional cry of
excitement and pleasure would reach my ears. The sea was so calm, and the
shore so gently sloping, that you could hardly tell where the sand ceased
and the sea began--the water sloped to such a thin pellicle, thinner
than any knife-edge, upon the shining brown sand, and you saw the sand
underneath the water to such a distance out. Yet this depth, which would
not drown a red spider, was the ocean. In my mind I followed that bed of
shining sand, bared of its hiding waters, out and out, till I was lost in
an awful wilderness of chasms, precipices, and mountain-peaks, in whose
caverns the sea-serpent may dwell, with his breath of pestilence; the
kraken, with "his skaly rind," may there be sleeping

  "His ancient dreamless, uninvaded sleep,"

while

    "faintest sunlights flee
  About his shadowy sides,"

as he lies

  "Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep."

There may lie all the horrors that Schiller's diver encountered--the
frightful Molch, and that worst of all, to which he gives no name, which
came creeping with a hundred knots at once; but here are only the gracious
rainbow-woven shells, an evanescent jelly or two, and the queer baby-crabs
that crawl out from the holes of the bordering rocks. What awful gradations
of gentleness lead from such as these down to those cabins where wallow
the inventions of Nature's infancy, when, like a child of untutored
imagination, she drew on the slate of her fancy creations in which flitting
shadows of beauty serve only to heighten the shuddering, gruesome horror.
The sweet sun and air, the hand of man, and the growth of the ages, have
all but swept such from the upper plains of the earth. What hunter's bow
has twanged, what adventurer's rifle has cracked in those leagues of
mountain-waste, vaster than all the upper world can show, where the beasts
of the ocean "graze the sea-weed, their pasture"! Diana of the silver bow
herself, when she descends into the interlunar caves of hell, sends no such
monsters fleeing from her spells. Yet if such there be, such horrors too
must lie in the undiscovered caves of man's nature, of which all this outer
world is but a typical analysis. By equally slow gradations may the inner
eye descend from the truth of a Cordelia to the falsehood of an Iago. As
these golden sands slope from the sunlight into the wallowing abyss of
darkness, even so from the love of the child to his holy mother slopes the
inclined plane of humanity to the hell of the sensualist. "But with one
difference in the moral world," I said aloud, as I paced up and down on the
shimmering margin, "that everywhere in the scale the eye of the all-seeing
Father can detect the first quiver of the eyelid that would raise itself
heavenward, responsive to his waking spirit." I lifted my eyes in the
relief of the thought, and saw how the sun of the autumn hung above the
waters oppressed with a mist of his own glory; far away to the left a man
who had been clambering on a low rock, inaccessible save in such a tide,
gathering mussels, threw himself into the sea and swam ashore; above his
head the storm-tower stood in the stormless air; the sea glittered and
shone, and the long-winged birds knew not which to choose, the balmy air or
the cool deep, now flitting like arrow-heads through the one, now alighting
eagerly upon the other, to forsake it anew for the thinner element. I
thanked God for his glory.

"O, papa, it's so jolly--so jolly!" shouted the children as I passed them
again.

"What is it that's so jolly, Charlie?" I asked.

"My castle," screeched Harry in reply; "only it's tumbled down. The water
_would_ keep coming in underneath."

"I tried to stop it with a newspaper," cried Charlie, "but it wouldn't. So
we were forced to let it be, and down it went into the ditch."

"We blew it up rather than surrender," said Dora. "We did; only Harry
always forgets, and says it was the water did it."

I drew near the rock that held the bath. I had never approached it from
this side before. It was high above my head, and a stream of water was
flowing from it. I scrambled up, undressed, and plunged into its dark
hollow, where I felt like one of the sea-beasts of which I had been
dreaming, down in the caves of the unvisited ocean. But the sun was over
my head, and the air with an edge of the winter was about me. I dressed
quickly, descended on the other side of the rock, and wandered again on the
sands to seaward of the breakwater, which lay above, looking dry and
weary, and worn with years of contest with the waves, which had at length
withdrawn defeated to their own country, and left it as if to victory and a
useless age of peace. How different was the scene when a raving mountain of
water filled all the hollow where I now wandered, and rushed over the top
of that mole now so high above me; and I had to cling to its stones to keep
me from being carried off like a bit of floating sea-weed! This was the
loveliest and strangest part of the shore. Several long low ridges of rock,
of whose existence I scarcely knew, worn to a level with the sand, hollowed
and channelled with the terrible run of the tide across them, and looking
like the old and outworn cheek-teeth of some awful beast of prey, stretched
out seawards. Here and there amongst them rose a well-known rock, but now
so changed in look by being lifted all the height between the base on the
waters, and the second base in the sand, that I wondered at each, walking
round and viewing it on all sides. It seemed almost a fresh growth out of
the garden of the shore, with uncouth hollows around its fungous root,
and a forsaken air about its brows as it stood in the dry sand and looked
seaward. But what made the chief delight of the spot, closed in by rocks
from the open sands, was the multitude of fairy rivers that flowed across
it to the sea. The gladness these streams gave me I cannot communicate. The
tide had filled thousands of hollows in the breakwater, hundreds of cracked
basins in the rocks, huge sponges of sand; from all of which--from cranny
and crack, and oozing sponge--the water flowed in restricted haste back,
back to the sea, tumbling in tiny cataracts down the faces of the rocks,
bubbling from their roots as from wells, gathering in tanks of sand, and
overflowing in broad shallow streams, curving and sweeping in their sandy
channels, just like, the great rivers of a continent;--here spreading into
smooth silent lakes and reaches, here babbling along in ripples and waves
innumerable--flowing, flowing, to lose their small beings in the same ocean
that met on the other side the waters of the Mississippi, the Orinoco, the
Amazon. All their channels were of golden sand, and the golden sunlight
was above and through and in them all: gold and gold met, with the waters
between. And what gave an added life to their motion was, that all the
ripples made shadows on the clear yellow below them. The eye could not
see the rippling on the surface; but the sun saw it, and drew it in
multitudinous shadowy motion upon the sand, with the play of a thousand
fancies of gold burnished and dead, of sunlight and yellow, trembling,
melting, curving, blending, vanishing ever, ever renewed. It was as if all
the water-marks upon a web of golden silk had been set in wildest yet most
graceful curvilinear motion by the breath of a hundred playful zephyrs. My
eye could not be filled with seeing. I stood in speechless delight for a
while, gazing at the "endless ending" which was "the humour of the game,"
and thinking how in all God's works the laws of beauty are wrought out
in evanishment, in birth and death. There, there is no hoarding, but
an ever-fresh creating, an eternal flow of life from the heart of the
All-beautiful. Hence even the heart of man cannot hoard. His brain or his
hand may gather into its box and hoard; but the moment the thing has passed
into the box, the heart has lost it and is hungry again. If man would
_have,_ it is the giver he must have; the eternal, the original, the
ever-outpouring is alone within his reach; the everlasting _creation_ is
his heritage. Therefore all that he makes must be free to come and go
through the heart of his child; he can enjoy it only as it passes, can
enjoy only its life, its soul, its vision, its meaning, not itself. To
hoard rubies and sapphires is as useless and hopeless for the heart, as if
I were to attempt to hoard this marvel of sand and water and sunlight in
the same iron chest with the musty deeds of my wife's inheritance.

"Father," I murmured half aloud, "thou alone art, and I am because thou
art. Thy will shall be mine."

I know that I must have spoken aloud, because I remember the start of
consciousness and discomposure occasioned by the voice of Percivale
greeting me.

"I beg your pardon," he added; "I did not mean to startle you, Mr. Walton.
I thought you were only looking at Nature's childplay--not thinking."

"I know few things _more_ fit to set one thinking than what you have very
well called Nature's childplay," I returned. "Is Nature very heartless now,
do you think, to go on with this kind of thing at our feet, when away up
yonder lies the awful London, with so many sores festering in her heart?"

"You must answer your own question, Mr. Walton. You know I cannot. I
confess I feel the difficulty deeply. I will go further, and confess that
the discrepancy makes me doubt many things I would gladly believe. I know
_you_ are able to distinguish between a glad unbelief and a sorrowful
doubt."

"Else were I unworthy of the humblest place in the kingdom--unworthy to be
a doorkeeper in the house of my God," I answered, and recoiled from the
sound of my own words; for they seemed to imply that I believed myself
worthy of the position I occupied. I hastened to correct them: "But do not
mistake my thoughts," I said; "I do not dream of worthiness in the way of
honour--only of fitness for the work to be done. For that I think God has
fitted me in some measure. The doorkeeper's office may be given him, not
because he has done some great deed worthy of the honour, but because he
can sweep the porch and scour the threshold, and will, in the main, try to
keep them clean. That is all the worthiness I dare to claim, even to hope
that I possess."

"No one who knows you can mistake your words, except wilfully," returned
Percivale courteously.

"Thank you," I said. "Now I will just ask you, in reference to the contrast
between human life and nature, how you will go back to your work in London,
after seeing all this child's and other play of Nature? Suppose you had
had nothing here but rain and high winds and sea-fogs, would you have been
better fitted for doing something to comfort those who know nothing of such
influences than you will be now? One of the most important qualifications
of a sick-nurse is a ready smile. A long-faced nurse in a sickroom is a
visible embodiment and presence of the disease against which the eager life
of the patient is fighting in agony. Such ought to be banished, with their
black dresses and their mourning-shop looks, from every sick-chamber, and
permitted to minister only to the dead, who do not mind looks. With what a
power of life and hope does a woman--young or old I do not care--with a
face of the morning, a dress like the spring, a bunch of wild flowers in
her hand, with the dew upon them, and perhaps in her eyes too (I don't
object to that--that is sympathy, not the worship of darkness),--with
what a message from nature and life does she, looking death in the face
with a smile, dawn upon the vision of the invalid! She brings a little
health, a little strength to fight, a little hope to endure, actually lapt
in the folds of her gracious garments; for the soul itself can do more than
any medicine, if it be fed with the truth of life."

"But are you not--I beg your pardon for interposing on your eloquence with
dull objection," said Percivale--"are you not begging all the question?
_Is_ life such an affair of sunshine and gladness?"

"If life is not, then I confess all this show of nature is worse than
vanity--it is a vile mockery. Life is gladness; it is the death in it that
makes the misery. We call life-in-death life, and hence the mistake. If
gladness were not at the root, whence its opposite sorrow, against which
we arise, from which we recoil, with which we fight? We recognise it as
death--the contrary of life. There could be no sorrow but for a recognition
of primordial bliss. This in us that fights must be life. It is of the
nature of light, not of darkness; darkness is nothing until the light
comes. This very childplay, as you call it, of Nature, is her assertion of
the secret that life is the deepest, that life shall conquer death. Those
who believe this must bear the good news to them that sit in darkness and
the shadow of death. Our Lord has conquered death--yea, the moral death
that he called the world; and now, having sown the seed of light, the
harvest is springing in human hearts, is springing in this dance of
radiance, and will grow and grow until the hearts of the children of the
kingdom shall frolic in the sunlight of the Father's presence. Nature has
God at her heart; she is but the garment of the Invisible. God wears his
singing robes in a day like this, and says to his children, 'Be not afraid:
your brothers and sisters up there in London are in my hands; go and help
them. I am with you. Bear to them the message of joy. Tell them to be of
good cheer: I have overcome the world. Tell them to endure hunger, and not
sin; to endure passion, and not yield; to admire, and not desire. Sorrow
and pain are serving my ends; for by them will I slay sin; and save my
children.'"

"I wish I could believe as you do, Mr. Walton."

"I wish you could. But God will teach you, if you are willing to be
taught."

"I desire the truth, Mr. Walton."

"God bless you! God is blessing you," I said.

"Amen," returned Percivale devoutly; and we strolled away together in
silence towards the cliffs.

The recession of the tide allowed us to get far enough away from the face
of the rocks to see the general effect. With the lisping of the inch-deep
wavelets at our heels we stood and regarded the worn yet defiant, the
wasted and jagged yet reposeful face of the guardians of the shore.

"Who could imagine, in weather like this, and with this baby of a tide
lying behind us, low at our feet, and shallow as the water a schoolboy
pours upon his slate to wash it withal, that those grand cliffs before
us bear on their front the scars and dints of centuries, of chiliads of
stubborn resistance, of passionate contest with this same creature that is
at this moment unable to rock the cradle of an infant? Look behind you, at
your feet, Mr. Percivale; look before you at the chasms, rents, caves, and
hollows of those rocks."

"I wish you were a painter, Mr. Walton," he said.

"I wish I were," I returned. "At least I know I should rejoice in it, if it
had been given me to be one. But why do you say so now?"

"Because you have always some individual predominating idea, which
would give interpretation to Nature while it gave harmony, reality, and
individuality to your representation of her."

"I know what you mean," I answered; "but I have no gift whatever in that
direction. I have no idea of drawing, or of producing the effects of light
and shade; though I think I have a little notion of colour--perhaps about
as much as the little London boy, who stopped a friend of mine once to ask
the way to the field where the buttercups grew, had of nature."

"I wish I could ask your opinion of some of my pictures."

"That I should never presume to give. I could only tell you what they made
me feel, or perhaps only think. Some day I may have the pleasure of looking
at them."

"May I offer you my address?" he said, and took a card from his
pocket-book. "It is a poor place, but if you should happen to think of
me when you are next in London, I shall be honoured by your paying me a
visit."

"I shall be most happy," I returned, taking his card.--"Did it ever occur
to you, in reference to the subject we were upon a few minutes ago, how
little you can do without shadow in making a picture?"

"Little indeed," answered Percivale. "In fact, it would be no picture at
all."

"I doubt if the world would fare better without its shadows."

"But it would be a poor satisfaction, with regard to the nature of God, to
be told that he allowed evil for artistic purposes."

"It would indeed, if you regard the world as a picture. But if you think of
his art as expended, not upon the making of a history or a drama, but upon
the making of an individual, a being, a character, then I think a great
part of the difficulty concerning the existence of evil which oppresses you
will vanish. So long as a creature has not sinned, sin is possible to him.
Does it seem inconsistent with the character of God that in order that sin
should become impossible he should allow sin to come? that, in order that
his creatures should choose the good and refuse the evil, in order that
they might become such, with their whole nature infinitely enlarged, as to
turn from sin with a perfect repugnance of the will, he should allow them
to fall? that, in order that, from being sweet childish children, they
should become noble, child-like men and women, he should let them try to
walk alone? Why should he not allow the possible in order that it should
become impossible? for possible it would ever have been, even in the midst
of all the blessedness, until it had been, and had been thus destroyed.
Thus sin is slain, uprooted. And the war must ever exist, it seems to me,
where there is creation still going on. How could I be content to guard my
children so that they should never have temptation, knowing that in all
probability they would fail if at any moment it should cross their path?
Would the deepest communion of father and child ever be possible between
us? Evil would ever seem to be in the child, so long as it was possible it
should be there developed. And if this can be said for the existence of
moral evil, the existence of all other evil becomes a comparative trifle;
nay, a positive good, for by this the other is combated."

"I think I understand you," returned Percivale. "I will think over what you
have said. These are very difficult questions."

"Very. I don't think argument is of much use about them, except as it may
help to quiet a man's uneasiness a little, and so give his mind peace to
think about duty. For about the doing of duty there can be no question,
once it is seen. And the doing of duty is the shortest--in very fact, the
only way into the light."

As we spoke, we had turned from the cliffs, and wandered back across the
salt streams to the sands beyond. From the direction of the house came
a little procession of servants, with Walter at their head, bearing the
preparations for our dinner--over the gates of the lock, down the sides of
the embankment of the canal, and across the sands, in the direction of the
children, who were still playing merrily.

"Will you join our early dinner, which is to be out of doors, as you see,
somewhere hereabout on the sands?" I said.

"I shall be delighted," he answered, "if you will let me be of some use
first. I presume you mean to bring your invalid out."

"Yes; and you shall help me to carry her, if you will."

"That is what I hoped," said Percivale; and we went together towards the
parsonage.

As we approached, I saw Wynnie sitting at the drawing-room window; but when
we entered the room, she was gone. My wife was there, however.

"Where is Wynnie?" I asked.

"She saw you coming," she answered, "and went to get Connie ready; for I
guessed Mr. Percivale had come to help you to carry her out."

But I could not help doubting there might be more than that in Wynnie's
disappearance. "What if she should have fallen in love with him," I
thought, "and he should never say a word on the subject? That would be
dreadful for us all."

They had been repeatedly but not very much together of late, and I was
compelled to allow to myself that if they did fall in love with each other
it would be very natural on both sides, for there was evidently a great
mental resemblance between them, so that they could not help sympathising
with each other's peculiarities. And anyone could see what a fine couple
they would make.

Wynnie was much taller than Connie--almost the height of her mother. She
had a very fair skin, and brown hair, a broad forehead, a wise, thoughtful,
often troubled face, a mouth that seldom smiled, but on which a smile
seemed always asleep, and round soft cheeks that dimpled like water when
she did smile. I have described Percivale before. Why should not two such
walk together along the path to the gates of the light? And yet I could
not help some anxiety. I did not know anything of his history. I had no
testimony concerning him from anyone that knew him. His past life was a
blank to me; his means of livelihood probably insufficient--certainly,
I judged, precarious; and his position in society--but there I checked
myself: I had had enough of that kind of thing already. I would not
willingly offend in that worldliness again. The God of the whole earth
could not choose that I should look at such works of his hands after that
fashion. And I was his servant--not Mammon's or Belial's.

All this passed through my mind in about three turns of the winnowing-fan
of thought. Mr. Percivale had begun talking to my wife, who took no pains
to conceal that his presence was pleasant to her, and I went upstairs,
almost unconsciously, to Connie's room.

When I opened the door, forgetting to announce my approach as I ought to
have done, I saw Wynnie leaning over Connie, and Connie's arm round her
waist. Wynnie started back, and Connie gave a little cry, for the jerk thus
occasioned had hurt her. Wynnie had turned her head away, but turned it
again at Connie's cry, and I saw a tear on her face.

"My darlings, I beg your pardon," I said. "It was very stupid of me not to
knock at the door."

Connie looked up at me with large resting eyes, and said--

"It's nothing, papa, Wynnie is in one of her gloomy moods, and didn't want
you to see her crying. She gave me a little pull, that was all. It didn't
hurt me much, only I'm such a goose! I'm in terror before the pain comes.
Look at me," she added, seeing, doubtless, some perturbation on my
countenance, "I'm all right now." And she smiled in my face perfectly.

I turned to Wynnie, put my arm about her, kissed her cheek, and left the
room. I looked round at the door, and saw that Connie was following me with
her eyes, but Wynnie's were hidden in her handkerchief.

I went back to the drawing-room, and in a few minutes Walter came to
announce that dinner was about to be served. The same moment Wynnie came to
say that Connie was ready. She did not lift her eyes, or approach to
give Percivale any greeting, but went again as soon as she had given her
message. I saw that he looked first concerned and then thoughtful.

"Come, Mr. Percivale," I said; and he followed me up to Connie's room.

Wynnie was not there; but Connie lay, looking lovely, all ready for going.
We lifted her, and carried her by the window out on the down, for the
easiest way, though the longest, was by the path to the breakwater, along
its broad back and down from the end of it upon the sands. Before we
reached the breakwater, I found that Wynnie was following behind us. We
stopped in the middle of it, and set Connie down, as if I wanted to take
breath. But I had thought of something to say to her, which I wanted Wynnie
to hear without its being addressed to her.

"Do you see, Connie," I said, "how far off the water is?"

"Yes, papa; it is a long way off. I wish I could get up and run down to
it."

"You can hardly believe that all between, all those rocks, and all that
sand, will be covered before sunset."

"I know it will be. But it doesn't _look_ likely, does it, papa!"

"Not the least likely, my dear. Do you remember that stormy night when I
came through your room to go out for a walk in the dark?"

"Remember it, papa? I cannot forget it. Every time I hear the wind blowing
when I wake in the night I fancy you are out in it, and have to wake myself
up' quite to get rid of the thought."

"Well, Connie, look down into the great hollow there, with rocks and sand
at the bottom of it, stretching far away."

"Yes, papa."

"Now look over the side of your litter. You see those holes all about
between the stones?"

"Yes, papa."

"Well, one of those little holes saved my life that night, when the great
gulf there was full of huge mounds of roaring water, which rushed across
this breakwater with force enough to sweep a whole cavalry regiment off its
back."

"Papa!" exclaimed Connie, turning pale.

Then first I told her all the story. And Wynnie listened behind.

"Then I _was_ right in being frightened, papa!" cried Connie, bursting into
tears; for since her accident she could not well command her feelings.

"You were right in trusting in God, Connie."

"But you might have been drowned, papa!" she sobbed.

"Nobody has a right to say that anything might have been other than what
has been. Before a thing has happened we can say might or might not; but
that has to do only with our ignorance. Of course I am not speaking
of things wherein we ought to exercise will and choice. That is _our_
department. But this does not look like that now, does it? Think what a
change--from the dark night and the roaring water to this fulness of
sunlight and the bare sands, with the water lisping on their edge away
there in the distance. Now, I want you to think that in life troubles will
come which look as if they would never pass away; the night and the storm
look as if they would last for ever; but the calm and the morning cannot be
stayed; the storm in its very nature is transient. The effort of Nature,
as that of the human heart, ever is to return to its repose, for God is
Peace."

"But if you will excuse me, Mr. Walton," said Percivale, "you can hardly
expect experience to be of use to any but those who have had it. It seems
to me that its influences cannot be imparted."

"That depends on the amount of faith in those to whom its results are
offered. Of course, as experience, it can have no weight with another; for
it is no longer experience. One remove, and it ceases. But faith in the
person who has experienced can draw over or derive--to use an old Italian
word--some of its benefits to him who has the faith. Experience may thus,
in a sense, be accumulated, and we may go on to fresh experience of our
own. At least I can hope that the experience of a father may take the form
of hope in the minds of his daughters. Hope never hurt anyone, never yet
interfered with duty; nay, always strengthens to the performance of duty,
gives courage, and clears the judgment. St. Paul says we are saved by hope.
Hope is the most rational thing in the universe. Even the ancient poets,
who believed it was delusive, yet regarded it as an antidote given by the
mercy of the gods against some, at least, of the ills of life."

"But they counted it delusive. A wise man cannot consent to be deluded."

"Assuredly not. The sorest truth rather than a false hope! But what is a
false hope? Only one that ought not to be fulfilled. The old poets could
give themselves little room for hope, and less for its fulfilment; for what
were the gods in whom they believed--I cannot say in whom they trusted?
Gods who did the best their own poverty of being was capable of doing for
men when they gave them the _illusion_ of hope. But I see they are waiting
for us below. One thing I repeat--the waves that foamed across the spot
where we now stand are gone away, have sunk and vanished."

"But they will come again, papa," faltered Wynnie.

"And God will come with them, my love," I said, as we lifted the litter.

In a few minutes more we were all seated on the sand around a table-cloth
spread upon it. I shall never forgot the peace and the light outside and
in, as far as I was concerned at least, and I hope the others too, that
afternoon. The tide had turned, and the waves were creeping up over the
level, soundless almost as thought; but it would be time to go home long
before they had reached us. The sun was in the western half of the sky, and
now and then a breath of wind came from the sea, with a slight saw-edge in
it, but not enough to hurt. Connie could stand much more in that way now.
And when I saw how she could move herself on her couch, and thought how
much she had improved since first she was laid upon it, hope for her kept
fluttering joyously in my heart. I could not help fancying even that I saw
her move her legs a little; but I could not be in the least sure; and she,
if she did move them, was clearly unconscious of it. Charles and Harry were
every now and then starting up from their dinner and running off with a
shout, to return with apparently increased appetite for the rest of it;
and neither their mother nor I cared to interfere with the indecorum. Dora
alone took it upon her to rebuke them. Wynnie was very silent, but looked
more cheerful. Connie seemed full of quiet bliss. My wife's face was a
picture of heavenly repose. The old nurse was walking about with the baby,
occasionally with one hand helping the other servants to wait upon us.
They, too, seemed to have a share in the gladness of the hour, and, like
Ariel, did their spiriting gently.

"This is the will of God," I said, after the things were removed, and we
had sat for a few moments in silence.

"What is the will of God, husband?" asked Ethelwyn.

"Why, this, my love," I answered; "this living air, and wind, and sea,
and light, and land all about us; this consenting, consorting harmony of
Nature, that mirrors a like peace in our souls. The perfection of such
visions, the gathering of them all in one was, is, I should say, in the
face of Christ Jesus. You will say that face was troubled sometimes. Yes,
but with a trouble that broke not the music, but deepened the harmony.
When he wept at the grave of Lazarus, you do not think it was for Lazarus
himself, or for his own loss of him, that he wept? That could not be,
seeing he had the power to call him back when he would. The grief was for
the poor troubled hearts left behind, to whom it was so dreadful because
they had not faith enough in his Father, the God of life and love, who was
looking after it all, full of tenderness and grace, with whom Lazarus was
present and blessed. It was the aching, loving heart of humanity for which
he wept, that needed God so awfully, and could not yet trust in him. Their
brother was only hidden in the skirts of their Father's garment, but they
could not believe that: they said he was dead--lost--away--all gone, as
the children say. And it was so sad to think of a whole world full of the
grief of death, that he could not bear it without the human tears to help
his heart, as they help ours. It was for our dark sorrows that he wept. But
the peace could be no less plain on the face that saw God. Did you ever
think of that wonderful saying: 'Again a little while, and ye shall see
me, because I go to the Father'? The heart of man would have joined the
'because I go to the Father' with the former result--the not seeing of him.
The heart of man is not able, without more and more light, to understand
that all vision is in the light of the Father. Because Jesus went to the
Father, therefore the disciples saw him tenfold more. His body no longer in
their eyes, his very being, his very self was in their hearts--not in their
affections only--in their spirits, their heavenly consciousness."

As I said this, a certain hymn, for which I had and have an especial
affection, came into my mind, and, without prologue or introduction, I
repeated it:

      "If I Him but have,
    If he be but mine,
      If my heart, hence to the grave,
    Ne'er forgets his love divine--
  Know I nought of sadness,
  Feel I nought but worship, love, and gladness.

      If I Him but have,
    Glad with all I part;
      Follow on my pilgrim staff
    My Lord only, with true heart;
  Leave them, nothing saying,
  On broad, bright, and crowded highways straying.

        If I Him but have,
      Glad I fall asleep;
        Aye the flood that his heart gave
      Strength within my heart shall keep,
  And with soft compelling
  Make it tender, through and through it swelling.

        If I Him but have,
      Mine the world I hail!
        Glad as cherub smiling grave,
      Holding back the virgin's veil.
  Sunk and lost in seeing,
  Earthly fears have died from all my being.

        Where I have but Him
      Is my Fatherland;
        And all gifts and graces come
      Heritage into my hand:
  Brothers long deplored
  I in his disciples find restored."

"What a lovely hymn, papa!" exclaimed Connie. She could always speak more
easily than either her mother or sister. "Who wrote it?"

"Friedrich von Hardenberg, known, where he is known, as Novalis."

"But he must have written it in German. Did you translate it?"

"Yes. You will find, I think, that I have kept form, thought, and feeling,
however I may have failed in making an English poem of it."

"O, you dear papa, it is lovely! Is it long since you did it?"

"Years before you were born, Connie."

"To think of you having lived so long, and being one of us!" she returned.
"Was he a Roman Catholic, papa?"

"No, he was a Moravian. At least, his parents were. I don't think he
belonged to any section of the church in particular."

"But oughtn't he, papa?"

"Certainly not, my dear, except he saw good reason for it. But what is the
use of asking such questions, after a hymn like that?"

"O, I didn't think anything bad, papa, I assure you. It was only that I
wanted to know more about him."

The tears were in her eyes, and I was sorry I had treated as significant
what was really not so. But the constant tendency to consider Christianity
as associated of necessity with this or that form of it, instead of as
simply obedience to Christ, had grown more and more repulsive to me as I
had grown myself, for it always seemed like an insult to my brethren in
Christ; hence the least hint of it in my children I was too ready to be
down upon like a most unchristian ogre. I took her hand in mine, and she
was comforted, for she saw in my face that I was sorry, and yet she could
see that there was reason at the root of my haste.

"But," said Wynnie, who, I thought afterwards, must have strengthened
herself to speak from the instinctive desire to show Percivale how far she
was from being out of sympathy with what he might suppose formed a barrier
between him and me--"But," she said, "the lovely feeling in that poem
seems to me, as in all the rest of such poems, to belong only to the New
Testament, and have nothing to do with this world round about us. These
things look as if they were only for drawing and painting and being glad
in, not as if they had relations with all those awful and solemn things. As
soon as I try to get the two together, I lose both of them."

"That is because the human mind must begin with one thing and grow to the
rest. At first, Christianity seemed to men to have only to do with their
conscience. That was the first relation, of course. But even with art
it was regarded as having no relation except for the presentment of its
history. Afterwards, men forgot the conscience almost in trying to make
Christianity comprehensible to the understanding. Now, I trust, we are
beginning to see that Christianity is everything or nothing. Either the
whole is a lovely fable setting forth the loftiest longing of the human
soul after the vision of the divine, or it is such a fact as is the heart
not only of theology so called, but of history, politics, science, and art.
The treasures of the Godhead must be hidden in him, and therefore by him
only can be revealed. This will interpret all things, or it has not yet
been. Teachers of men have not taught this, because they have not seen it.
If we do not find him in nature, we may conclude either that we do not
understand the expression of nature, or have mistaken ideas or poor
feelings about him. It is one great business in our life to find the
interpretation which will render this harmony visible. Till we find it, we
have not seen him to be all in all. Recognising a discord when they touched
the notes of nature and society, the hermits forsook the instrument
altogether, and contented themselves with a partial symphony--lofty,
narrow, and weak. Their example, more or less, has been followed by almost
all Christians. Exclusion is so much the easier way of getting harmony
in the orchestra than study, insight, and interpretation, that most have
adopted it. It is for us, and all who have hope in the infinite God, to
widen its basis as we may, to search and find the true tone and right idea,
place, and combination of instruments, until to our enraptured ear they
all, with one voice of multiform yet harmonious utterance, declare the
glory of God and of his Christ."

"A grand idea," said Percivale.

"Therefore likely to be a true one," I returned. "People find it hard
to believe grand things; but why? If there be a God, is it not likely
everything is grand, save where the reflection of his great thoughts is
shaken, broken, distorted by the watery mirrors of our unbelieving and
troubled souls? Things ought to be grand, simple, and noble. The ages of
eternity will go on showing that such they are and ever have been. God will
yet be victorious over our wretched unbeliefs."

I was sitting facing the sea, but with my eyes fixed on the sand, boring
holes in it with my stick, for I could talk better when I did not look my
familiar faces in the face. I did not feel thus in the pulpit; there I
sought the faces of my flock, to assist me in speaking to their needs. As
I drew to the close of my last monologue, a colder and stronger blast from
the sea blew in my face. I lifted my head, and saw that the tide had crept
up a long way, and was coming in fast. A luminous fog had sunk down over
the western horizon, and almost hidden the sun, had obscured the half of
the sea, and destroyed all our hopes of a sunset. A certain veil as of the
commonplace, like that which so often settles down over the spirit of man
after a season of vision and glory and gladness, had dropped over the face
of Nature. The wind came in little bitter gusts across the dull waters. It
was time to lift Connie and take her home.

This was the last time we ate together on the open shore.




CHAPTER III.

A PASTORAL VISIT.


The next morning rose neither "cherchef't in a comely cloud" nor "roab'd in
flames and amber light," but covered all in a rainy mist, which the wind
mingled with salt spray torn from the tops of the waves. Every now and then
the wind blew a blastful of larger drops against the window of my study
with an angry clatter and clash, as if daring me to go out and meet its
ire. The earth was very dreary, for there were no shadows anywhere. The
sun was hustled away by the crowding vapours; and earth, sea, and sky were
possessed by a gray spirit that threatened wrath. The breakfast-bell rang,
and I went down, expecting to find my Wynnie, who was always down first to
make the tea, standing at the window with a sad face, giving fit response
to the aspect of nature without, her soul talking with the gray spirit. I
did find her at the window, looking out upon the restless tossing of the
waters, but with no despondent answer to the trouble of nature. On the
contrary, her cheek, though neither rosy nor radiant, looked luminous, and
her eyes were flashing out upon the ebb-tide which was sinking away into
the troubled ocean beyond. Does my girl-reader expect me to tell her next
that something had happened? that Percivale had said something to her? or
that, at least, he had just passed the window, and given her a look which
she might interpret as she pleased? I must disappoint her. It was nothing
of the sort. I knew the heart and feeling of my child. It was only that
kind nature was in sympathy with her mood. The girl was always more
peaceful in storm than in sunshine. I remembered that now. A movement of
life instantly began in her when the obligation of gladness had departed
with the light. Her own being arose to provide for its own needs. She could
smile now when nature required from her no smile in response to hers. And I
could not help saying to myself, "She must marry a poor man some day; she
is a creature of the north, and not of the south; the hot sun of prosperity
would wither her up. Give her a bleak hill-side, and a glint or two of
sunshine between the hailstorms, and she will live and grow; give her
poverty and love, and life will be interesting to her as a romance; give
her money and position, and she will grow dull and haughty. She will
believe in nothing that poet can sing or architect build. She will, like
Cassius, scorn her spirit for being moved to smile at anything."

I had stood regarding her for a moment. She turned and saw me, and came
forward with her usual morning greeting.

"I beg your pardon, papa: I thought it was Walter."

"I am glad to see a smile on your face, my love."

"Don't think me very disagreeable, papa. I know I am a trouble to you. But
I am a trouble to myself first. I fear I have a discontented mind and a
complaining temper. But I do try, and I will try hard to overcome it."

"It will not get the better of you, so long as you do the duty of the
moment. But I think, as I told you before, that you are not very well, and
that your indisposition is going to do you good by making you think about
some things you are ready to think about, but which you might have banished
if you had been in good health and spirits. You are feeling as you never
felt before, that you need a presence in your soul of which at least you
haven't enough yet. But I preached quite enough to you yesterday, and I
won't go on the same way to-day again. Only I wanted to comfort you. Come
and give me my breakfast."

"You do comfort me, papa," she answered, approaching the table. "I know I
don't show what I feel as I ought, but you do comfort me much. Don't you
like a day like this, papa?"

"I do, my dear. I always did. And I think you take after me in that, as you
do in a good many things besides. That is how I understand you so well."

"Do I really take after you, papa? Are you sure that you understand me so
well?" she asked, brightening up.

"I know I do," I returned, replying to her last question.

"Better than I do myself?" she asked with an arch smile.

"Considerably, if I mistake not," I answered.

"How delightful! To think that I am understood even when I don't understand
myself!"

"But even if I am wrong, you are yet understood. The blessedness of life is
that we can hide nothing from God. If we could hide anything from God, that
hidden thing would by and by turn into a terrible disease. It is the sight
of God that keeps and makes things clean. But as we are both, by mutual
confession, fond of this kind of weather, what do you say to going out with
me? I have to visit a sick woman."

"You don't mean Mrs. Coombes, papa?"

"No, my dear. I did not hear she was ill."

"O, I daresay it is nothing much. Only old nursey said yesterday she was in
bed with a bad cold, or something of that sort."

"We'll call and inquire as we pass,--that is, if you are inclined to go
with me."

"How can you put an _if_ to that, papa?"

"I have just had a message from that cottage that stands all alone on the
corner of Mr. Barton's farm--over the cliff, you know--that the woman is
ill, and would like to see me. So the sooner we start the better."

"I shall have done my breakfast in five minutes, papa. O, here's
mamma!--Mamma, I'm going out for a walk in the rain with papa. You won't
mind, will you?"

"I don't think it will do you any harm, my dear. That's all I mind, you
know. It was only once or twice when you were not well that I objected to
it. I quite agree with your papa, that only lazy people are _glad_ to stay
in-doors when it rains."

"And it does blow so delightfully!" said Wynnie, as she left the room to
put on her long cloak and her bonnet.

We called at the sexton's cottage, and found him sitting gloomily by the
low window, looking seaward.

"I hope your wife is not _very_ poorly, Coombes," I said.

"No, sir. She be very comfortable in bed. Bed's not a bad place to be in
in such weather," he answered, turning again a dreary look towards the
Atlantic. "Poor things!"

"What a passion for comfort you have, Coombes! How does that come about, do
you think?"

"I suppose I was made so, sir."

"To be sure you were. God made you so."

"Surely, sir. Who else?"

"Then I suppose he likes making people comfortable if he makes people like
to be comfortable."

"It du look likely enough, sir."

"Then when he takes it out of your hands, you mustn't think he doesn't look
after the people you would make comfortable if you could."

"I must mind my work, you know, sir."

"Yes, surely. And you mustn't want to take his out of his hands, and go
grumbling as if you would do it so much better if he would only let you get
_your_ hand to it."

"I daresay you be right, sir," he said. "I must just go and have a look
about, though. Here's Agnes. She'll tell you about mother."

He took his spade from the corner, and went out. He often brought his tools
into the cottage. He had carved the handle of his spade all over with the
names of the people he had buried.

"Tell your mother, Agnes, that I will call in the evening and see her, if
she would like to see me. We are going now to see Mrs. Stokes. She is very
poorly, I hear."

"Let us go through the churchyard, papa," said Wynnie, "and see what the
old man is doing."

"Very well, my dear. It is only a few steps round."

"Why do you humour the sexton's foolish fancy so much, papa? It is
such nonsense! You taught us it was, surely, in your sermon about the
resurrection?"

"Most certainly, my dear. But it would be of no use to try to get it out of
his head by any argument. He has a kind of craze in that direction. To get
people's hearts right is of much more importance than convincing their
judgments. Right judgment will follow. All such fixed ideas should be
encountered from the deepest grounds of truth, and not from the outsides of
their relations. Coombes has to be taught that God cares for the dead more
than he does, and _therefore_ it is unreasonable for him to be anxious
about them."

When we reached the churchyard we found the old man kneeling on a grave
before its headstone. It was a very old one, with a death's-head and
cross-bones carved upon the top of it in very high relief. With his
pocket-knife he was removing the lumps of green moss out of the hollows of
the eyes of the carven skull. We did not interrupt him, but walked past
with a nod.

"You saw what he was doing, Wynnie? That reminds me of almost the only
thing in Dante's grand poem that troubles me. I cannot think of it without
a renewal of my concern, though I have no doubt he is as sorry now as I am
that ever he could have written it. When, in the _Inferno,_ he reaches the
lowest region of torture, which is a solid lake of ice, he finds the lost
plunged in it to various depths, some, if I remember rightly, entirely
submerged, and visible only through the ice, transparent as crystal, like
the insects found in amber. One man with his head only above the ice,
appeals to him as condemned to the same punishment to take pity on him, and
remove the lumps of frozen tears from his eyes, that he may weep a little
before they freeze again and stop the relief once more. Dante says to him,
'Tell me who you are, and if I do not assist you, I deserve to lie at the
bottom of the ice myself.' The man tells him who he is, and explains to him
one awful mystery of these regions. Then he says, 'Now stretch forth thy
hand, and open my eyes.' 'And,' says Dante, I did not open them for him;
and rudeness to him was courtesy.'"

"But he promised, you said."

"He did; and yet he did not do it. Pity and truth had abandoned him
together. One would think little of it comparatively, were it not that
Dante is so full of tenderness and grand religion. It is very awful, and
may teach us many things."

"But what made you think of that now?"

"Merely what Coombes was about. The visual image was all. He was scooping
the green moss out of the eyes of the death's-head on the gravestone."

By this time we were on the top of the downs, and the wind was buffeting
us, and every other minute assailing us with a blast of rain. Wynnie drew
her cloak closer about her, bent her head towards the blast, and struggled
on bravely by my side. No one who wants to enjoy a walk in the rain must
carry an umbrella; it is pure folly. When we came to one of the stone
fences, we cowered down by its side for a few moments to recover our
breath, and then struggled on again. Anything like conversation was out of
the question. At length we dropped into a hollow, which gave us a little
repose. Down below the sea was dashing into the mouth of the glen, or
coomb, as they call it there. On the opposite side of the hollow, the
little house to which we were going stood up against the gray sky.

"I begin to doubt whether I ought to have brought you, Wynnie. It was
thoughtless of me; I don't mean for your sake, but because your presence
may be embarrassing in a small house; for probably the poor woman may
prefer seeing me alone."

"I will go back, papa. I sha'n't mind it a bit."

"No; you had better come on. I shall not be long with her, I daresay. We
may find some place that you can wait in. Are you wet?"

"Only my cloak. I am as dry as a tortoise inside."

"Come along, then. We shall soon be there."

When we reached the house I found that Wynnie would not be in the way. I
left her seated by the kitchen-fire, and was shown into the room where Mrs.
Stokes lay. I cannot say I perceived. But I guessed somehow, the moment I
saw her that there was something upon her mind. She was a hard-featured
woman, with a cold, troubled black eye that rolled restlessly about. She
lay on her back, moving her head from side to side. When I entered she only
looked at me, and turned her eyes away towards the wall. I approached the
bedside, and seated myself by it. I always do so at once; for the patient
feels more at rest than if you stand tall up before her. I laid my hand on
hers.

"Are you very ill, Mrs. Stokes?" I said.

"Yes, very," she answered with a groan. "It be come to the last with me."

"I hope not, indeed, Mrs. Stokes. It's not come to the last with us, so
long as we have a Father in heaven."

"Ah! but it be with me. He can't take any notice of the like of me."

"But indeed he does, whether you think it or not. He takes notice of every
thought we think, and every deed we do, and every sin we commit."

I said the last words with emphasis, for I suspected something more than
usual upon her conscience. She gave another groan, but made no reply. I
therefore went on.

"Our Father in heaven is not like some fathers on earth, who, so long as
their children don't bother them, let them do anything they like. He will
not have them do what is wrong. He loves them too much for that."

"He won't look at me," she said half murmuring, half sighing it out, so
that I could hardly, hear what she said.

"It is because he _is_ looking at you that you are feeling uncomfortable,"
I answered. "He wants you to confess your sins. I don't mean to me, but to
himself; though if you would like to tell me anything, and I can help you,
I shall be _very_ glad. You know Jesus Christ came to save us from our
sins; and that's why we call him our Saviour. But he can't save us from our
sins if we won't confess that we have any."

"I'm sure I never said but what I be a great sinner, as well as other
people."

"You don't suppose that's confessing your sins?" I said. "I once knew a
woman of very bad character, who allowed to me she was a great sinner; but
when I said, 'Yes, you have done so and so,' she would not allow one of
those deeds to be worthy of being reckoned amongst her sins. When I asked
her what great sins she had been guilty of, then, seeing these counted for
nothing, I could get no more out of her than that she was a great sinner,
like other people, as you have just been saying."

"I hope you don't be thinking I ha' done anything of that sort," she said
with wakening energy. "No man or woman dare say I've done anything to be
ashamed of."

"Then you've committed no sins?" I returned. "But why did you send for me?
You must have something to say to me."

"I never did send for you. It must ha' been my husband."

"Ah, then I'm afraid I've no business here!" I returned, rising. "I thought
you had sent for me."

She returned no answer. I hoped that by retiring I should set her thinking,
and make her more willing to listen the next time I came. I think clergymen
may do much harm by insisting when people are in a bad mood, as if they
had everything to do, and the Spirit of God nothing at all. I bade her
good-day, hoped she would be better soon, and returned to Wynnie.

As we walked home together, I said:

"Wynnie, I was right. It would not have done at all to take you into the
sick-room. Mrs. Stokes had not sent for me herself, and rather resented my
appearance. But I think she will send for me before many days are over."




CHAPTER IV.

THE ART OF NATURE.


We had a week of hazy weather after this. I spent it chiefly in my study
and in Connie's room. A world of mist hung over the sea; it refused to hold
any communion with mortals. As if ill-tempered or unhappy, it folded itself
in its mantle and lay still.

What was it thinking about? All Nature is so full of meaning, that we
cannot help fancying sometimes that she knows her own meanings. She is
busy with every human mood in turn--sometimes with ten of them at
once--picturing our own inner world before us, that we may see, understand,
develop, reform it.

I was turning over some such thought in my mind one morning, when Dora
knocked at the door, saying that Mr. Percivale had called, and that mamma
was busy, and would I mind if she brought him up to the study.

"Not in the least, my dear," I answered; "I shall be very glad to see him."

"Not much of weather for your sacred craft, Percivale," I said as he
entered. "I suppose, if you were asked to make a sketch to-day, it would be
much the same as if a stupid woman were to ask you to take her portrait?"

"Not quite so bad as that," said Percivale.

"Surely the human face is more than nature."

"Nature is never stupid."

"The woman might be pretty."

"Nature is full of beauty in her worst moods; while the prettier such a
woman, the more stupid she would look, and the more irksome you would feel
the task; for you could not help making claims upon her which you would
never think of making upon Nature."

"I daresay you are right. Such stupidity has a good deal to do with moral
causes. You do not ever feel that Nature is to blame."

"Nature is never ugly. She may be dull, sorrowful, troubled; she may be
lost in tears and pallor, but she cannot be ugly. It is only when you rise
into animal nature that you find ugliness."

"True in the main only; for no lines of absolute division can be drawn in
nature. I have seen ugly flowers."

"I grant it; but they are exceptional; and none of them are without
beauty."

"Surely not. The ugliest soul even is not without some beauty. But I grant
you that the higher you rise the more is ugliness possible, just because
the greater beauty is possible. There is no ugliness to equal in its
repulsiveness the ugliness of a beautiful face."

A pause followed.

"I presume," I said, "you are thinking of returning to London now, there
seems so little to be gained by remaining here. When this weather begins to
show itself I could wish myself in my own parish; but I am sure the change,
even through the winter, will be good for my daughter."

"I must be going soon," he answered; "but it would be too bad to take
offence at the old lady's first touch of temper. I mean to wait and see
whether we shall not have a little bit of St. Martin's summer, as Shakspere
calls it; after which, hail London, queen of smoke and--"

"And what?" I asked, seeing he hesitated.

"'And soap,' I was fancying you would say; for you never will allow the
worst of things, Mr. Walton."

"No, surely I will not. For one thing, the worst has never been seen by
anybody yet. We have no experience to justify it."

We were chatting in this loose manner when Walter came to the door to tell
me that a messenger had come from Mrs. Stokes.

I went down to see him, and found her husband.

"My wife be very bad, sir," he said. "I wish you could come and see her."

"Does she want to see me?' I asked.

"She's been more uncomfortable than ever since you was there last," he
said.

"But," I repeated, "has she said she would like to see me?"

"I can't say it, sir," answered the man.

"Then it is you who want me to see her?"

"Yes, sir; but I be sure she do want to see you. I know her way, you see,
sir. She never would say she wanted anything in her life; she would always
leave you to find it out: so I got sharp at that, sir."

"And then would she allow she had wanted it when you got it her?"

"No, never, sir. She be peculiar--my wife; she always be."

"Does she know that you have come to ask me now?"

"No, sir."

"Have you courage to tell her?"

The man hesitated.

"If you haven't courage to tell her," I resumed, "I have nothing more to
say. I can't go; or, rather, I will not go."

"I will tell her, sir."

"Then you will tell her that I refused to come until she sent for me
herself."

"Ben't that rather hard on a dying woman, sir?"

"I have my reasons. Except she send for me herself, the moment I go she
will take refuge in the fact that she did not send for me. I know your
wife's peculiarity too, Mr. Stokes."

"Well, I _will_ tell her, sir. It's time to speak my own mind."

"I think so. It was time long ago. When she sends for me, if it be in the
middle of the night, I shall be with her at once."

He left me and I returned to Percivale.

"I was just thinking before you came," I said, "about the relation of
Nature to our inner world. You know I am quite ignorant of your art, but I
often think about the truths that lie at the root of it."

"I am greatly obliged to you," he said, "for talking about these things. I
assure you it is of more service to me than any professional talk. I always
think the professions should not herd together so much as they do; they
want to be shone upon from other quarters."

"I believe we have all to help each other, Percivale. The sun himself could
give us no light that would be of any service to us but for the reflective
power of the airy particles through which he shines. But anything I know I
have found out merely by foraging for my own necessities."

"That is just what makes the result valuable," he replied. "Tell me what
you were thinking."

"I was thinking," I answered, "how everyone likes to see his own thoughts
set outside of him, that he may contemplate them _objectively,_ as the
philosophers call it. He likes to see the other side of them, as it were."

"Yes, that is, of course, true; else, I suppose, there would be no art at
all."

"Surely. But that is not the aspect in which I was considering the
question. Those who can so set them forth are artists; and however they
may fail of effecting such a representation of their ideas as will satisfy
themselves, they yet experience satisfaction in the measure in which they
have succeeded. But there are many more men who cannot yet utter their
ideas in any form. Mind, I do expect that, if they will only be good, they
shall have this power some day; for I do think that many things we call
differences in kind, may in God's grand scale prove to be only differences
in degree. And indeed the artist--by artist, I mean, of course, architect,
musician, painter, poet, sculptor--in many things requires it just as much
as the most helpless and dumb of his brethren, seeing in proportion to the
things that he can do, he is aware of the things he cannot do, the thoughts
he cannot express. Hence arises the enthusiasm with which people hail the
work of an artist; they rejoice, namely, in seeing their own thoughts, or
feelings, or something like them, expressed; and hence it comes that of
those who have money, some hang their walls with pictures of their own
choice, others--"

"I beg your pardon," said Percivale, interrupting; "but most people, I
fear, hang their walls with pictures of other people's choice, for they
don't buy them at all till the artist has got a name."

"That is true. And yet there is a shadow of choice even there; for they
won't at least buy what they dislike. And again the growth in popularity
may be only what first attracted their attention--not determined their
choice."

"But there are others who only buy them for their value in the market."

"'Of such is not the talk,' as the Germans would say. In as far as your
description applies, such are only tradesmen, and have no claim to be
considered now."

"Then I beg your pardon for interrupting. I am punished more than I
deserve, if you have lost your thread."

"I don't think I have. Let me see. Yes. I was saying that people hang
their walls with pictures of their choice; or provide music, &c., of
their choice. Let me keep to the pictures: their choice, consciously or
unconsciously, is determined by some expression that these pictures give
to what is in themselves--the buyers, I mean. They like to see their own
feelings outside of themselves."

"Is there not another possible motive--that the pictures teach them
something?"

"That, I venture to think, shows a higher moral condition than the other,
but still partakes of the other; for it is only what is in us already
that makes us able to lay hold of a lesson. It is there in the germ, else
nothing from without would wake it up."

"I do not quite see what all this has to do with Nature and her
influences."

"One step more, and I shall arrive at it. You will admit that the pictures
and objects of art of all kinds, with which a man adorns the house he has
chosen or built to live in, have thenceforward not a little to do with the
education of his tastes and feelings. Even when he is not aware of it, they
are working upon him,--for good, if he has chosen what is good, which alone
shall be our supposition."

"Certainly; that is clear."

"Now I come to it. God, knowing our needs, built our house for our
needs--not as one man may build for another, but as no man can build for
himself. For our comfort, education, training, he has put into form for us
all the otherwise hidden thoughts and feelings of our heart. Even when he
speaks of the hidden things of the Spirit of God, he uses the forms or
pictures of Nature. The world is, as it were, the human, unseen world
turned inside out, that we may see it. On the walls of the house that he
has built for us, God has hung up the pictures--ever-living, ever-changing
pictures--of all that passes in our souls. Form and colour and motion are
there,--ever-modelling, ever-renewing, never wearying. Without this living
portraiture from within, we should have no word to utter that should
represent a single act of the inner world. Metaphysics could have no
existence, not to speak of poetry, not to speak of the commonest language
of affection. But all is done in such spiritual suggestion, portrait and
definition are so avoided, the whole is in such fluent evanescence, that
the producing mind is only aided, never overwhelmed. It never amounts to
representation. It affords but the material which the thinking, feeling
soul can use, interpret, and apply for its own purposes of speech. It is,
as it were, the forms of thought cast into a lovely chaos by the inferior
laws of matter, thence to be withdrawn by what we call the creative genius
that God has given to men, and moulded, and modelled, and arranged, and
built up to its own shapes and its own purposes."

"Then I presume you would say that no mere transcript, if I may use the
word, of nature is the worthy work of an artist."

"It is an impossibility to make a mere transcript. No man can help seeing
nature as he is himself, for she has all in her; but if he sees no meaning
in especial that he wants to give, his portrait of her will represent only
her dead face, not her living impassioned countenance."

"Then artists ought to interpret nature?"

"Indubitably; but that will only be to interpret themselves--something of
humanity that is theirs, whether they have discovered it already or not. If
to this they can add some teaching for humanity, then indeed they may claim
to belong to the higher order of art, however imperfect they may be in
their powers of representing--however lowly, therefore, their position may
be in that order."




CHAPTER V.

THE SORE SPOT.


We went on talking for some time. Indeed we talked so long that the
dinner-hour was approaching, when one of the maids came with the message
that Mr. Stokes had called again, wishing to see me. I could not help
smiling inwardly at the news. I went down at once, and found him smiling
too.

"My wife do send me for you this time, sir," he said. "Between you and me,
I cannot help thinking she have something on her mind she wants to tell
you, sir."

"Why shouldn't she tell you, Mr. Stokes? That would be most natural. And
then, if you wanted any help about it, why, of course, here I am."

"She don't think well enough of my judgment for that, sir; and I daresay
she be quite right. She always do make me give in before she have done
talking. But she have been a right good wife to me, sir."

"Perhaps she would have been a better if you hadn't given in quite so much.
It is very wrong to give in when you think you are right."

"But I never be sure of it when she talk to me awhile."

"Ah, then I have nothing to say except that you ought to have been
surer--_sometimes;_ I don't say _always."_

"But she do want you very bad now, sir. I don't think she'll behave to you
as she did before. Do come, sir."

"Of course I will--instantly."

I returned to the study, and asked Percivale if he would like to go with
me. He looked, I thought, as if he would rather not. I saw that it was
hardly kind to ask him.

"Well, perhaps it is better not," I said; "for I do not know how long I may
have to be with the poor woman. You had better wait here and take my place
at the dinner-table. I promise not to depose you if I should return before
the meal is over."

He thanked me very heartily. I showed him into the drawing-room, told my
wife where I was going, and not to wait dinner for me--I would take my
chance--and joined Mr. Stokes.

"You have no idea, then," I said, after we had gone about half-way, "what
makes your wife so uneasy?"

"No, I haven't," he answered; "except it be," he resumed, "that she was too
hard, as I thought, upon our Mary, when she wanted to marry beneath her, as
wife thought."

"How beneath her? Who was it she wanted to marry?"

"She did marry him, sir. She has a bit of her mother's temper, you see, and
she would take her own way."

"Ah, there's a lesson to mothers, is it not? If they want to have their own
way, they mustn't give their own temper to their daughters."

"But how are they to help it, sir?"

"Ah, how indeed? But what is your daughter's husband?"

"A labourer, sir. He works on a farm out by Carpstone."

"But you have worked on Mr. Barton's farm for many years, if I don't
mistake?"

"I have, sir; but I am a sort of a foreman now, you see."

"But you weren't so always; and your son-in-law, whether he work his way up
or not, is, I presume, much where you were when you married Mrs. Stokes?"

"True as you say, sir; and it's not me that has anything to say about it. I
never gave the man a nay. But you see, my wife, she always do be wanting to
get her head up in the world; and since she took to the shopkeeping--"

"The shopkeeping!" I said, with some surprise; "I didn't know that."

"Well, you see, sir, it's only for a quarter or so of the year. You know
it's a favourite walk for the folks as comes here for the bathing--past our
house, to see the great cave down below; and my wife, she got a bit of a
sign put up, and put a few ginger-beer bottles in the window, and--"

"A bad place for the ginger-beer," I said.

"They were only empty ones, with corks and strings, you know, sir. My wife,
she know better than put the ginger-beer its own self in the sun. But I do
think she carry her head higher after that; and a farm-labourer, as they
call them, was none good enough for her daughter."

"And hasn't she been kind to her since she married, then?"

"She's never done her no harm, sir."

"But she hasn't gone to see her very often, or asked her to come and see
you very often, I suppose?"

"There's ne'er a one o' them crossed the door of the other," he answered,
with some evident feeling of his own in the matter.

"Ah; but you don't approve of that yourself, Stokes?"

"Approve of it? No, sir. I be a farm-labourer once myself; and so I do want
to see my own daughter now and then. But she take after her mother, she do.
I don't know which of the two it is as does it, but there's no coming and
going between Carpstone and this."

We were approaching the house. I told Stokes he had better let her know I
was there; for that, if she had changed her mind, it was not too late for
me to go home again without disturbing her. He came back saying she was
still very anxious to see me.

"Well, Mrs. Stokes, how do you feel to-day?" I asked, by way of opening the
conversation. "I don't think you look much worse."

"I be much worse, sir. You don't know what I suffer, or you wouldn't make
so little of it. I be very bad."

"I know you are very ill, but I hope you are not too ill to tell me why you
are so anxious to see me. You have got something to tell me, I suppose."

With pale and death-like countenance, she appeared to be fighting more with
herself than with the disease which yet had nearly overcome her. The drops
stood upon her forehead, and she did not speak. Wishing to help her, if I
might, I said--

"Was it about your daughter you wanted to speak to me?"

"No," she muttered. "I have nothing to say about my daughter. She was my
own. I could do as I pleased with her."

I thought with myself, we must have a word about that by and by, but
meantime she must relieve her heart of the one thing whose pressure she
feels.

"Then," I said, "you want to tell me about something that was not your
own?"

"Who said I ever took what was not my own?" she returned fiercely. "Did
Stokes dare to say I took anything that wasn't my own?"

"No one has said anything of the sort. Only I cannot help thinking, from
your own words and from your own behaviour, that that must be the cause of
your misery."

"It is very hard that the parson should think such things," she muttered
again.

"My poor woman," I said, "you sent for me because you had something to
confess to me. I want to help you if I can. But you are too proud to
confess it yet, I see. There is no use in my staying here. It only does you
harm. So I will bid you good-morning. If you cannot confess to me, confess
to God."

"God knows it, I suppose, without that."

"Yes. But that does not make it less necessary for you to confess it. How
is he to forgive you, if you won't allow that you have done wrong?"

"It be not so easy that as you think. How would you like to say you had
took something that wasn't your own?"

"Well, I shouldn't like it, certainly; but if I had it to do, I think I
should make haste and do it, and so get rid of it."

"But that's the worst of it; I can't get rid of it."

"But," I said, laying my hand on hers, and trying to speak as kindly as I
could, although her whole behaviour would have been exceedingly repulsive
but for her evidently great suffering, "you have now all but confessed
taking something that did not belong to you. Why don't you summon courage
and tell me all about it? I want to help you out of the trouble as easily
as ever I can; but I can't if you don't tell me what you've got that isn't
yours."

"I haven't got anything," she muttered.

"You had something, then, whatever may have become of it now."

She was again silent.

"What did you do with it?"

"Nothing."

I rose and took up my hat. She stretched out her hand, as if to lay hold of
me, with a cry.

"Stop, stop. I'll tell you all about it. I lost it again. That's the worst
of it. I got no good of it."

"What was it?"

"A sovereign," she said, with a groan. "And now I'm a thief, I suppose."

"No more a thief than you were before. Rather less, I hope. But do you
think it would have been any better for you if you hadn't lost it, and had
got some good of it, as you say?"

She was silent yet again.

"If you hadn't lost it you would most likely have been a great deal worse
for it than you are--a more wicked woman altogether."

"I'm not a wicked woman."

"It is wicked to steal, is it not?"

"I didn't steal it."

"How did you come by it, then?"

"I found it."

"Did you try to find out the owner?"

"No. I knew whose it was."

"Then it was very wicked not to return it. And I say again, that if you had
not lost the sovereign you would have been most likely a more wicked woman
than you are."

"It was very hard to lose it. I could have given it back. And then I
wouldn't have lost my character as I have done this day."

"Yes, you could; but I doubt if you would."

"I would."

"Now, if you had it, you are sure you would give it back?"

"Yes, that I would," she said, looking me so full in the face that I was
sure she meant it.

"How would you give it back? Would you get your husband to take it?"

"No; I wouldn't trust him."

"With the story, you mean I You do not wish to imply that he would not
restore it?"

"I don't mean that. He would do what I told him."

"How would you return it, then?"

"I should make a parcel of it, and send it."

"Without saying anything about it?"

"Yes. Where's the good? The man would have his own."

"No, he would not. He has a right to your confession, for you have wronged
him. That would never do."

"You are too hard upon me," she said, beginning to weep angrily.

"Do you want to get the weight of this sin off your mind?" I said.

"Of course I do. I am going to die. O dear! O dear!"

"Then that is just what I want to help you in. You must confess, or the
weight of it will stick there."

"But, if I confess, I shall be expected to pay it back?"

"Of course. That is only reasonable."

"But I haven't got it, I tell you. I have lost it."

"Have you not a sovereign in your possession?"

"No, not one."

"Can't you ask your husband to let you have one?"

"There! I knew it was no use. I knew you would only make matters worse. I
do wish I had never seen that wicked money."

"You ought not to abuse the money; it was not wicked. You ought to wish
that you had returned it. But that is no use; the thing is to return it
now. Has your husband got a sovereign?"

"No. He may ha' got one since I be laid up. But I never can tell him about
it; and I should be main sorry to spend one of his hard earning in that
way, poor man."

"Well, I'll tell him, and we'll manage it somehow."

I thought for a few moments she would break out in opposition; but she hid
her face with the sheet instead, and burst into a great weeping.

I took this as a permission to do as I had said, and went to the room-door
and called her husband. He came, looking scared. His wife did not look up,
but lay weeping. I hoped much for her and him too from this humiliation
before him, for I had little doubt she needed it.

"Your wife, poor woman," I said, "is in great distress because--I do not
know when or how--she picked up a sovereign that did not belong to her,
and, instead of returning, put it away somewhere and lost it. This is what
is making her so miserable."

"Deary me!" said Stokes, in the tone with which he would have spoken to a
sick child; and going up to his wife, he sought to draw down the sheet from
her face, apparently that he might kiss her; but she kept tight hold of
it, and he could not. "Deary me!" he went on; "we'll soon put that all to
rights. When was it, Jane, that you found it?"

"When we wanted so to have a pig of our own; and I thought I could soon
return it," she sobbed from under the sheet.

"Deary me! Ten years ago! Where did you find it, old woman?"

"I saw Squire Tresham drop it, as he paid me for some ginger-beer he got
for some ladies that was with him. I do believe I should ha' given it back
at the time; but he made faces at the ginger-beer, and said it was very
nasty; and I thought, well, I would punish him for it."

"You see it was your temper that made a thief of you, then," I said.

"My old man won't be so hard on me as you, sir. I wish I had told him
first."

"I would wish that too," I said, "were it not that I am afraid you might
have persuaded him to be silent about it, and so have made him miserable
and wicked too. But now, Stokes, what is to be done? This money must be
paid. Have you got it?"

The poor man looked blank.

"She will never be at ease till this money is paid," I insisted.

"Well, sir, I ain't got it, but I'll borrow it of someone; I'll go to
master, and ask him."

"No, my good fellow, that won't do. Your master would want to know what
you were going to do with it, perhaps; and we mustn't let more people know
about it than just ourselves and Squire Tresham. There is no occasion for
that. I'll tell you what: I'll give you the money, and you must take it;
or, if you like, I will take it to the squire, and tell him all about it.
Do you authorise me to do this, Mrs. Stokes?"

"Please, sir. It's very kind of you. I will work hard to pay you again, if
it please God to spare me. I am very sorry I was so cross-tempered to you,
sir; but I couldn't bear the disgrace of it."

She said all this from under the bed-clothes.

"Well, I'll go," I said; "and as soon as I've had my dinner I'll get a
horse and ride over to Squire Tresham's. I'll come back to-night and tell
you about it. And now I hope you will be able to thank God for forgiving
you this sin; but you must not hide and cover it up, but confess it clean
out to him, you know."

She made me no answer, but went on sobbing.

I hastened home, and as I entered sent Walter to ask the loan of a horse
which a gentleman, a neighbour, had placed at my disposal.

When I went into the dining-room, I found that they had not sat down to
dinner. I expostulated: it was against the rule of the house, when my
return was uncertain.

"But, my love," said my wife, "why should you not let us please ourselves
sometimes? Dinner is so much nicer when you are with us."

"I am very glad you think so," I answered. "But there are the children: it
is not good for growing creatures to be kept waiting for their meals."

"You see there are no children; they have had their dinner."

"Always in the right, wife; but there's Mr. Percivale."

"I never dine till seven o'clock, to save daylight," he said.

"Then I am beaten on all points. Let us dine."

During dinner I could scarcely help observing how Percivale's eyes followed
Wynnie, or, rather, every now and then settled down upon her face. That she
was aware, almost conscious of this, I could not doubt. One glance at her
satisfied me of that. But certain words of the apostle kept coming again
and again into my mind; for they were winged words those, and even when
they did not enter they fluttered their wings at my window: "Whatsoever is
not of faith is sin." And I kept reminding myself that I must heave the
load of sin off me, as I had been urging poor Mrs. Stokes to do; for God
was ever seeking to lift it, only he could not without my help, for that
would be to do me more harm than good by taking the one thing in which I
was like him away from me--my action. Therefore I must have faith in
him, and not be afraid; for surely all fear is sin, and one of the most
oppressive sins from which the Lord came to save us.

Before dinner was over the horse was at the door. I mounted, and set out
for Squire Tresham's.


I found him a rough but kind-hearted elderly man. When I told him the story
of the poor woman's misery, he was quite concerned at her suffering. When I
produced the sovereign he would not receive it at first, but requested me
to take it back to her and say she must keep it by way of an apology for
his rudeness about her ginger-beer; for I took care to tell him the whole
story, thinking it might be a lesson to him too. But I begged him to take
it; for it would, I thought, not only relieve her mind more thoroughly, but
help to keep her from coming to think lightly of the affair afterwards. Of
course I could not tell him that I had advanced the money, for that would
have quite prevented him from receiving it. I then got on my horse again,
and rode straight to the cottage.

"Well, Mrs. Stokes," I said, "it's all over now. That's one good thing
done. How do you feel yourself now?"

"I feel better now, sir. I hope God will forgive me."

"God does forgive you. But there are more things you need forgiveness for.
It is not enough to get rid of one sin. We must get rid of all our sins,
you know. They're not nice things, are they, to keep in our hearts? It is
just like shutting up nasty corrupting things, dead carcasses, under lock
and key, in our most secret drawers, as if they were precious jewels."

"I wish I could be good, like some people, but I wasn't made so. There's my
husband now. I do believe he never do anything wrong in his life. But then,
you see, he would let a child take him in."

"And far better too. Infinitely better to be taken in. Indeed there is no
harm in being taken in; but there is awful harm in taking in."

She did not reply, and I went on:

"I think you would feel a good deal better yet, if you would send for your
daughter and her husband now, and make it up with them, especially seeing
you are so ill."

"I will, sir. I will directly. I'm tired of having my own way. But I was
made so."

"You weren't made to continue so, at all events. God gives us the necessary
strength to resist what is bad in us. He is making at you now; only you
must give in, else he cannot get on with the making of you. I think very
likely he made you ill now, just that you might bethink yourself, and feel
that you had done wrong."

"I have been feeling that for many a year."

"That made it the more needful to make you ill; for you had been feeling
your duty, and yet not doing it; and that was worst of all. You know Jesus
came to lift the weight of our sins, our very sins themselves, off our
hearts, by forgiving them and helping us to cast them away from us.
Everything that makes you uncomfortable must have sin in it somewhere, and
he came to save you from it. Send for your daughter and her husband, and
when you have done that you will think of something else to set right
that's wrong."

"But there would be no end to that way of it, sir."

"Certainly not, till everything was put right."

"But a body might have nothing else to do, that way."

"Well, that's the very first thing that has to be done. It is our business
in this world. We were not sent here to have our own way and try to enjoy
ourselves."

"That is hard on a poor woman that has to work for her bread."

"To work for your bread is not to take your own way, for it is God's way.
But you have wanted many things your own way. Now, if you would just take
his way, you would find that he would take care you should enjoy your
life."

"I'm sure I haven't had much enjoyment in mine."

"That was just because you would not trust him with his own business, but
must take it into your hands. If you will but do his will, he will take
care that you have a life to be very glad of and very thankful for. And the
longer you live, the more blessed you will find it. But I must leave you
now, for I have talked to you long enough. You must try and get a sleep. I
will come and see you again to-morrow, if you like."

"Please do, sir; I shall be very grateful."

As I rode home I thought, if the lifting of one sin off the human heart was
like a resurrection, what would it be when every sin was lifted from every
heart! Every sin, then, discovered in one's own soul must be a pledge of
renewed bliss in its removing. And when the thought came again of what St.
Paul had said somewhere, "whatsoever is not of faith is sin," I thought
what a weight of sin had to be lifted from the earth, and how blessed it
might be. But what could I do for it? I could just begin with myself, and
pray God for that inward light which is his Spirit, that so I might see him
in everything and rejoice in everything as his gift, and then all things
would be holy, for whatsoever is of faith must be the opposite of sin; and
that was my part towards heaving the weight of sin, which, like myriads
of gravestones, was pressing the life out of us men, off the whole world.
Faith in God is life and righteousness--the faith that trusts so that it
will obey--none other. Lord, lift the people thou hast made into holy
obedience and thanksgiving, that they may be glad in this thy world.




CHAPTER VI.

THE GATHERING STORM.


The weather cleared up again the next day, and for a fortnight it was
lovely. In this region we saw less of the sadness of the dying year than in
our own parish, for there being so few trees in the vicinity of the ocean,
the autumn had nowhere to hang out her mourning flags. But there, indeed,
so mild is the air, and so equable the temperature all the winter through,
compared with the inland counties, that the bitterness of the season is
almost unknown. This, however, is no guarantee against furious storms of
wind and rain.

Not long after the occurrence last recorded, Turner paid us another visit.
I confess I was a little surprised at his being able to get away so soon
again; for of all men a country surgeon can least easily find time for a
holiday; but he had managed it, and I had no doubt, from what I knew of
him, had made thorough provision for his cure in his absence.

He brought us good news from home. Everything was going on well. Weir was
working as hard as usual; and everybody agreed that I could not have got a
man to take my place better.

He said he found Connie much improved; and, from my own observations, I was
sure he was right. She was now able to turn a good way from one side to the
other, and finding her health so steady besides, Turner encouraged her in
making gentle and frequent use of her strength, impressing it upon her,
however, that everything depended on avoiding everything like a jerk or
twist of any sort. I was with them when he said this. She looked up at him
with a happy smile.

"I will do all I can, Mr. Turner," she said, "to get out of people's way as
soon as possible."

Perhaps she saw something in our faces that made her add--

"I know you don't mind the bother I am; but I do. I want to help, and not
be helped--more than other people--as soon as possible. I will therefore be
as gentle as mamma and as brave as papa, and see if we don't get well, Mr.
Turner. I mean to have a ride on old Spry next summer.--I do," she added,
nodding her pretty head up from the pillow, when she saw the glance the
doctor and I exchanged. "Look here," she went on, poking the eider-down
quilt up with her foot.

"Magnificent!" said Turner; "but mind, you must do nothing out of bravado.
That won't do at all."

"I have done," said Connie, putting on a face of mock submission.

That day we carried her out for a few minutes, but hardly laid her down,
for we were afraid of the damp from the earth. A few feet nearer or farther
from the soil will make a difference. It was the last time for many weeks.
Anyone interested in my Connie need not be alarmed: it was only because of
the weather, not because of her health.

One day I was walking home from a visit I had been paying to Mrs. Stokes.
She was much better, in a fair way to recover indeed, and her mental health
was improved as well. Her manner to me was certainly very different, and
the tone of her voice, when she spoke to her husband especially, was
changed: a certain roughness in it was much modified, and I had good
hopes that she had begun to climb up instead of sliding down the hill of
difficulty, as she had been doing hitherto.

It was a cold and gusty afternoon. The sky eastward and overhead was
tolerably clear when I set out from home; but when I left the cottage to
return, I could see that some change was at hand. Shaggy vapours of light
gray were blowing rapidly across the sky from the west. A wind was blowing
fiercely up there, although the gusts down below came from the east.
The clouds it swept along with it were formless, with loose
fringes--disreputable, troubled, hasty clouds they were, looking like
mischief. They reminded me of Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," in which
he compares the "loose clouds" to hair, and calls them "the locks of the
approaching storm." Away to the west, a great thick curtain of fog, of a
luminous yellow, covered all the sea-horizon, extending north and south as
far as the eye could reach. It looked ominous. A surly secret seemed to
lie in its bosom. Now and then I could discern the dim ghost of a vessel
through it, as tacking for north or south it came near enough to the edge
of the fog to show itself for a few moments, ere it retreated again
into its bosom. There was exhaustion, it seemed to me, in the air,
notwithstanding the coolness of the wind, and I was glad when I found
myself comfortably seated by the drawing-room fire, and saw Wynnie
bestirring herself to make the tea.

"It looks stormy, I think, Wynnie," I said.

Her eye lightened, as she looked out to sea from the window.

"You seem to like the idea of it," I added.

"You told me I was like you, papa; and you look as if you liked the idea of
it too."

"_Per se_, certainly, a storm is pleasant to me. I should not like a world
without storms any more than I should like that Frenchman's idea of the
perfection of the earth, when all was to be smooth as a trim-shaven lawn,
rocks and mountains banished, and the sea breaking on the shore only in
wavelets of ginger-beer or lemonade, I forget which. But the older
you grow, the more sides of a thing will present themselves to your
contemplation. The storm may be grand and exciting in itself, but you
cannot help thinking of the people that are in it. Think for a moment of
the multitude of vessels, great and small, which are gathered within the
skirts of that angry vapour out there. I fear the toils of the storm are
around them. Look at the barometer in the hall, my dear, and tell me what
it says."

She went and returned.

"It was not very low, papa--only at rain; but the moment I touched it, the
hand dropped an inch."

"Yes, I thought so. All things look stormy. It may not be very bad here,
however."

"That doesn't make much difference though, does it, papa?"

"No further than that being creatures in time and space, we must think of
things from our own standpoint."

"But I remember very well how, when we were children, you would not let
nurse teach us Dr. Watts's hymns for children, because you said they tended
to encourage selfishness."

"Yes; I remember it very well. Some of them make the contrast between the
misery of others and our own comforts so immediately the apparent--mind,
I only say apparent--ground of thankfulness, that they are not fit for
teaching. I do think that if you could put Dr. Watts to the question, he
would abjure any such intention, saying that only he meant to heighten
the sense of our obligation. But it does tend to selfishness and, what is
worse, self-righteousness, and is very dangerous therefore. What right have
I to thank God that I am not as other men are in anything? I have to thank
God for the good things he has given to me; but how dare I suppose that he
is not doing the same for other people in proportion to their capacity? I
don't like to appear to condemn Dr. Watts's hymns. Certainly he has written
the very worst hymns I know; but he has likewise written the best--for
public worship, I mean."

"Well, but, papa, I have heard you say that any simple feeling that comes
of itself cannot be wrong in itself. If I feel a delight in the idea of a
storm, I cannot help it coming."

"I never said you could, my dear. I only said that as we get older, other
things we did not feel at first come to show themselves more to us, and
impress us more."

Thus my child and I went on, like two pendulums crossing each other in
their swing, trying to reach the same dead beat of mutual intelligence.

"But," said Wynnie, "you say everybody is in God's hands as well as we."

"Yes, surely, my dear; as much out in yon stormy haze as here beside the
fire."

"Then we ought not to be miserable about them, even if there comes a storm,
ought we?"

"No, surely. And, besides, I think if we could help any of them, the very
persons that enjoyed the storm the most would be the busiest to rescue them
from it. At least, I fancy so. But isn't the tea ready?"

"Yes, papa. I'll just go and tell mamma."

When she returned with her mother, and the children had joined us, Wynnie
resumed the talk.

"I know what I am going to say is absurd, papa, and yet I don't see my
way out of it--logically, I suppose you would call it. What is the use of
taking any trouble about them if they are in God's hands? Why should we try
to take them out of God's hands?"

"Ah, Wynnie! at least you do not seek to hide your bad logic, or whatever
you call it. Take them out of God's hands! If you could do that, it would
be perdition indeed. God's hands is the only safe place in the universe;
and the universe is in his hands. Are we not in God's hands on the shore
because we say they are in his hands who go down to the sea in ships? If we
draw them on shore, surely they are not out of God's hands."

"I see--I see. But God could save them without us."

"Yes; but what would become of us then? God is so good to us, that we must
work our little salvation in the earth with him. Just as a father lets his
little child help him a little, that the child may learn to be and to do,
so God puts it in our hearts to save this life to our fellows, because we
would instinctively save it to ourselves, if we could. He requires us to do
our best."

"But God may not mean to save them."

"He may mean them to be drowned--we do not know. But we know that we must
try our little salvation, for it will never interfere with God's great and
good and perfect will. Ours will be foiled if he sees that best."

"But people always say, when anyone escapes unhurt from an accident, 'by
the mercy of God.' They don't say it is by the mercy of God when he is
drowned."

"But _people_ cannot be expected, ought not, to say what they do not feel.
Their own first sensation of deliverance from impending death would break
out in a 'thank God,' and therefore they say it is God's mercy when another
is saved. If they go farther, and refuse to consider it God's mercy when a
man is drowned, that is just the sin of the world--the want of faith. But
the man who creeps out of the drowning, choking billows into the glory of
the new heavens and the new earth--do you think his thanksgiving for the
mercy of God which has delivered him is less than that of the man who
creeps, exhausted and worn, out of the waves on to the dreary, surf-beaten
shore? In nothing do we show less faith than the way in which we think and
speak about death. 'O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy
victory?' says the apostle. 'Here, here, here,' cry the Christian people,
'everywhere. It is an awful sting, a fearful victory. But God keeps it away
from us many a time when we ask him--to let it pierce us to the heart, at
last, to be sure; but that can't be helped.' I mean this is how they feel
in their hearts who do not believe that God is as merciful when he sends
death as when he sends life; who, Christian people as they are, yet look
upon death as an evil thing which cannot be avoided, and would, if they
might live always, be content to live always. Death or Life--each is God's;
for he is not the God of the dead, but of the living: there are no dead,
for all live to him."

"But don't you think we naturally shrink from death, Harry?" said my wife.

"There can be no doubt about that, my dear."

"Then, if it be natural, God must have meant that it should be so."

"Doubtless, to begin with, but not to continue or end with. A child's sole
desire is for food--the very best possible to begin with. But how would it
be if the child should reach, say, two years of age, and refuse to share
this same food with his little brother? Or what comes of the man who never
so far rises above the desire for food that _nothing_ could make him forget
his dinner-hour? Just so the life of Christians should be strong enough to
overcome the fear of death. We ought to love and believe him so much, that
when he says we shall not die, we should at least believe that death must
be something very different from what it looks to us to be--so different,
that what we mean by the word does not apply to the reality at all; and so
Jesus cannot use the word, because it would seem to us that he meant what
we mean by it, which he, seeing it all round, cannot mean."

"That does seem quite reasonable," said Ethelwyn.

Turner had taken no part in the conversation. He, too, had just come in
from a walk over the hills. He was now standing looking out at the sea.

"She looks uneasy, does she not?" I said.

"You mean the Atlantic?" he returned, looking round. "Yes, I think so. I am
glad she is not a patient of mine. I fear she is going to be very feverish,
probably delirious before morning. She won't sleep much, and will talk
rather loud when the tide comes in."

"Disease has often an ebb and flow like the tide, has it not?"

"Often. Some diseases are like a plant that has its time to grow and
blossom, then dies; others, as you say, ebb and flow again and again before
they vanish."

"It seems to me, however, that the ebb and flow does not belong to the
disease, but to Nature, which works through the disease. It seems to
me that my life has its tides, just like the ocean, only a little more
regularly. It is high water with me always in the morning and the evening;
in the afternoon life is at its lowest; and I believe it is lowest again
while we sleep, and hence it comes that to work the brain at night has such
an injurious effect on the system. But this is perhaps all a fancy."

"There may be some truth in it. But I was just thinking when you spoke to
me what a happy thing it is that the tide does not vary by an even six
hours, but has the odd minutes; whence we see endless changes in the
relation of the water to the times of the day. And then the spring-tides
and the neap-tides! What a provision there is in the world for change!"

"Yes. Change is one of the forms that infinitude takes for the use of us
human immortals. But come and have some tea, Turner. You will not care to
go out again. What shall we do this evening? Shall we all go to Connie's
room and have some Shakspere?"

"I could wish nothing better. What play shall we have?"

"Let us have the _Midsummer Night's Dream,"_ said Ethelwyn.

"You like to go by contraries, apparently, Ethel. But you're quite right.
It is in the winter of the year that art must give us its summer. I suspect
that most of the poetry about spring and summer is written in the winter.
It is generally when we do not possess that we lay full value upon what we
lack."

"There is one reason," said Wynnie with a roguish look, "why I like that
play."

"I should think there might be more than one, Wynnie."

"But one reason is enough for a woman at once; isn't it, papa?"

"I'm not sure of that. But what is your reason?"

"That the fairies are not allowed to play any tricks with the women. _They_
are true throughout."

"I might choose to say that was because they were not tried."

"And I might venture to answer that Shakspere--being true to nature always,
as you say, papa--knew very well how absurd it would be to represent a
woman's feelings as under the influence of the juice of a paltry flower."

"Capital, Wynnie!" said her mother; and Turner and I chimed in with our
approbation.

"Shall I tell you what I like best in the play?" said Turner. "It is the
common sense of Theseus in accounting for all the bewilderments of the
night."

"But," said Ethelwyn, "he was wrong after all. What is the use of common
sense if it leads you wrong? The common sense of Theseus simply amounted to
this, that he would only believe his own eyes."

"I think Mrs. Walton is right, Turner," I said. "For my part, I have more
admired the open-mindedness of Hippolyta, who would yield more weight
to the consistency of the various testimony than could be altogether
counterbalanced by the negation of her own experience. Now I will tell you
what I most admire in the play: it is the reconciling power of the poet. He
brings together such marvellous contrasts, without a single shock or jar
to your feeling of the artistic harmony of the conjunction. Think for a
moment--the ordinary commonplace courtiers; the lovers, men and women in
the condition of all conditions in which fairy-powers might get a hold of
them; the quarrelling king and queen of Fairyland, with their courtiers,
Blossom, Cobweb, and the rest, and the court-jester, Puck; the ignorant,
clownish artisans, rehearsing their play,--fairies and clowns, lovers and
courtiers, are all mingled in one exquisite harmony, clothed with a night
of early summer, rounded in by the wedding of the king and queen. But I
have talked enough about it. Let us get our books."

As we sat in Connie's room, delighting ourselves with the reflex of
the poet's fancy, the sound of the rising tide kept mingling with the
fairy-talk and the foolish rehearsal. "Musk roses," said Titania; and the
first of the blast, going round by south to west, rattled the window. "Good
hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow," said Bottom; and the roar of the waters
was in our ears. "So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle Gently
entwist," said Titania; and the blast poured the rain in a spout against
the window. "Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells," said
Theseus; and the wind whistled shrill through the chinks of the bark-house
opening from the room. We drew the curtains closer, made up the fire
higher, and read on. It was time for supper ere we had done; and when
we left Connie to have hers and go to sleep, it was with the hope that,
through all the rising storm, she would dream of breeze-haunted summer
woods.




CHAPTER VII.

THE GATHERED STORM.


I woke in the middle of the night and the darkness to hear the wind
howling. It was wide awake now, and up with intent. It seized the house,
and shook it furiously; and the rain kept pouring, only I could not hear it
save in the _rallentondo_ passages of the wind; but through all the wind
I could hear the roaring of the big waves on the shore. I did not wake my
wife; but I got up, put on my dressing-gown, and went softly to Connie's
room, to see whether she was awake; for I feared, if she were, she would be
frightened. Wynnie always slept in a little bed in the same room. I opened
the door very gently, and peeped in. The fire was burning, for Wynnie was
an admirable stoker, and could generally keep the fire in all night. I
crept to the bedside: there was just light enough to see that Connie was
fast asleep, and that her dreams were not of storms. It was a marvel how
well the child always slept. But, as I turned to leave the room, Wynnie's
voice called me in a whisper. Approaching her bed, I saw her wide eyes,
like the eyes of the darkness, for I could scarcely see anything of her
face.

"Awake, darling?" I said.

"Yes, papa. I have been awake a long time; but isn't Connie sleeping
delightfully? She does sleep so well! Sleep is surely very good for her."

"It is the best thing for us all, next to God's spirit, I sometimes think,
my dear. But are you frightened by the storm? Is that what keeps you
awake?"

"I don't think that is what keeps me awake; but sometimes the house shakes
so that I do feel a little nervous. I don't know how it is. I never felt
afraid of anything natural before."

"What our Lord said about not being afraid of anything that could only hurt
the body applies here, and in all the terrors of the night. Think about
him, dear."

"I do try, papa. Don't you stop; you will get cold. It is a dreadful storm,
is it not? Suppose there should be people drowning out there now!"

"There may be, my love. People are dying almost every other moment, I
suppose, on the face of the earth. Drowning is only an easy way of dying.
Mind, they are all in God's hands."

"Yes, papa. I will turn round and shut my eyes, and fancy that his hand is
over them, making them dark with his care."

"And it will not be fancy, my darling, if you do. You remember those
odd but no less devout lines of George Herbert? Just after he says, so
beautifully, 'And now with darkness closest weary eyes,' he adds:

  Thus in thy ebony box
  Thou dost enclose us, till the day
  Put our amendment in our way,
  And give new wheels to our disordered clocks."

"He is very fond of boxes, by the way. So go to sleep, dear. You are a good
clock of God's making; but you want new wheels, according to our beloved
brother George Herbert. Therefore sleep. Good-night."

This was tiresome talk--was it--in the middle of the night, reader? Well,
but my child did not think so, I know.

Dark, dank, weeping, the morning dawned. All dreary was the earth and sky.
The wind was still hunting the clouds across the heavens. It lulled a
little while we sat at breakfast, but soon the storm was up again, and
the wind raved. I went out. The wind caught me as if with invisible human
hands, and shook me. I fought with it, and made my way into the village.
The streets were deserted. I peeped up the inn-yard as I passed: not a man
or horse was to be seen. The little shops looked as if nobody had crossed
their thresholds for a week. Not a door was open. One child came out of the
baker's with a big loaf in her apron. The wind threatened to blow the hair
off her head, if not herself first into the canal. I took her by the hand
and led her, or rather, let her lead me home, while I kept her from being
carried away by the wind. Having landed her safely inside her mother's
door, I went on, climbed the heights above the village, and looked abroad
over the Atlantic. What a waste of aimless tossing to and fro! Gray mist
above, full of falling rain; gray, wrathful waters underneath, foaming and
bursting as billow broke upon billow. The tide was ebbing now, but almost
every other wave swept the breakwater. They burst on the rocks at the end
of it, and rushed in shattered spouts and clouds of spray far into the air
over their heads. "Will the time ever come," I thought, "when man shall
be able to store up even this force for his own ends? Who can tell?" The
solitary form of a man stood at some distance gazing, as I was gazing, out
on the ocean. I walked towards him, thinking with myself who it could be
that loved Nature so well that he did not shrink from her even in her most
uncompanionable moods. I suspected, and soon found I was right; it was
Percivale.

"What a clashing of water-drops!" I said, thinking of a line somewhere in
Coleridge's Remorse. "They are but water-drops, after all, that make this
great noise upon the rocks; only there is a great many of them."

"Yes," said Percivale. "But look out yonder. You see a single sail,
close-reefed--that is all I can see--away in the mist there? As soon as you
think of the human struggle with the elements, as soon as you know that
hearts are in the midst of it, it is a clashing of water-drops no more. It
is an awful power, with which the will and all that it rules have to fight
for the mastery, or at least for freedom."

"Surely you are right. It is the presence of thought, feeling, effort that
gives the majesty to everything. It is even a dim attribution of human
feelings to this tormented, passionate sea that gives it much of its awe;
although, as we were saying the other day, it is only _a picture_ of the
troubled mind. But as I have now seen how matters are with the elements,
and have had a good pluvial bath as well, I think I will go home and change
my clothes."

"I have hardly had enough of it yet," returned Percivale. "I shall have a
stroll along the heights here, and when the tide has fallen a little way
from the foot of the cliffs I shall go down on the sands and watch awhile
there."

"Well, you're a younger man than I am; but I've seen the day, as Lear says.
What an odd tendency we old men have to boast of the past: we would be
judged by the past, not by the present. We always speak of the strength
that is withered and gone, as if we had some claim upon it still. But I am
not going to talk in this storm. I am always talking."

"I will go with you as far as the village, and then I will turn and take my
way along the downs for a mile or two; I don't mind being wet."

"I didn't once."

"Don't you think," resumed Percivale, "that in some sense the old man--not
that I can allow _you_ that dignity yet, Mr. Walton--has a right to regard
the past as his own?"

"That would be scanned," I answered, as we walked towards the village.
"Surely the results of the past are the man's own. Any action of the man's,
upon which the life in him reposes, remains his. But suppose a man had done
a good deed once, and instead of making that a foundation upon which to
build more good, grew so vain of it that he became incapable of doing
anything more of the same sort, you could not say that the action belonged
to him still. Therein he has severed his connection with the past. Again,
what has never in any deep sense been a man's own, cannot surely continue
to be his afterwards. Thus the things that a man has merely possessed once,
the very people who most admired him for their sakes when he had them,
give him no credit for after he has lost them. Riches that have taken
to themselves wings leave with the poor man only a surpassing poverty.
Strength, likewise, which can so little depend on any exercise of the will
in man, passes from him with the years. It was not his all the time; it was
but lent him, and had nothing to do with his inward force. A bodily feeble
man may put forth a mighty life-strength in effort, and show nothing to the
eyes of his neighbour; while the strong man gains endless admiration for
what he could hardly help. But the effort of the one remains, for it was
his own; the strength of the other passes from him, for it was never his
own. So with beauty, which the commonest woman acknowledges never to have
been hers in seeking to restore it by deception. So, likewise, in a great
measure with intellect."

"But if you take away intellect as well, what do you leave a man that can
in any way be called his own?"

"Certainly his intellect is not his own. One thing only is his own--to will
the truth. This, too, is as much God's gift as everything else: I ought to
say is more God's gift than anything else, for he gives it to be the man's
own more than anything else can be. And when he wills the truth, he has
God himself. Man _can_ possess God: all other things follow as necessary
results. What poor creatures we should have been if God had not made us to
do something--to look heavenwards--to lift up the hands that hang down, and
strengthen the feeble knees! Something like this was in the mind of the
prophet Jeremiah when he said, 'Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man
glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not
the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth glory in this,
that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise
loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth: for in these
things I delight, saith the Lord.' My own conviction is, that a vague sense
of a far higher life in ourselves than we yet know anything about is at the
root of all our false efforts to be able to think something of ourselves.
We cannot commend ourselves, and therefore we set about priding ourselves.
We have little or no strength of mind, faculty of operation, or worth of
will, and therefore we talk of our strength of body, worship the riches
we have, or have not, it is all one, and boast of our paltry intellectual
successes. The man most ambitious of being considered a universal genius
must at last confess himself a conceited dabbler, and be ready to part with
all he knows for one glimpse more of that understanding of God which the
wise men of old held to be essential to every man, but which the growing
luminaries of the present day will not allow to be even possible for any
man."

We had reached the brow of the heights, and here we parted. A fierce blast
of wind rushed at me, and I hastened down the hill. How dreary the streets
did look!--how much more dreary than the stormy down! I saw no living
creature as I returned but a terribly draggled dog, a cat that seemed to
have a bad conscience, and a lovely little girl-face, which, forgetful of
its own rights, would flatten the tip of the nose belonging to it against a
window-pane. Every rain-pool was a mimic sea, and had a mimic storm within
its own narrow bounds. The water went hurrying down the kennels like a long
brown snake anxious to get to its hole and hide from the tormenting wind,
and every now and then the rain came in full rout before the conquering
blast.

When I got home, I peeped in at Connie's door the first thing, and saw that
she was raised a little more than usual; that is, the end of the conch
against which she leaned was at a more acute angle. She was sitting
staring, rather than gazing, out at the wild tumult which she could see
over the shoulder of the down on which her window immediately looked. Her
face was paler and keener than usual.

"Why, Connie, who set you up so straight?"

"Mr. Turner, papa. I wanted to see out, and he raised me himself. He says I
am so much better, I may have it in the seventh notch as often as I like."

"But you look too tired for it. Hadn't you better lie down again?"

"It's only the storm, papa."

"The more reason you should not see it if it tires you so."

"It does not tire me, papa. Only I keep constantly wondering what is going
to come out of it. It looks so as if something must follow."

"You didn't hear me come into your room last night, Connie. The storm was
raging then as loud as it is now, but you were out of its reach--fast
asleep. Now it is too much for you. You must lie down."

"Very well, papa."

I lowered the support, and when I returned from changing my wet garments
she was already looking much better.

After dinner I went to my study, but when evening began to fall I went out
again. I wanted to see how our next neighbours, the sexton and his wife,
were faring. The wind had already increased in violence. It threatened to
blow a hurricane. The tide was again rising, and was coming in with great
rapidity. The old mill shook to the foundation as I passed through it to
reach the lower part where they lived. When I peeped in from the bottom
of the stair, I saw no one; but, hearing the steps of someone overhead, I
called out.

Agnes's voice made answer, as she descended an inner stair which led to the
bedrooms above--

"Mother's gone to church, sir."

"Gone to church!" I said, a vague pang darting through me as I thought
whether I had forgotten any service; but the next moment I recalled what
the old woman had herself told me of her preference for the church during a
storm.

"O yes, Agnes, I remember!" I said; "your mother thinks the weather bad
enough to take to the church, does she? How do you come to be here now?
Where is your husband?"

"He'll be here in an hour or so, sir. He don't mind the wet. You see, we
don't like the old people to be left alone when it blows what the sailors
call 'great guns.'"

"And what becomes of his mother then?"

"There don't be any sea out there, sir. Leastways," she added with a quiet
smile, and stopped.

"You mean, I suppose, Agnes, that there is never any perturbation of the
elements out there?"

She laughed; for she understood me well enough. The temper of Joe's mother
was proverbial.

"But really, sir," she said, "she don't mind the weather a bit; and though
we don't live in the same cottage with her, for Joe wouldn't hear of that,
we see her far oftener than we see my mother, you know."

"I'm sure it's quite fair, Agnes. Is Joe very sorry that he married you,
now?"

She hung her head, and blushed so deeply through all her sallow complexion,
that I was sorry I had teased her, and said so. This brought a reply.

"I don't think he be, sir. I do think he gets better. He's been working
very hard the last week or two, and he says it agrees with him."

"And how are you?"

"Quite well, thank you, sir."

I had never seen her look half so well. Life was evidently a very different
thing to both of them now. I left her, and took my way to the church.

When I reached the churchyard, there, in the middle of the rain and the
gathering darkness, was the old man busy with the duties of his calling. A
certain headstone stood right under a drip from the roof of the southern
transept; and this drip had caused the mould at the foot of the stone, on
the side next the wall, to sink, so that there was a considerable crack
between the stone and the soil. The old man had cut some sod from another
part of the churchyard, and was now standing, with the rain pouring on him
from the roof, beating this sod down in the crack. He was sheltered from
the wind by the church, but he was as wet as he could be. I may mention
that he never appeared in the least disconcerted when I came upon him in
the discharge of his functions: he was so content with his own feeling in
the matter, that no difference of opinion could disturb him.

"This will never do, Coombes," I said. "You will get your death of cold.
You must be as full of water as a sponge. Old man, there's rheumatism in
the world!"

"It be only my work, sir. But I believe I ha' done now for a night. I think
he'll be a bit more comfortable now. The very wind could get at him through
that hole."

"Do go home, then," I said, "and change your clothes. Is your wife in the
church?"

"She be, sir. This door, sir--this door," he added, as he saw me going
round to the usual entrance. "You'll find her in there."

I lifted the great latch and entered. I could not see her at first, for it
was much darker inside the church. It felt very quiet in there somehow,
although the place was full of the noise of winds and waters. Mrs. Coombes
was not sitting on the bell-keys, where I looked for her first, for the
wind blew down the tower in many currents and draughts--how it did roar up
there--as if the louvres had been a windsail to catch the wind and send
it down to ventilate the church!--she was sitting at the foot of the
chancel-rail, with her stocking as usual.

The sight of her sweet old face, lighted up by a moonlike smile as I drew
near her, in the middle of the ancient dusk filled with sounds, but only
sounds of tempest, gave me a sense of one dwelling in the secret place of
the Most High, such as I shall never forget. It was no time to say much,
however.

"How long do you mean to stay here, Mrs. Coombes?" I asked. "Not all
night?"

"No, not all night, surely, sir. But I hadn't thought o' going yet for a
bit."

"Why there's Coombes out there, wet to the skin; and I'm afraid he'll go on
pottering at the churchyard bed-clothes till he gets his bones as full of
rheumatism as they can hold."

"Deary me! I didn't know as my old man was there. He tould me he had them
all comforble for the winter a week ago. But to be sure there's always some
mendin' to do."

I heard the voice of Joe outside, and the next moment he came into the
church. After speaking to me, he turned to Mrs. Coombes.

"You be comin' home with me, mother. This will never do. Father's as wet as
a mop. I ha' brought something for your supper, and Aggy's a-cookin' of it;
and we're going to be comfortable over the fire, and have a chapter or two
of the New Testament to keep down the noise of the sea. There! Come along."

The old woman drew her cloak over her head, put her knitting carefully in
her pocket, and stood aside for me to lead the way.

"No, no," I said; "I'm the shepherd and you're the sheep, so I'll drive you
before me--at least, you and Coombes. Joe here will be offended if I take
on me to say I am _his_ shepherd."


"Nay, nay, don't say that, sir. You've been a good shepherd to me when I
was a very sulky sheep. But if you'll please to go, sir, I'll lock the door
behind; for you know in them parts the shepherd goes first and the sheep
follow the shepherd. And I'll follow like a good sheep," he added,
laughing.

"You're right, Joe," I said, and took the lead without more ado.

I was struck by his saying _them parts_, which seemed to indicate a habit
of pondering on the places as well as circumstances of the gospel-story.
The sexton joined us at the door, and we all walked to his cottage, Joe
taking care of his mother-in-law and I taking what care I could of Coombes
by carrying his tools for him. But as we went I feared I had done ill in
that, for the wind blew so fiercely that I thought the thin feeble little
man would have got on better if he had been more heavily weighted against
it. But I made him take a hold of my arm, and so we got in. The old man
took his tools from me and set them down in the mill, for the roof of which
I felt some anxiety as we passed through, so full of wind was the whole
space. But when we opened the inner door the welcome of a glowing fire
burst up the stair as if that had been a well of warmth and light below. I
went down with them. Coombes departed to change his clothes, and the rest
of us stood round the fire, where Agnes was busy cooking something like
white puddings for their supper.

"Did you hear, sir," said Joe, "that the coastguard is off to the
Goose-pot? There's a vessel ashore there, they say. I met them on the road
with the rocket-cart."

"How far off is that, Joe?"

"Some five or six miles, I suppose, along the coast nor'ards."

"What sort of a vessel is she?"

"That I don't know. Some say she be a schooner, others a brigantine. The
coast-guard didn't know themselves."

"Poor things!" said Mrs. Coombes. "If any of them comes ashore, they'll be
sadly knocked to pieces on the rocks in a night like this."

She had caught a little infection of her husband's mode of thought.

"It's not likely to clear up before morning, I fear; is it, Joe?"

"I don't think so, sir. There's no likelihood."

"Will you condescend to sit down and take a share with us, sir?" said the
old woman.

"There would be no condescension in that, Mrs. Coombes. I will another time
with all my heart; but in such a night I ought to be at home with my own
people. They will be more uneasy if I am away."

"Of coorse, of coorse, sir."

"So I'll bid you good-night. I wish this storm were well over."

I buttoned my great-coat, pulled my hat down on my head, and set out. It
was getting on for high water. The night was growing very dark. There would
be a moon some time, but the clouds were so dense she could not do much
while they came between. The roaring of the waves on the shore was
terrible; all I could see of them now was the whiteness of their breaking,
but they filled the earth and the air with their furious noises. The wind
roared from the sea; two oceans were breaking on the land, only to the one
had been set a hitherto--to the other none. Ere the night was far gone,
however, I had begun to doubt whether the ocean itself had not broken its
bars.

I found the whole household full of the storm. The children kept pressing
their faces to the windows, trying to pierce, as by force of will, through
the darkness, and discover what the wild thing out there was doing. They
could see nothing: all was one mass of blackness and dismay, with a soul in
it of ceaseless roaring. I ran up to Connie's room, and found that she was
left alone. She looked restless, pale, and frightened. The house quivered,
and still the wind howled and whistled through the adjoining bark-hut.

"Connie, darling, have they left you alone?" I said.

"Only for a few minutes, papa. I don't mind it."

"Don't be frightened at the storm, my dear. He who could walk on the sea
of Galilee, and still the storm of that little pool, can rule the Atlantic
just as well. Jeremiah says he 'divideth the sea when the waves thereof
roar.'"

The same moment Dora came running into the room.

"Papa," she cried, "the spray--such a lot of it--came dashing on the
windows in the dining-room. Will it break them?"

"I hope not, my dear. Just stay with Connie while I run down."

"O, papa! I do want to see."

"What do you want to see, Dora?"

"The storm, papa."

"It is as black as pitch. You can't see anything."

"O, but I want to--to--be beside it."

"Well, you sha'n't stay with Connie, if you are not willing. Go along. Ask
Wynnie to come here."

The child was so possessed by the commotion without that she did not
seem even to see my rebuke, not to say feel it. She ran off, and Wynnie
presently came. I left her with Connie, put on a long waterproof cloak,
and went down to the dining-room. A door led from it immediately on to the
little green in front of the house, between it and the sea. The dining-room
was dark, for they had put out the lights that they might see better from
the windows. The children and some of the servants were there looking out.
I opened the door cautiously. It needed the strength of two of the women
to shut it behind me. The moment I opened it a great sheet of spray rushed
over me. I went down the little grassy slope. The rain had ceased, and it
was not quite so dark as I had expected. I could see the gleaming whiteness
all before me. The next moment a wave rolled over the low wall in front of
me, breaking on it and wrapping me round in a sheet of water. Something
hurt me sharply on the leg; and I found, on searching, that one of the
large flat stones that lay for coping on the top of the wall was on the
grass beside me. If it had struck me straight, it must have broken my leg.

There came a little lull in the wind, and just as I turned to go into the
house again, I thought I heard a gun. I stood and listened, but heard
nothing more, and fancied I must have been mistaken. I returned and tapped
at the door; but I had to knock loudly before they heard me within. When I
went up to the drawing-room, I found that Percivale had joined our party.
He and Turner were talking together at one of the windows.

"Did you hear a gun?" I asked them.

"No. Was there one?"

"I'm not sure. I half-fancied I heard one, but no other followed. There
will be a good many fired to-night, though, along this awful coast."

"I suppose they keep the life-boat always ready," said Turner.

"No life-boat even, I fear, would live in such a sea," I said, remembering
what the officer of the coast-guard had told me.

"They would try, though, I suppose," said Turner.

"I do not know," said Percivale. "I don't know the people. But I have seen
a life-boat out in as bad a night--whether in as bad a sea, I cannot tell:
that depends on the coast, I suppose."

We went on chatting for some time, wondering how the coast-guard had fared
with the vessel ashore at the Goose-pot. Wynnie joined us.

"How is Connie, now, my dear?"

"Very restless and excited, papa. I came down to say, that if Mr. Turner
didn't mind, I wish he would go up and see her."

"Of course--instantly," said Turner, and moved to follow Winnie.

But the same moment, as if it had been beside us in the room, so clear, so
shrill was it, we heard Connie's voice shrieking, "Papa, papa! There's a
great ship ashore down there. Come, come!"

Turner and I rushed from the room in fear and dismay. "How? What? Where
could the voice come from?" was the unformed movement of our thoughts. But
the moment we left the drawing-room the thing was clear, though not the
less marvellous and alarming. We forgot all about the ship, and thought
only of our Connie. So much does the near hide the greater that is afar!
Connie kept on calling, and her voice guided our eyes.

A little stair led immediately from this floor up to the bark-hut, so that
it might be reached without passing through the bedroom. The door at the
top of it was open. The door that led from Connie's room into the bark-hut
was likewise open, and light shone through it into the place--enough to
show a figure standing by the furthest window with face pressed against the
glass. And from this figure came the cry, "Papa, papa! Quick, quick! The
waves will knock her to pieces!"

In very truth it was Connie standing there.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE SHIPWRECK.


Things that happen altogether have to be told one after the other. Turner
and I both rushed at the narrow stair. There was not room for more than one
upon it. I was first, but stumbled on the lowest step and fell. Turner
put his foot on my back, jumped over me, sprang up the stair, and when I
reached the top of it after him, he was meeting me with Connie in his arms,
carrying her back to her room. But the girl kept crying--"Papa, papa, the
ship, the ship!"

My duty woke in me. Turner could attend to Connie far better than I could.
I made one spring to the window. The moon was not to be seen, but the
clouds were thinner, and light enough was soaking through them to show a
wave-tormented mass some little way out in the bay; and in that one moment
in which I stood looking, a shriek pierced the howling of the wind, cutting
through it like a knife. I rushed bare-headed from the house. When or
how the resolve was born in me I do not know, but I flew straight to the
sexton's, snatched the key from the wall, crying only "ship ashore!" and
rushed to the church.

I remember my hand trembled so that I could hardly get the key into the
lock. I made myself quieter, opened the door, and feeling my way to the
tower, knelt before the keys of the bell-hammers, opened the chest, and
struck them wildly, fiercely. An awful jangling, out of tune and harsh,
burst into monstrous being in the storm-vexed air. Music itself was
untuned, corrupted, and returning to chaos. I struck and struck at the
keys. I knew nothing of their normal use. Noise, outcry, _reveillé_ was all
I meant.

In a few minutes I heard voices and footsteps. From some parts of the
village, out of sight of the shore, men and women gathered to the summons.
Through the door of the church, which I had left open, came voices in
hurried question. "Ship ashore!" was all I could answer, for what was to be
done I was helpless to think.

I wondered that so few appeared at the cry of the bells. After those first
nobody came for what seemed a long time. I believe, however, I was beating
the alarum for only a few minutes altogether, though when I look back upon
the time in the dark church, it looks like half-an-hour at least. But
indeed I feel so confused about all the doings of that night that in
attempting to describe them in order, I feel as if I were walking in a
dream. Still, from comparing mine with the recollected impressions of
others, I think I am able to give a tolerably correct result. Most of the
incidents seem burnt into my memory so that nothing could destroy the depth
of the impression; but the order in which they took place is none the less
doubtful.

A hand was laid on my shoulder.

"Who is there?" I said; for it was far too dark to know anyone.

"Percivale. What is to be done? The coastguard is away. Nobody seems to
know about anything. It is of no use to go on ringing more. Everybody is
out, even to the maid-servants. Come down to the shore, and you will see."

"But is there not the life-boat?"

"Nobody seems to know anything about it, except 'it's no manner of use to
go trying of that with such a sea on.'"

"But there must be someone in command of it," I said.

"Yes," returned Percivale; "but there doesn't seem to be one of the crew
amongst the crowd. All the sailor-like fellows are going about with their
hands in their pockets."

"Let us make haste, then," I said; "perhaps we can find out. Are you sure
the coastguard have nothing to do with the life-boat?"

"I believe not. They have enough to do with their rockets."

"I remember now that Roxton told me he had far more confidence in his
rockets than in anything a life-boat could do, upon this coast at least."

While we spoke we came to the bank of the canal. This we had to cross, in
order to reach that part of the shore opposite which the wreck lay. To my
surprise the canal itself was in a storm, heaving and tossing and dashing
over its banks.

"Percivale," I exclaimed, "the gates are gone; the sea has torn them away."

"Yes, I suppose so. Would God I could get half-a-dozen men to help me. I
have been doing what I could; but I have no influence amongst them."

"What do you mean?" I asked. "What could you do if you had a thousand men
at your command?"

He made me no answer for a few moments, during which we were hurrying on
for the bridge over the canal. Then he said:

"They regard me only as a meddling stranger, I suppose; for I have been
able to get no useful answer. They are all excited; but nobody is doing
anything."

"They must know about it a great deal better than we," I returned; "and we
must take care not to do them the injustice of supposing they are not ready
to do all that can be done."

Percivale was silent yet again.

The record of our conversation looks as quiet on the paper as if we had
been talking in a curtained room; but all the time the ocean was raving in
my very ear, and the awful tragedy was going on in the dark behind us. The
wind was almost as loud as ever, but the rain had quite ceased, and when we
reached the bridge the moon shone out white, as if aghast at what she had
at length succeeded in pushing the clouds aside that she might see. Awe
and helplessness oppressed us. Having crossed the canal, we turned to the
shore. There was little of it left; for the waves had rushed up almost to
the village. The sand and the roads, every garden wall, every window that
looked seaward was crowded with gazers. But it was a wonderfully quiet
crowd, or seemed so at least; for the noise of the wind and the waves
filled the whole vault, and what was spoken was heard only in the ear to
which it was spoken. When we came amongst them we heard only a murmur as of
more articulated confusion. One turn, and we saw the centre of strife and
anxiety--the heart of the storm that filled heaven and earth, upon which
all the blasts and the billows broke and raved.

Out there in the moonlight lay a mass of something whose place was
discernible by the flashing of the waves as they burst over it. She was far
above low-water mark--lay nearer the village by a furlong than the spot
where we had taken our last dinner on the shore. It was strange to think
that yesterday the spot lay bare to human feet, where now so many men and
women were isolated in a howling waste of angry waters; for the cry of
women came plainly to our ears, and we were helpless to save them. It was
terrible to have to do nothing. Percivale went about hurriedly, talking to
this one and that one, as if he still thought something might be done. He
turned to me.

"Do try, Mr. Walton, and find out for me where the captain of the life-boat
is."

I turned to a sailor-like man who stood at my elbow and asked him.

"It's no use, I assure you, sir," he answered; "no boat could live in such
a sea. It would be throwing away the men's lives."

"Do you know where the captain lives?" Percivale asked.

"If I did, I tell you it is of no use."

"Are you the captain yourself?" returned Percivale.

"What is that to you?" he answered, surly now. "I know my own business."

The same moment several of the crowd nearest the edge of the water made a
simultaneous rush into the surf, and laid hold of something, which, as they
returned drawing it to the shore, I saw to be a human form. It was the body
of a woman--alive or dead I could not tell. I could just see the long hair
hanging from the head, which itself hung backward helplessly as they bore
her up the bank. I saw, too, a white face, and I can recall no more.

"Run, Percivale," I said, "and fetch Turner. She may not be dead yet."

"I can't," answered Percivale. "You had better go yourself, Mr. Walton."

He spoke hurriedly. I saw he must have some reason for answering me so
abruptly. He was talking to a young fellow whom I recognised as one of the
most dissolute in the village; and just as I turned to go they walked away
together.

I sped home as fast as I could. It was easier to get along now that the
moon shone. I found that Turner had given Connie a composing draught, and
that he had good hopes she would at least be nothing the worse for the
marvellous result of her excitement. She was asleep exhausted, and her
mother was watching by her side. It, seemed strange that she could sleep;
but Turner said it was the safest reaction, partly, however, occasioned by
what he had given her. In her sleep she kept on talking about the ship.

We hurried back to see if anything could be done for the woman. As we went
up the side of the canal we perceived a dark body meeting us. The clouds
had again obscured, though not quite hidden the moon, and we could not at
first make out what it was. When we came nearer it showed itself a body
of men hauling something along. Yes, it was the life-boat, afloat on the
troubled waves of the canal, each man seated in his own place, his hands
quiet upon his oar, his cork-jacket braced about him, his feet out before
him, ready to pull the moment they should pass beyond the broken gates of
the lock out on the awful tossing of the waves. They sat very silent, and
the men on the path towed them swiftly along. The moon uncovered her face
for a moment, and shone upon the faces of two of the rowers.

"Percivale! Joe!" I cried.

"All right, sir!" said Joe.

"Does your wife know of it, Joe?" I almost gasped.

"To be sure," answered Joe. "It's the first chance I've had of returning
thanks for her. Please God, I shall see her again to-night."

"That's good, Joe. Trust in God, my men, whether you sink or swim."

"Ay, ay, sir!" they answered as one man.

"This is your doing, Percivale," I said, turning and walking alongside of
the boat for a little way.

"It's more Jim Allen's," said Percivale. "If I hadn't got a hold of him I
couldn't have done anything."

"God bless you, Jim Allen!" I said. "You'll be a better man after this, I
think."

"Donnow, sir," returned Jim cheerily. "It's harder work than pulling an
oar."

The captain himself was on board. Percivale having persuaded Jim Allen, the
two had gone about in the crowd seeking proselytes. In a wonderfully short
space they had found almost all the crew, each fresh one picking up another
or more; till at length the captain, protesting against the folly of it,
gave in, and once having yielded, was, like a true Englishman, as much in
earnest as any of them. The places of two who were missing were supplied by
Percivale and Joe, the latter of whom would listen to no remonstrance.

"I've nothing to lose," Percivale had said. "You have a young wife, Joe."

"I've everything to win," Joe had returned. "The only thing that makes me
feel a bit faint-hearted over it, is that I'm afraid it's not my duty that
drives me to it, but the praise of men, leastways of a woman. What would
Aggy think of me if I was to let them drown out there and go to my bed and
sleep? I must go."

"Very well, Joe," returned Percivale, "I daresay you are right. You can
row, of course?"

"I can row hard, and do as I'm told," said Joe.

"All right," said Percivale; "come along."

This I heard afterwards. We were now hurrying against the wind towards the
mouth of the canal, some twenty men hauling on the tow-rope. The critical
moment would be in the clearing of the gates, I thought, some parts of
which might remain swinging; but they encountered no difficulty there, as
I heard afterwards. For I remembered that this was not my post, and turned
again to follow the doctor.

"God bless you, my men!" I said, and left them.

They gave a great hurrah, and sped on to meet their fate. I found Turner in
the little public-house, whither they had carried the body. The woman was
quite dead.

"I fear it is an emigrant vessel," he said.

"Why do you think so?" I asked, in some consternation.

"Come and look at the body," he said.

It was that of a woman about twenty, tall, and finely formed. The face was
very handsome, but it did not need the evidence of the hands to prove that
she was one of our sisters who have to labour for their bread.

"What should such a girl be doing on board ship but going out to America or
Australia--to her lover, perhaps," said Turner. "You see she has a locket
on her neck; I hope nobody will dare to take it off. Some of these people
are not far derived from those who thought a wreck a Godsend."

A sound of many feet was at the door just as we turned to leave the house.
They were bringing another body--that of an elderly woman--dead, quite
dead. Turner had ceased examining her, and we were going out together,
when, through all the tumult of the wind and waves, a fierce hiss,
vindictive, wrathful, tore the air over our heads. Far up, seawards,
something like a fiery snake shot from the high ground on the right side of
the bay, over the vessel, and into the water beyond it.

"Thank God! that's the coastguard," I cried.

We rushed through the village, and up on the heights, where they had
planted their apparatus. A little crowd surrounded them. How dismal the sea
looked in the struggling moonlight! I felt as if I were wandering in the
mazes of an evil dream. But when I approached the cliff, and saw down below
the great mass, of the vessel's hulk, with the waves breaking every moment
upon her side, I felt the reality awful indeed. Now and then there would
come a kind of lull in the wild sequence of rolling waters, and then I
fancied for a moment that I saw how she rocked on the bottom. Her masts had
all gone by the board, and a perfect chaos of cordage floated and swung in
the waves that broke over her. But her bowsprit remained entire, and shot
out into the foamy dark, crowded with human beings. The first rocket
had missed. They were preparing to fire another. Roxton stood with his
telescope in his hand, ready to watch the result.

"This is a terrible job, sir," he said when I approached him; "I doubt if
we shall save one of them."

"There's the life-boat!" I cried, as a dark spot appeared on the waters
approaching the vessel from the other side.

"The life-boat!" he returned with contempt. "You don't mean to say they've
got _her_ out! She'll only add to the mischief. We'll have to save her
too."

She was still some way from the vessel, and in comparatively smooth water.
But between her and the hull the sea raved in madness; the billows rode
over each other, in pursuit, as it seemed, of some invisible prey. Another
hiss, as of concentrated hatred, and the second rocket was shooting its
parabola through the dusky air. Roxton raised his telescope to his eye the
same moment.

"Over her starn!" he cried. "There's a fellow getting down from the
cat-head to run aft.--Stop, stop!" he shouted involuntarily. "There's an
awful wave on your quarter."

His voice was swallowed in the roaring of the storm. I fancied I could
distinguish a dark something shoot from the bows towards the stern. But the
huge wave fell upon the wreck. The same moment Roxton exclaimed--so coolly
as to amaze me, forgetting how men must come to regard familiar things
without discomposure--

"He's gone! I said so. The next'll have better luck, I hope."

That man came ashore alive, though.

All were forward of the foremast. The bowsprit, when I looked through
Roxton's telescope, was shapeless as with a swarm of bees. Now and then a
single shriek rose upon the wild air. But now my attention was fixed on the
life-boat. She had got into the wildest of the broken water; at one
moment she was down in a huge cleft, the next balanced like a beam on the
knife-edge of a wave, tossed about hither and thither, as if the waves
delighted in mocking the rudder; but hitherto she had shipped no water. I
am here drawing upon the information I have since received; but I did
see how a huge wave, following close upon the back of that on which she
floated, rushed, towered up over her, toppled, and fell upon the life-boat
with tons of water: the moon was shining brightly enough to show this with
tolerable distinctness. The boat vanished. The next moment, there she was,
floating helplessly about, like a living thing stunned by the blow of the
falling wave. The struggle was over. As far as I could see, every man was
in his place; but the boat drifted away before the storm shore-wards, and
the men let her drift. Were they all killed as they sat? I thought of my
Wynnie, and turned to Roxton.

"That wave has done for them," he said. "I told you it was no use. There
they go."

"But what is the matter?" I asked. "The men are sitting every man in his
place."

"I think so," he answered. "Two were swept overboard, but they caught the
ropes and got in again. But don't you see they have no oars?"

That wave had broken every one of them off at the rowlocks, and now they
were as helpless as a sponge.

I turned and ran. Before I reached the brow of the hill another rocket was
fired and fell wide shorewards, partly because the wind blew with fresh
fury at the very moment. I heard Roxton say--"She's breaking up. It's no
use. That last did for her;" but I hurried off for the other side of the
bay, to see what became of the life-boat. I heard a great cry from the
vessel as I reached the brow of the hill, and turned for a parting glance.
The dark mass had vanished, and the waves were rushing at will over the
space. When I got to the shore the crowd was less. Many were running, like
myself, towards the other side, anxious about the life-boat. I hastened
after them; for Percivale and Joe filled my heart.

They led the way to the little beach in front of the parsonage. It would
be well for the crew if they were driven ashore there, for it was the only
spot where they could escape being dashed on rocks.

There was a crowd before the garden-wall, a bustle, and great confusion of
speech. The people, men and women, boys and girls, were all gathered about
the crew of the life-boat,--which already lay, as if it knew of nothing but
repose, on the grass within.

"Percivale!" I cried, making my way through the crowd.

There was no answer.

"Joe Harper!" I cried again, searching with eager eyes amongst the crew, to
whom everybody was talking.

Still there was no answer; and from the disjointed phrases I heard, I could
gather nothing. All at once I saw Wynnie looking over the wall, despair in
her face, her wide eyes searching wildly through the crowd. I could not
look at her till I knew the worst. The captain was talking to old Coombes.
I went up to him. As soon as he saw me, he gave me his attention.

"Where is Mr. Percivale?" I asked, with all the calmness I could assume.

He took me by the arm, and drew me out of the crowd, nearer to the waves,
and a little nearer to the mouth of the canal. The tide had fallen
considerably, else there would not have been standing-room, narrow as it
was, which the people now occupied. He pointed in the direction of the
Castle-rock.

"If you mean the stranger gentleman--"

"And Joe Harper, the blacksmith," I interposed.

"They're there, sir."

"You don't mean those two--just those two--are drowned?" I said.

"No, sir; I don't say that; but God knows they have little chance."

I could not help thinking that God might know they were not in the smallest
danger. But I only begged him to tell me where they were.

"Do you see that schooner there, just between you and the Castle-rock?"

"No," I answered; "I can see nothing. Stay. I fancy I can. But I am always
ready to fancy I see a thing when I am told it is there. I can't say I see
it."

"I can, though. The gentleman you mean, and Joe Harper too, are, I believe,
on board of that schooner."

"Is she aground?"

"O dear no, sir. She's a light craft, and can swim there well enough. If
she'd been aground, she'd ha' been ashore in pieces hours ago. But whether
she'll ride it out, God only knows, as I said afore."

"How ever did they get aboard of her? I never saw her from the heights
opposite."

"You were all taken up by the ship ashore, you see, sir. And she don't make
much show in this light. But there she is, and they're aboard of her. And
this is how it was."

He went on to give me his part of the story; but I will now give the whole
of it myself, as I have gathered and pieced it together.

Two men had been swept overboard, as Roxton said--one of them was
Percivale--but they had both got on board again, to drift, oarless, with
the rest--now in a windless valley--now aloft on a tempest-swept hill of
water--away towards a goal they knew not, neither had chosen, and which yet
they could by no means avoid.

A little out of the full force of the current, and not far from the channel
of the small stream, which, when the tide was out, flowed across the sands
nearly from the canal gates to the Castle-rock, lay a little schooner,
belonging to a neighbouring port, Boscastle, I think, which, caught in
the storm, had been driven into the bay when it was almost dark, some
considerable time before the great ship. The master, however, knew the
ground well. The current carried him a little out of the wind, and would
have thrown him upon the rocks next, but he managed to drop anchor just in
time, and the cable held; and there the little schooner hung in the skirts
of the storm, with the jagged teeth of the rocks within an arrow flight. In
the excitement of the great wreck, no one had observed the danger of the
little coasting bird. If the cable held till the tide went down, and the
anchor did not drag, she would be safe; if not, she must be dashed to
pieces.

In the schooner were two men and a boy: two men had been washed overboard
an hour or so before they reached the bay. When they had dropped their
anchor, they lay down exhausted on the deck. Indeed they were so worn out
that they had been unable to drop their sheet anchor, and were holding on
only by their best bower. Had they not been a good deal out of the wind,
this would have been useless. Even if it held she was in danger of having
her bottom stove in by bumping against the sands as the tide went out. But
that they had not to think of yet. The moment they lay down they fell
fast asleep in the middle of the storm. While they slept it increased in
violence.

Suddenly one of them awoke, and thought he saw a vision of angels. For over
his head faces looked down upon him from the air--that is, from the top of
a great wave. The same moment he heard a voice, two of the angels dropped
on the deck beside him, and the rest vanished. Those angels were Percivale
and Joe. And angels they were, for they came just in time, as all angels
do--never a moment too soon or a moment too late: the schooner _was_
dragging her anchor. This was soon plain even to the less experienced eyes
of the said angels.

But it did not take them many minutes now to drop their strongest anchor,
and they were soon riding in perfect safety for some time to come.

One of the two men was the son of old Coombes, the sexton, who was engaged
to marry the girl I have spoken of in the end of the fourth chapter in the
second volume.

Percivale's account of the matter, as far as he was concerned, was, that as
they drifted helplessly along, he suddenly saw from the top of a huge wave
the little vessel below him. They were, in fact, almost upon the rigging.
The wave on which they rode swept the quarter-deck of the schooner.

Percivale says the captain of the lifeboat called out "Aboard!" The captain
said he remembered nothing of the sort. If he did, he must have meant
it for the men on the schooner to get on board the lifeboat. Percivale,
however, who had a most chivalrous (ought I not to say Christian?) notion
of obedience, fancying the captain meant them to board the schooner, sprang
at her fore-shrouds. Thereupon the wave sweeping them along the schooner's
side, Joe sprang at the main-shrouds, and they dropped on the deck
together.

But although my reader is at ease about their fate, we who were in the
affair were anything but easy at the time corresponding to this point of
the narrative. It was a terrible night we passed through.

When I returned, which was almost instantly, for I could do nothing by
staring out in the direction of the schooner, I found that the crowd was
nearly gone. One little group alone remained behind, the centre of which
was a woman. Wynnie had disappeared. The woman who remained behind was
Agnes Harper.

The moon shone out clear as I approached the group; indeed, the clouds were
breaking-up and drifting away off the heavens. The storm had raved out its
business, and was departing into the past.

"Agnes," I said.

"Yes, sir," she answered, and looked up as if waiting for a command. There
was no colour in her cheeks or in her lips--at least it seemed so in the
moonlight--only in her eyes. But she was perfectly calm. She was leaning
against the low wall, with her hands clasped, but hanging quietly down
before her.

"The storm is breaking-up, Agnes," I said.

"Yes, sir," she answered in the same still tone. Then, after just a
moment's pause, she spoke out of her heart.

"Joe's at his duty, sir?"

I have given the utterance a point of interrogation; whether she meant that
point I am not quite sure.

"Indubitably," I returned. "I have such faith in Joe, that I should be sure
of that in any case. At all events, he's not taking care of his own life.
And if one is to go wrong, I would ten thousand times rather err on that
side. But I am sure Joe has been doing right, and nothing else."

"Then there's nothing to be said, sir, is there?" she returned, with a sigh
that sounded as of relief.

I presume some of the surrounding condolers had been giving her Job's
comfort by blaming her husband.

"Do you remember, Agnes, what the Lord said to his mother when she
reproached him with having left her and his father?"

"I can't remember anything at this moment, sir," was her touching answer.

"Then I will tell you. He said, 'Why did you look for me? Didn't you know
that I must be about something my Father had given me to do?' Now, Joe was
and is about his Father's business, and you must not be anxious about him.
There could be no better reason for not being anxious."

Agnes was a very quiet woman. When without a word she took my hand and
kissed it, I felt what a depth there was in the feeling she could not
utter. I did not withdraw my hand, for I knew that would be to rebuke her
love for Joe.

"Will you come in and wait?" I said indefinitely.

"No, thank you, sir. I must go to my mother. God will look after Joe, won't
he, sir?"

"As sure as there is a God, Agnes," I said; and she went away without
another word.

I put my hand on the top of the wall and jumped over. I started back with
terror, for I had almost alighted on the body of a woman lying there. The
first insane suggestion was that it had been cast ashore; but the next
moment I knew that it was my own Wynnie.

She had not even fainted. She was lying with her handkerchief stuffed into
her mouth to keep her from screaming. When I uttered her name she rose,
and, without looking at me, walked away towards the house. I followed. She
went straight to her own room and shut the door. I went to find her mother.
She was with Connie, who was now awake, lying pale and frightened. I told
Ethelwyn that Percivale and Joe were on board the little schooner, which
was holding on by her anchor, that Wynnie was in terror about Percivale,
that I had found her lying on the wet grass, and that she must get her into
a warm bath and to bed. We went together to her room.

She was standing in the middle of the floor, with her hands pressed against
her temples.

"Wynnie," I said, "our friends are not drowned. I think you will see them
quite safe in the morning. Pray to God for them."

She did not hear a word.

"Leave her with me," said Ethelwyn, proceeding to undress her; "and tell
nurse to bring up the large bath. There is plenty of hot water in the
boiler. I gave orders to that effect, not knowing what might happen."

Wynnie shuddered as her mother said this; but I waited no longer, for when
Ethelwyn spoke everyone felt her authority. I obeyed her, and then went to
Connie's room.

"Do you mind being left alone a little while?" I asked her.

"No, papa; only--are they all drowned?" she said with a shudder.

"I hope not, my dear; but be sure of the mercy of God, whatever you fear.
You must rest in him, my love; for he is life, and will conquer death both
in the soul and in the body."

"I was not thinking of myself, papa."

"I know that, my dear. But God is thinking of you and every creature that
he has made. And for our sakes you must be quiet in heart, that you may get
better, and be able to help us."

"I will try, papa," she said; and, turning slowly on her side, she lay
quite still.

Dora and the boys were all fast asleep, for it was very late. I cannot,
however, say what hour it was.

Telling nurse to be on the watch because Connie was alone, I went again to
the beach. I called first, however, to inquire after Agnes. I found her
quite composed, sitting with her parents by the fire, none of them doing
anything, scarcely speaking, only listening intently to the sounds of the
storm now beginning to die away.

I next went to the place where I had left Turner. Five bodies lay there,
and he was busy with a sixth. The surgeon of the place was with him, and
they quite expected to recover this man.

I then went down to the sands. An officer of the revenue was taking charge
of all that came ashore--chests, and bales, and everything. For a week the
sea went on casting out the fragments of that which she had destroyed. I
have heard that, for years after, the shifting of the sands would now and
then discover things buried that night by the waves.

All the next day the bodies kept coming ashore, some peaceful as in sleep,
others broken and mutilated. Many were cast upon other parts of the coast.
Some four or five only, all men, were recovered. It was strange to me how
I got used to it. The first horror over, the cry that yet another body had
come awoke only a gentle pity--no more dismay or shuddering. But, finding
I could be of no use, I did not wait longer than just till the morning
began to dawn with a pale ghastly light over the seething raging sea; for
the sea raged on, although the wind had gone down. There were many strong
men about, with two surgeons and all the coastguard, who were well
accustomed to similar though not such extensive destruction. The houses
along the shore were at the disposal of any who wanted aid; the Parsonage
was at some distance; and I confess that when I thought of the state of my
daughters, as well as remembered former influences upon my wife, I was very
glad to think there was no necessity for carrying thither any of those whom
the waves cast on the shore.

When I reached home, and found Wynnie quieter and Connie again asleep, I
walked out along our own downs till I came whence I could see the little
schooner still safe at anchor. From her position I concluded--correctly as
I found afterwards--that they had let out her cable far enough to allow her
to reach the bed of the little stream, where the tide would leave her more
gently. She was clearly out of all danger now; and if Percivale and Joe had
got safe on board of her, we might confidently expect to see them before
many hours were passed. I went home with the good news.

For a few moments I doubted whether I should tell Wynnie, for I could not
know with any certainty that Percivale was in the schooner. But presently I
recalled former conclusions to the effect that we have no right to modify
God's facts for fear of what may be to come. A little hope founded on a
present appearance, even if that hope should never be realised, may be the
very means of enabling a soul to bear the weight of a sorrow past the point
at which it would otherwise break down. I would therefore tell Wynnie, and
let her share my expectation of deliverance.

I think she had been half-asleep, for when I entered her room she started
up in a sitting posture, looking wild, and putting her hands to her head.

"I have brought you good news, Wynnie," I said. "I have been out on the
downs, and there is light enough now to see that the little schooner is
quite safe."

"What schooner?" she asked listlessly, and lay down again, her eyes still
staring, awfully unappeased.

"Why the schooner they say Percivale got on board."

"He isn't drowned then!" she cried with a choking voice, and put her hands
to her face and burst into tears and sobs.

"Wynnie," I said, "look what your faithlessness brings upon you. Everybody
but you has known all night that Percivale and Joe Harper are probably
quite safe. They may be ashore in a couple of hours."

"But you don't know it. He may be drowned yet."

"Of course there is room for doubt, but none for despair. See what a poor
helpless creature hopelessness makes you."

"But how can I help it, papa?" she asked piteously. "I am made so."

But as she spoke the dawn was clear upon the height of her forehead.

"You are not made yet, as I am always telling you; and God has ordained
that you shall have a hand in your own making. You have to consent, to
desire that what you know for a fault shall be set right by his loving will
and spirit."

"I don't know God, papa."

"Ah, my dear, that is where it all lies. You do not know him, or you would
never be without hope."

"But what am I to do to know him!" she asked, rising on her elbow.

The saving power of hope was already working in her. She was once more
turning her face towards the Life.

"Read as you have never read before about Christ Jesus, my love. Read with
the express object of finding out what God is like, that you may know him
and may trust him. And now give yourself to him, and he will give you
sleep."

"What are we to do," I said to my wife, "if Percivale continue silent? For
even if he be in love with her, I doubt if he will speak."

"We must leave all that, Harry," she answered.

She was turning on myself the counsel I had been giving Wynnie. It is
strange how easily we can tell our brother what he ought to do, and yet,
when the case comes to be our own, do precisely as we had rebuked him for
doing. I lay down and fell fast asleep.




CHAPTER IX.

THE FUNERAL.


It was a lovely morning when I woke once more. The sun was flashing back
from the sea, which was still tossing, but no longer furiously, only as if
it wanted to turn itself every way to flash the sunlight about. The madness
of the night was over and gone; the light was abroad, and the world was
rejoicing. When I reached the drawing-room, which afforded the best outlook
over the shore, there was the schooner lying dry on the sands, her two
cables and anchors stretching out yards behind her; but half way between
the two sides of the bay rose a mass of something shapeless, drifted over
with sand. It was all that remained together of the great ship that had the
day before swept over the waters like a live thing with wings--of all the
works of man's hands the nearest to the shape and sign of life. The wind
had ceased altogether, only now and then a little breeze arose which
murmured "I am very sorry," and lay down again. And I knew that in the
houses on the shore dead men and women were lying.

I went down to the dining-room. The three children were busy at their
breakfast, but neither wife, daughter, nor visitor had yet appeared. I made
a hurried meal, and was just rising to go and inquire further into the
events of the night, when the door opened, and in walked Percivale, looking
very solemn, but in perfect health and well-being. I grasped his hand
warmly.

"Thank God," I said, "that you are returned to us, Percivale."

"I doubt if that is much to give thanks for," he said.

"We are the judges of that," I rejoined. "Tell me all about it."

While he was narrating the events I have already communicated, Wynnie
entered. She started, turned pale and then very red, and for a moment
hesitated in the doorway.

"Here is another to rejoice at your safety, Percivale," I said.

Thereupon he stepped forward to meet her, and she gave him her hand with an
emotion so evident that I felt a little distressed--why, I could not easily
have told, for she looked most charming in the act,--more lovely than I had
ever seen her. Her beauty was unconsciously praising God, and her heart
would soon praise him too. But Percivale was a modest man, and I think
attributed her emotion to the fact that he had been in danger in the way of
duty,--a fact sufficient to move the heart of any good woman.

She sat down and began to busy herself with the teapot. Her hand trembled.
I requested Percivale to begin his story once more; and he evidently
enjoyed recounting to her the adventures of the night.

I asked him to sit down and have a second breakfast while I went into the
village, whereto he seemed nothing loth.

As I crossed the floor of the old mill to see how Joe was, the head of
the sexton appeared emerging from it. He looked full of weighty solemn
business. Bidding me good-morning, he turned to the corner where his tools
lay, and proceeded to shoulder spade and pickaxe.

"Ah, Coombes! you'll want them," I said.

"A good many o' my people be come all at once, you see, sir," he returned.
"I shall have enough ado to make 'em all comfortable like."

"But you must get help, you know; you can never make them all comfortable
yourself alone."

"We'll see what I can do," he returned. "I ben't a bit willin' to let no
one do my work for me, I do assure you, sir."

"How many are there wanting your services?" I asked.

"There be fifteen of them now, and there be more, I don't doubt, on the
way."

"But you won't think of making separate graves for them all," I said. "They
died together: let them lie together."

The old man set down his tools, and looked me in the face with indignation.
The face was so honest and old, that, without feeling I had deserved it, I
yet felt the rebuke.

"How would you like, sir," he said, at length, "to be put in the same bed
with a lot of people you didn't know nothing about?"

I knew the old man's way, and that any argument which denied the premiss
of his peculiar fancy was worse than thrown away upon him. I therefore
ventured no farther than to say that I had heard death was a leveller.

"That be very true; and, mayhap, they mightn't think of it after they'd
been down awhile--six weeks, mayhap, or so. But anyhow, it can't be
comfortable for 'em, poor things. One on 'em be a baby: I daresay he'd
rather lie with his mother. The doctor he say one o' the women be a mother.
I don't know," he went on reflectively, "whether she be the baby's own
mother, but I daresay neither o' them 'll mind it if I take it for granted,
and lay 'em down together. So that's one bed less."

One thing was clear, that the old man could not dig fourteen graves within
the needful time. But I would not interfere with his office in the church,
having no reason to doubt that he would perform its duties to perfection.
He shouldered his tools again and walked out. I descended the stair,
thinking to see Joe; but there was no one there but the old woman.

"Where are Joe and Agnes?" I asked.

"You see, sir, Joe had promised a little job of work to be ready to-day,
and so he couldn't stop. He did say Agnes needn't go with him; but she
thought she couldn't part with him so soon, you see, sir."

"She had received him from the dead--raised to life again," I said; "it was
most natural. But what a fine fellow Joe is; nothing will make him neglect
his work!"

"I tried to get him to stop, sir, saying he had done quite enough last
night for all next day; but he told me it was his business to get the tire
put on Farmer Wheatstone's cart-wheel to-day just as much as it was his
business to go in the life-boat yesterday. So he would go, and Aggy
wouldn't stay behind."

"Fine fellow, Joe!" I said, and took my leave.

As I drew near the village, I heard the sound of hammering and sawing, and
apparently everything at once in the way of joinery; they were making the
coffins in the joiners' shops, of which there were two in the place.

I do not like coffins. They seem to me relics of barbarism. If I had my
way, I would have the old thing decently wound in a fair linen cloth, and
so laid in the bosom of the earth, whence it was taken. I would have it
vanish, not merely from the world of vision, but from the world of form, as
soon as may be. The embrace of the fine life-hoarding, life-giving mould,
seems to me comforting, in the vague, foolish fancy that will sometimes
emerge from the froth of reverie--I mean, of subdued consciousness
remaining in the outworn frame. But the coffin is altogether and vilely
repellent. Of this, however, enough, I hate even the shadow of sentiment,
though some of my readers, who may not yet have learned to distinguish
between sentiment and feeling, may wonder how I dare to utter such a
barbarism.

I went to the house of the county magistrate hard by, for I thought
something might have to be done in which I had a share. I found that he had
sent a notice of the loss of the vessel to the Liverpool papers, requesting
those who might wish to identify or claim any of the bodies to appear
within four days at Kilkhaven.

This threw the last upon Saturday, and before the end of the week it was
clear that they must not remain above ground over Sunday. I therefore
arranged that they should be buried late on the Saturday night.

On the Friday morning, a young woman and an old man, unknown to each other,
arrived by the coach from Barnstaple. They had come to see the last of
their friends in this world; to look, if they might, at the shadow left
behind by the departing soul. For as the shadow of any object remains a
moment upon the magic curtain of the eye after the object itself has gone,
so the shadow of the soul, namely, the body, lingers a moment upon the
earth after the object itself has gone to the "high countries." It was
well to see with what a sober sorrow the dignified little old man bore his
grief. It was as if he felt that the loss of his son was only for a moment.
But the young woman had taken on the hue of the corpse she came to seek.
Her eyes were sunken as if with the weight of the light she cared not for,
and her cheeks had already pined away as if to be ready for the grave. A
being thus emptied of its glory seized and possessed my thoughts. She never
even told us whom she came seeking, and after one involuntary question,
which simply received no answer, I was very careful not even to approach
another. I do not think the form she sought was there; and she may have
gone home with the lingering hope to cast the gray aurora of a doubtful
dawn over her coming days, that, after all, that one had escaped.

On the Friday afternoon, with the approbation of the magistrate, I had
all the bodies removed to the church. Some in their coffins, others on
stretchers, they were laid in front of the communion-rail. In the evening
these two went to see them. I took care to be present. The old man soon
found his son. I was at his elbow as he walked between the rows of the
dead. He turned to me and said quietly--

"That's him, sir. He was a good lad. God rest his soul. He's with his
mother; and if I'm sorry, she's glad."

With that he smiled, or tried to smile. I could only lay my hand on his
arm, to let him know that I understood him, and was with him. He walked
out of the church, sat down, upon a stone, and stared at the mould of a
new-made grave in front of him. What was passing behind those eyes God only
knew--certainly the man himself did not know. Our lightest thoughts are of
more awful significance than the most serious of us can imagine.

For the young woman, I thought she left the church with a little light in
her eyes; but she had said nothing. Alas! that the body was not there could
no more justify her than Milton in letting her

  "frail thoughts dally with false surmise."

With him, too, she might well add--

  "Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away."

But God had them in his teaching, and all I could do was to ask them to be
my guests till the funeral and the following Sunday were over. To this
they kindly consented, and I took them to my wife, who received them like
herself, and had in a few minutes made them at home with her, to which no
doubt their sorrow tended, for that brings out the relations of humanity
and destroys its distinctions.

The next morning a Scotchman of a very decided type, originally from
Aberdeen, but resident in Liverpool, appeared, seeking the form of his
daughter. I had arranged that whoever came should be brought to me first. I
went with him to the church. He was a tall, gaunt, bony man, with long arms
and huge hands, a rugged granite-like face, and a slow ponderous utterance,
which I had some difficulty in understanding. He treated the object of his
visit with a certain hardness, and at the same time lightness, which also I
had some difficulty in understanding.

"You want to see the--" I said, and hesitated.

"Ow ay--the boadies," he answered. "She winna be there, I daursay, but I
wad jist like to see; for I wadna like her to be beeried gin sae be 'at she
was there, wi'oot biddin' her good-bye like."

When we reached the church, I opened the door and entered. An awe fell upon
me fresh and new. The beautiful church had become a tomb: solemn, grand,
ancient, it rose as a memorial of the dead who lay in peace before her
altar-rail, as if they had fled thither for sanctuary from a sea of
troubles. And I thought with myself, Will the time ever come when the
churches shall stand as the tombs of holy things that have passed away,
when Christ shall have rendered up the kingdom to his Father, and no man
shall need to teach his neighbour or his brother, saying, "Know the Lord"?
The thought passed through my mind and vanished, as I led my companion up
to the dead. He glanced at one and another, and passed on. He had looked
at ten or twelve ere he stopped, gazing on the face of the beautiful form
which had first come ashore. He stooped and stroked the white cheeks,
taking the head in his great rough hands, and smoothed the brown hair
tenderly, saying, as if he had quite forgotten that she was dead--

"Eh, Maggie! hoo cam _ye_ here, lass?"

Then, as if for the first time the reality had grown comprehensible, he put
his hands before his face, and burst into tears. His huge frame was shaken
with sobs for one long minute, while I stood looking on with awe and
reverence. He ceased suddenly, pulled a blue cotton handkerchief with
yellow spots on it--I see it now--from his pocket, rubbed his face with
it as if drying it with a towel, put it back, turned, and said, without
looking at me, "I'll awa' hame."

"Wouldn't you like a piece of her hair?" I asked.

"Gin ye please," he answered gently, as if his daughter's form had been
mine now, and her hair were mine to give.

By the vestry door sat Mrs. Coombes, watching the dead, with her sweet
solemn smile, and her constant ministration of knitting.

"Have you got a pair of scissors there, Mrs. Coombes?" I asked.

"Yes, to be sure, sir," she answered, rising, and lifting a huge pair by
the string suspending them from her waist.

"Cut off a nice piece of this beautiful hair," I said.

She lifted the lovely head, chose, and cut off a long piece, and handed it
respectfully to the father.

He took it without a word, sat down on the step before the communion-rail,
and began to smooth out the wonderful sleave of dusky gold. It was, indeed,
beautiful hair. As he drew it out, I thought it must be a yard long. He
passed his big fingers through and through it, but tenderly, as if it had
been still growing on the live lovely head, stopping every moment to pick
out the bits of sea-weed and shells, and shake out the sand that had been
wrought into its mass. He sat thus for nearly half-an-hour, and we stood
looking on with something closely akin to awe. At length he folded it up,
drew from his pocket an old black leather book, laid it carefully in the
innermost pocket, and rose. I led the way from the church, and he followed
me.

Outside the church, he laid his hand on my arm, and said, groping with his
other hand in his trousers-pocket--

"She'll hae putten ye to some expense--for the coffin an' sic like."

"We'll talk about that afterwards," I answered. "Come home with me now, and
have some refreshment."

"Na, I thank ye. I hae putten ye to eneuch o' tribble already. I'll jist
awa' hame."

"We are going to lay them down this evening. You won't go before the
funeral. Indeed, I think you can't get away till Monday morning. My wife
and I will be glad of your company till then."

"I'm no company for gentle-fowk, sir."

"Come and show me in which of these graves you would like to have her
laid," I said.

He yielded and followed me.

Coombes had not dug many spadefuls before he saw what had been plain
enough--that ten such men as he could not dig the graves in time. But there
was plenty of help to be had from the village and the neighbouring farms.
Most of them were now ready, but a good many men were still at work. The
brown hillocks lay all about the church-yard--the mole-heaps of burrowing
Death.

The stranger looked around him. His face grew critical. He stepped a little
hither and thither. At length he turned to me and said--

"I wadna like to be greedy; but gin ye wad lat her lie next the kirk
there--i' that neuk, I wad tak' it kindly. And syne gin ever it cam' aboot
that I cam' here again, I wad ken whaur she was. Could ye get a sma' bit
heidstane putten up? I wad leave the siller wi' ye to pay for't."

"To be sure I can. What will you have put on the stone?"

"Ow jist--let me see--Maggie Jamieson--nae Marget, but jist Maggie. She was
aye Maggie at home. Maggie Jamieson, frae her father. It's the last thing I
can gie her. Maybe ye micht put a verse o' Scripter aneath't, ye ken."

"What verse would you like?"

He thought for a little.

"Isna there a text that says, 'The deid shall hear his voice'?"

"Yes: 'The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God.'"

"Ay. That's it. Weel, jist put that on.--They canna do better than hear his
voice," he added, with a strange mixture of Scotch ratiocination.

I led the way home, and he accompanied me without further objection or
apology. After dinner, I proposed that we should go upon the downs, for the
day was warm and bright. We sat on the grass. I felt that I could not talk
to them as from myself. I knew nothing of the possible gulfs of sorrow in
their hearts. To me their forms seemed each like a hill in whose unseen
bosom lay a cavern of dripping waters, perhaps with a subterranean torrent
of anguish raving through its hollows and tumbling down hidden precipices,
whose voice God only heard, and God only could still. This daughter
_might_, though from her face I did not think it, have gone away against
her father's will. That son _might_ have been a ne'er-do-well at home--how
could I tell? The woman _might_ be looking for the lover that had forsaken
her--I could not divine. I would speak no words of my own. The Son of
God had spoken words of comfort to his mourning friends, when he was the
present God and they were the forefront of humanity; I would read some of
the words he spoke. From them the human nature in each would draw what
comfort it could. I took my New Testament from my pocket, and said, without
any preamble,

"When our Lord was going to die, he knew that his friends loved him enough
to be very wretched about it. He knew that they would be overwhelmed for a
time with trouble. He knew, too, that they could not believe the glad end
of it all, to which end he looked, across the awful death that awaited
him--a death to which that of our friends in the wreck was ease itself. I
will just read to you what he said."

I read from the fourteenth to the seventeenth chapter of St. John's Gospel.
I knew there were worlds of meaning in the words into which I could hardly
hope any of them would enter. But I knew likewise that the best things are
just those from which the humble will draw the truth they are capable of
seeing. Therefore I read as for myself, and left it to them to hear for
themselves. Nor did I add any word of comment, fearful of darkening counsel
by words without knowledge. For the Bible is awfully set against what is
not wise.

When I had finished, I closed the book, rose from the grass, and walked
towards the brow of the shore. They rose likewise and followed me. I talked
of slight things; the tone was all that communicated between us. But little
of any sort was said. The sea lay still before us, knowing nothing of the
sorrow it had caused.

We wandered a little way along the cliff. The burial-service was at seven
o'clock.

"I have an invalid to visit out in this direction," I said; "would you mind
walking with me? I shall not stay more than five minutes, and we shall get
back just in time for tea."

They assented kindly. I walked first with one, then with another; heard a
little of the story of each; was able to say a few words of sympathy, and
point, as it were, a few times towards the hills whence cometh our aid. I
may just mention here, that since our return to Marshmallows I have had two
of them, the young woman and the Scotchman, to visit us there.

The bell began to toll, and we went to church. My companions placed
themselves near the dead. I went into the vestry till the appointed hour.
I thought as I put on my surplice how, in all religions but the Christian,
the dead body was a pollution to the temple. Here the church received it,
as a holy thing, for a last embrace ere it went to the earth.

As the dead were already in the church, the usual form could not be carried
out. I therefore stood by the communion-table, and there began to read, "I
am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me,
though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth
in me shall never die."

I advanced, as I read, till I came outside the rails and stood before the
dead. There I read the Psalm, "Lord, thou hast been our refuge," and
the glorious lesson, "Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the
first-fruits of them that slept." Then the men of the neighbourhood came
forward, and in long solemn procession bore the bodies out of the church,
each to its grave. At the church-door I stood and read, "Man that is born
of a woman;" then went from one to another of the graves, and read over
each, as the earth fell on the coffin-lid, "Forasmuch as it hath pleased
Almighty God, of his great mercy." Then again, I went back to the
church-door and read, "I heard a voice from heaven;" and so to the end of
the service.

Leaving the men to fill up the graves, I hastened to lay aside my
canonicals, that I might join my guests; but my wife and daughter had
already prevailed on them to leave the churchyard.

A word now concerning my own family. Turner insisted on Connie's remaining
in bed for two or three days. She looked worse in face--pale and worn; but
it was clear, from the way she moved in bed, that the fresh power called
forth by the shock had not vanished with the moment.

Wynnie was quieter almost than ever; but there was a constant _secret_
light, if I may use the paradox, in her eyes. Percivale was at the
house every day, always ready to make himself useful. My wife bore up
wonderfully. As yet the much greater catastrophe had come far short of the
impression made by the less. When quieter hours should come, however, I
could not help fearing that the place would be dreadfully painful to
all but the younger ones, who, of course, had the usual child-gift of
forgetting. The servants--even Walter--looked thin and anxious.

That Saturday night I found myself, as I had once or twice found myself
before, entirely unprepared to preach. I did not feel anxious, because I
did not feel that I was to blame: I had been so much occupied. I had again
and again turned my thoughts thitherward, but nothing recommended itself to
me so that I could say "I must take that;" nothing said plainly, "This is
what you have to speak of."

As often as I had sought to find fitting matter for my sermon, my mind
had turned to death and the grave; but I shrunk from every suggestion, or
rather nothing had come to me that interested myself enough to justify me
in giving it to my people. And I always took it as my sole justification,
in speaking of anything to the flock of Christ, that I cared heartily in my
own soul for that thing. Without this consciousness I was dumb. And I do
think, highly as I value prophecy, that a clergyman ought to be at liberty
upon occasion to say, "My friends, I cannot preach to-day." What a riddance
it would be for the Church, I do not say if every priest were to speak
sense, but only if every priest were to abstain from speaking of that in
which, at the moment, he feels little or no interest!

I went to bed, which is often the very best thing a man can do; for sleep
will bring him from God that which no effort of his own will can compass.
I have read somewhere--I will verify it by present search--that Luther's
translation, of the verse in the psalm, "So he giveth to his beloved
sleep," is, "He giveth his beloved sleeping," or while asleep. Yes, so it
is, literally, in English, "It is in vain that ye rise early, and then
sit long, and eat your bread with care, for to his friends he gives it
sleeping." This was my experience in the present instance; for the thought
of which I was first conscious when I awoke was, "Why should I talk about
death? Every man's heart is now full of death. We have enough of that--even
the sum that God has sent us on the wings of the tempest. What I have to
do, as the minister of the new covenant, is to speak of life." It flashed
in on my mind: "Death is over and gone. The resurrection comes next. I will
speak of the raising of Lazarus."

The same moment I knew that I was ready to speak. Shall I or shall I not
give my reader the substance of what I said? I wish I knew how many of them
would like it, and how many would not. I do not want to bore them with
sermons, especially seeing I have always said that no sermons ought to
be printed; for in print they are but what the old alchymists would have
called a _caput mortuum_, or death's head, namely, a lifeless lump of
residuum at the bottom of the crucible; for they have no longer the living
human utterance which gives all the power on the minds of the hearers. But
I have not, either in this or in my preceding narrative, attempted to give
a sermon as I preached it. I have only sought to present the substance of
it in a form fitter for being read, somewhat cleared of the unavoidable,
let me say necessary--yes, I will say _valuable_--repetitions and
enforcements by which the various considerations are pressed upon the minds
of the hearers. These are entirely wearisome in print--useless too, for
the reader may ponder over every phrase till he finds out the purport of
it--if indeed there be such readers nowadays.

I rose, went down to the bath in the rocks, had a joyous physical ablution,
and a swim up and down the narrow cleft, from which I emerged as if myself
newly born or raised anew, and then wandered about on the downs full of
hope and thankfulness, seeking all I could to plant deep in my mind the
long-rooted truths of resurrection, that they might be not only ready to
blossom in the warmth of the spring-tides to come, but able to send out
some leaves and promissory buds even in the wintry time of the soul, when
the fogs of pain steam up from the frozen clay soil of the body, and make
the monarch-will totter dizzily upon his throne, to comfort the eyes of the
bewildered king, reminding him that the King of kings hath conquered Death
and the Grave. There is no perfect faith that cannot laugh at winters and
graveyards, and all the whole array of defiant appearances. The fresh
breeze of the morning visited me. "O God," I said in my heart, "would that
when the dark day comes, in which I can feel nothing, I may be able to
front it with the memory of this day's strength, and so help myself to
trust in the Father! I would call to mind the days of old, with David the
king."

When I returned to the house, I found that one of the sailors, who had been
cast ashore with his leg broken, wished to see me. I obeyed, and found him
very pale and worn.

"I think I am going, sir," he said; "and I wanted to see you before I die."

"Trust in Christ, and do not be afraid," I returned.

"I prayed to him to save me when I was hanging to the rigging, and if I
wasn't afraid then, I'm not going to be afraid now, dying quietly in my
bed. But just look here, sir."

He took from under his pillow something wrapped up in paper, unfolded the
envelope, and showed a lump of something--I could not at first tell what.
He put it in my hand, and then I saw that it was part of a bible, with
nearly the upper half of it worn or cut away, and the rest partly in a
state of pulp.

"That's the bible my mother gave me when I left home first," he said. "I
don't know how I came to put it in my pocket, but I think the rope that cut
through that when I was lashed to the shrouds would a'most have cut through
my ribs if it hadn't been for it."

"Very likely," I returned. "The body of the Bible has saved your bodily
life: may the spirit of it save your spiritual life."

"I think I know what you mean, sir," he panted out. "My mother was a good
woman, and I know she prayed to God for me."

"Would you like us to pray for you in church to-day?"

"If you please, sir; me and Bob Fox. He's nearly as bad as I am."

"We won't forget you," I said. "I will come in after church and see how you
are."

I knelt and offered the prayers for the sick, and then took my leave. I did
not think the poor fellow was going to die.

I may as well mention here, that he has been in my service ever since. We
took him with us to Marshmallows, where he works in the garden and stables,
and is very useful. We have to look after him though, for his health
continues delicate.




CHAPTER X.

THE SERMON.


When I stood up to preach, I gave them no text; but, with the eleventh
chapter of the Gospel of St. John open before me, to keep me correct, I
proceeded to tell the story in the words God gave me; for who can dare to
say that he makes his own commonest speech?

"When Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and therefore our elder brother,
was going about on the earth, eating and drinking with his brothers and
sisters, there was one family he loved especially--a family of two sisters
and a brother; for, although he loves everybody as much as they can be
loved, there are some who can be loved more than others. Only God is always
trying to make us such that we can be loved more and more. There are
several stories--O, such lovely stories!--about that family and Jesus; and
we have to do with one of them now.

"They lived near the capital of the country, Jerusalem, in a village they
called Bethany; and it must have been a great relief to our Lord, when he
was worn out with the obstinacy and pride of the great men of the city, to
go out to the quiet little town and into the refuge of Lazarus's house,
where everyone was more glad at the sound of his feet than at any news that
could come to them.

"They had at this time behaved so ill to him in Jerusalem--taking up stones
to stone him even, though they dared not quite do it, mad with anger as
they were--and all because he told them the truth--that he had gone away to
the other side of the great river that divided the country, and taught the
people in that quiet place. While he was there his friend Lazarus was taken
ill; and the two sisters, Martha and Mary, sent a messenger to him, to say
to him, 'Lord, your friend is very ill.' Only they said it more beautifully
than that: 'Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.' You know, when
anyone is ill, we always want the person whom he loves most to come to him.
This is very wonderful. In the worst things that can come to us the first
thought is of love. People, like the Scribes and Pharisees, might say,
'What good can that do him?' And we may not in the least suppose that the
person we want knows any secret that can cure his pain; yet love is the
first thing we think of. And here we are more right than we know; for, at
the long last, love will cure everything: which truth, indeed, this story
will set forth to us. No doubt the heart of Lazarus, ill as he was, longed
after his friend; and, very likely, even the sight of Jesus might have
given him such strength that the life in him could have driven out the
death which had already got one foot across the threshold. But the sisters
expected more than this: they believed that Jesus, whom they knew to have
driven disease and death out of so many hearts, had only to come and touch
him--nay, only to speak a word, to look at him, and their brother was
saved. Do you think they presumed in thus expecting? The fact was, they did
not believe enough; they had not yet learned to believe that he could cure
him all the same whether he came to them or not, because he was always with
them. We cannot understand this; but our understanding is never a measure
of what is true.

"Whether Jesus knew exactly all that was going to take place I cannot tell.
Some people may feel certain upon points that I dare not feel certain upon.
One thing I am sure of: that he did not always know everything beforehand,
for he said so himself. It is infinitely more valuable to us, because more
beautiful and godlike in him, that he should trust his Father than that he
should foresee everything. At all events he knew that his Father did not
want him to go to his friends yet. So he sent them a message to the effect
that there was a particular reason for this sickness--that the end of it
was not the death of Lazarus, but the glory of God. This, I think, he told
them by the same messenger they sent to him; and then, instead of going to
them, he remained where he was.

"But O, my friends, what shall I say about this wonderful message? Think of
being sick for the glory of God! of being shipwrecked for the glory of God!
of being drowned for the glory of God! How can the sickness, the fear, the
broken-heartedness of his creatures be for the glory of God? What kind of
a God can that be? Why just a God so perfectly, absolutely good, that the
things that look least like it are only the means of clearing our eyes to
let us see how good he is. For he is so good that he is not satisfied with
_being_ good. He loves his children, so that except he can make them good
like himself, make them blessed by seeing how good he is, and desiring the
same goodness in themselves, he is not satisfied. He is not like a fine
proud benefactor, who is content with doing that which will satisfy his
sense of his own glory, but like a mother who puts her arm round her child,
and whose heart is sore till she can make her child see the love which is
her glory. The glorification of the Son of God is the glorification of the
human race; for the glory of God is the glory of man, and that glory is
love. Welcome sickness, welcome sorrow, welcome death, revealing that
glory!

"The next two verses sound very strangely together, and yet they almost
seem typical of all the perplexities of God's dealings. The old painters
and poets represented Faith as a beautiful woman, holding in her hand a cup
of wine and water, with a serpent coiled up within. Highhearted Faith!
she scruples not to drink of the life-giving wine and water; she is not
repelled by the upcoiled serpent. The serpent she takes but for the type of
the eternal wisdom that looks repellent because it is not understood. The
wine is good, the water is good; and if the hand of the supreme Fate put
that cup in her hand, the serpent itself must be good too,--harmless, at
least, to hurt the truth of the water and the wine. But let us read the
verses.

"'Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When he had heard
therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where
he was.'

"Strange! his friend was sick: he abode two days where he was! But remember
what we have already heard. The glory of God was infinitely more for the
final cure of a dying Lazarus, who, give him all the life he could have,
would yet, without that glory, be in death, than the mere presence of the
Son of God. I say _mere_ presence, for, compared with the glory of God, the
very presence of his Son, so dissociated, is nothing. He abode where he was
that the glory of God, the final cure of humanity, the love that triumphs
over death, might shine out and redeem the hearts of men, so that death
could not touch them.

"After the two days, the hour had arrived. He said to his disciples, 'Let
us go back to Judæa.' They expostulated, because of the danger, saying,
'Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither
again?' The answer which he gave them I am not sure whether I can
thoroughly understand; but I think, in fact I know, it must bear on the
same region of life--the will of God. I think what he means by walking
in the day is simply doing the will of God. That was the sole, the
all-embracing light in which Jesus ever walked. I think he means that now
he saw plainly what the Father wanted him to do. If he did not see that the
Father wanted him to go back to Judæa, and yet went, that would be to
go stumblingly, to walk in the darkness. There are twelve hours in the
day--one time to act--a time of light and the clear call of duty; there is
a night when a man, not seeing where or hearing how, must be content to
rest. Something not inharmonious with this, I think, he must have intended;
but I do not see the whole thought clearly enough to be sure that I am
right. I do think, further, that it points at a clearer condition of human
vision and conviction than I am good enough to understand; though I hope
one day to rise into this upper stratum of light.

"Whether his scholars had heard anything of Lazarus yet, I do not know. It
looks a little as if Jesus had not told them the message he had had from
the sisters. But he told them now that he was asleep, and that he was going
to wake him. You would think they might have understood this. The idea of
going so many miles to wake a man might have surely suggested death. But
the disciples were sorely perplexed with many of his words. Sometimes they
looked far away for the meaning when the meaning lay in their very hearts;
sometimes they looked into their hands for it when it was lost in the
grandeur of the ages. But he meant them to see into all that he said by
and by, although they could not see into it now. When they understood him
better, then they would understand what he said better. And to understand
him better they must be more like him; and to make them more like him he
must go away and give them his spirit--awful mystery which no man but
himself can understand.

"Now he had to tell them plainly that Lazarus was dead. They had not
thought of death as a sleep. I suppose this was altogether a new and
Christian idea. Do not suppose that it applied more to Lazarus than to
other dead people. He was none the less dead that Jesus meant to take a
weary two days' journey to his sepulchre and wake him. If death is not a
sleep, Jesus did not speak the truth when he said Lazarus slept. You may
say it was a figure; but a figure that is not like the thing it figures is
simply a lie.

"They set out to go back to Judæa. Here we have a glimpse of the faith of
Thomas, the doubter. For a doubter is not without faith. The very fact
that he doubts, shows that he has some faith. When I find anyone hard upon
doubters, I always doubt the _quality_ of his faith. It is of little use to
have a great cable, if the hemp is so poor that it breaks like the painter
of a boat. I have known people whose power of believing chiefly consisted
in their incapacity for seeing difficulties. Of what fine sort a faith must
be that is founded in stupidity, or far worse, in indifference to the truth
and the mere desire to get out of hell! That is not a grand belief in the
Son of God, the radiation of the Father. Thomas's want of faith was shown
in the grumbling, self-pitying way in which he said, 'Let us also go that
we may die with him.' His Master had said that he was going to wake
him. Thomas said, 'that we may die with him.' You may say, 'He did not
understand him.' True, it may be, but his unbelief was the cause of his not
understanding him. I suppose Thomas meant this as a reproach to Jesus for
putting them all in danger by going back to Judæa; if not, it was only a
poor piece of sentimentality. So much for Thomas's unbelief. But he had
good and true faith notwithstanding; for _he went with his Master_.

"By the time they reached the neighbourhood of Bethany, Lazarus had been
dead four days. Someone ran to the house and told the sisters that Jesus
was coming. Martha, as soon as she heard it, rose and went to meet him.
It might be interesting at another time to compare the difference of the
behaviour of the two sisters upon this occasion with the difference of
their behaviour upon another occasion, likewise recorded; but with the man
dead in his sepulchre, and the hope dead in these two hearts, we have no
inclination to enter upon fine distinctions of character. Death and grief
bring out the great family likenesses in the living as well as in the dead.

"When Martha came to Jesus, she showed her true though imperfect faith by
almost attributing her brother's death to Jesus' absence. But even in the
moment, looking in the face of the Master, a fresh hope, a new budding of
faith, began in her soul. She thought--'What if, after all, he were
to bring him to life again!' O, trusting heart, how thou leavest the
dull-plodding intellect behind thee! While the conceited intellect is
reasoning upon the impossibility of the thing, the expectant faith beholds
it accomplished. Jesus, responding instantly to her faith, granting her
half-born prayer, says, 'Thy brother shall rise again;' not meaning the
general truth recognised, or at least assented to by all but the Sadducees,
concerning the final resurrection of the dead, but meaning, 'Be it unto
thee as thou wilt. I will raise him again.' For there is no steering for a
fine effect in the words of Jesus. But these words are too good for Martha
to take them as he meant them. Her faith is not quite equal to the belief
that he actually will do it. The thing she could hope for afar off she
could hardly believe when it came to her very door. 'O, yes,' she said, her
mood falling again to the level of the commonplace, 'of course, at the last
day.' Then the Lord turns away her thoughts from the dogmas of her faith
to himself, the Life, saying, 'I am the resurrection and the life: he that
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever
liveth and believeth in me, shall never die. Believest thou this?' Martha,
without understanding what he said more than in a very poor part, answered
in words which preserved her honesty entire, and yet included all he asked,
and a thousandfold more than she could yet believe: 'Yea, Lord; I believe
that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the
world.'

"I dare not pretend to have more than a grand glimmering of the truth of
Jesus' words 'shall never die;' but I am pretty sure that when Martha came
to die, she found that there was indeed no such thing as she had meant when
she used the ghastly word _death_, and said with her first new breath,
'Verily, Lord, I am not dead.'

"But look how this declaration of her confidence in the Christ operated
upon herself. She instantly thought of her sister; the hope that the Lord
would do something swelled within her, and, leaving Jesus, she went to find
Mary. Whoever has had a true word with the elder brother, straightway
will look around him to find his brother, his sister. The family feeling
blossoms: he wants his friend to share the glory withal. Martha wants Mary
to go to Jesus too.

"Mary heard her, forgot her visitors, rose, and went. They thought she went
to the grave: she went to meet its conqueror. But when she came to him, the
woman who had chosen the good part praised of Jesus, had but the same words
to embody her hope and her grief that her careful and troubled sister had
uttered a few minutes before. How often during those four days had not the
self-same words passed between them! 'Ah, if he had been here, our brother
had not died!' She said so to himself now, and wept, and her friends who
had followed her wept likewise. A moment more, and the Master groaned; yet
a moment, and he too wept. 'Sorrow is catching;' but this was not the mere
infection of sorrow. It went deeper than mere sympathy; for he groaned in
his spirit and was troubled. What made him weep? It was when he saw them
weeping that he wept. But why should he weep, when he knew how soon their
weeping would be turned into rejoicing? It was not for their weeping, so
soon to be over, that he wept, but for the human heart everywhere swollen
with tears, yea, with griefs that can find no such relief as tears; for
these, and for all his brothers and sisters tormented with pain for lack of
faith in his Father in heaven, Jesus wept. He saw the blessed well-being
of Lazarus on the one side, and on the other the streaming eyes from whose
sight he had vanished. The veil between was so thin! yet the sight of those
eyes could not pierce it: their hearts must go on weeping--without cause,
for his Father was so good. I think it was the helplessness he felt in
the impossibility of at once sweeping away the phantasm death from their
imagination that drew the tears from the eyes of Jesus. Certainly it was
not for Lazarus; it could hardly be for these his friends--save as they
represented the humanity which he would help, but could not help even as he
was about to help them.

"The Jews saw herein proof that he loved Lazarus; but they little thought
it was for them and their people, and for the Gentiles whom they despised,
that his tears were now flowing--that the love which pressed the fountains
of his weeping was love for every human heart, from Adam on through the
ages.

"Some of them went a little farther, nearly as far as the sisters, saying,
'Could he not have kept the man from dying?' But it was such a poor thing,
after all, that they thought he might have done. They regarded merely this
unexpected illness, this early death; for I daresay Lazarus was not much
older than Jesus. They did not think that, after all, Lazarus must die some
time; that the beloved could be saved, at best, only for a little while.
Jesus seems to have heard the remark, for he again groaned in himself.

"Meantime they were drawing near the place where he was buried. It was a
hollow in the face of a rock, with a stone laid against it. I suppose the
bodies were laid on something like shelves inside the rock, as they are in
many sepulchres. They were not put into coffins, but wound round and round
with linen.

"When they came before the door of death, Jesus said to them, 'Take away
the stone.' The nature of Martha's reply--the realism of it, as they would
say now-a-days--would seem to indicate that her dawning faith had sunk
again below the horizon, that in the presence of the insignia of death, her
faith yielded, even as the faith of Peter failed him when he saw around him
the grandeur of the high-priest, and his Master bound and helpless. Jesus
answered--O, what an answer!--To meet the corruption and the stink which
filled her poor human fancy, 'the glory of God' came from his lips: human
fear; horror speaking from the lips of a woman in the very jaws of the
devouring death; and the 'said I not unto thee?' from the mouth of him who
was so soon to pass worn and bloodless through such a door! 'He stinketh,'
said Martha. 'The glory of God,' said Jesus. 'Said I not unto thee, that,
if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?'

"Before the open throat of the sepulchre Jesus began to speak to his Father
aloud. He had prayed to him in his heart before, most likely while he
groaned in his spirit. Now he thanked him that he had comforted him, and
given him Lazarus as a first-fruit from the dead. But he will be true to
the listening people as well as to his ever-hearing Father; therefore he
tells why he said the word of thanks aloud--a thing not usual with him, for
his Father was always hearing, him. Having spoken it for the people, he
would say that it was for the people.

"The end of it all was that they might believe that God had sent him--a far
grander gift than having the dearest brought back from the grave; for he is
the life of men.

"'Lazarus, come forth!"

"And Lazarus came forth, creeping helplessly with inch-long steps of his
linen-bound limbs. 'Ha, ha! brother, sister!' cries the human heart. The
Lord of Life hath taken the prey from the spoiler; he hath emptied the
grave. Here comes the dead man, welcome as never was child from the
womb--new-born, and in him all the human race new-born from the grave!
'Loose him and let him go,' and the work is done. The sorrow is over, and
the joy is come. Home, home, Martha, Mary, with your Lazarus! He too will
go with you, the Lord of the Living. Home and get the feast ready, Martha!
Prepare the food for him who comes hungry from the grave, for him who has
called him thence. Home, Mary, to help Martha! What a household will yours
be! What wondrous speech will pass between the dead come to life and the
living come to die!

"But what pang is this that makes Lazarus draw hurried breath, and turns
Martha's cheek so pale? Ah, at the little window of the heart the pale eyes
of the defeated Horror look in. What! is he there still! Ah, yes, he will
come for Martha, come for Mary, come yet again for Lazarus--yea, come for
the Lord of Life himself, and carry all away. But look at the Lord: he
knows all about it, and he smiles. Does Martha think of the words he spoke,
'He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die'? Perhaps she does,
and, like the moon before the sun, her face returns the smile of her Lord.

"This, my friends, is a fancy in form, but it embodies a dear truth. What
is it to you and me that he raised Lazarus? We are not called upon to
believe that he will raise from the tomb that joy of our hearts which lies
buried there beyond our sight. Stop! Are we not? We are called upon to
believe this; else the whole story were for us a poor mockery. What is it
to us that the Lord raised Lazarus?--Is it nothing to know that our Brother
is Lord over the grave? Will the harvest be behind the first-fruits? If he
tells us he cannot, for good reasons, raise up our vanished love to-day, or
to-morrow, or for all the years of our life to come, shall we not mingle
the smile of faithful thanks with the sorrow of present loss, and walk
diligently waiting? That he called forth Lazarus showed that he was in his
keeping, that he is Lord of the living, and that all live to him, that he
has a hold of them, and can draw them forth when he will. If this is not
true, then the raising of Lazarus is false; I do not mean merely false in
fact, but false in meaning. If we believe in him, then in his name, both
for ourselves and for our friends, we must deny death and believe in life.
Lord Christ, fill our hearts with thy Life!"




CHAPTER XI.

CHANGED PLANS.


In a day or two Connie was permitted to rise and take to her couch once
more. It seemed strange that she should look so much worse, and yet be so
much stronger. The growth of her power of motion was wonderful. As they
carried her, she begged to be allowed to put her feet to the ground. Turner
yielded, though without quite ceasing to support her. He was satisfied,
however, that she could have stood upright for a moment at least. He would
not, of course, risk it, and made haste to lay her down.

The time of his departure was coming near, and he seemed more anxious the
nearer it came; for Connie continued worn-looking and pale; and her smile,
though ever ready to greet me when I entered, had lost much of its light. I
noticed, too, that she had the curtain of her window constantly so arranged
as to shut out the sea. I said something to her about it once. Her reply
was:

"Papa, I can't bear it. I know it is very silly; but I think I can make you
understand how it is: I was so fond of the sea when I came down; it seemed
to lie close to my window, with a friendly smile ready for me every morning
when I looked out. I daresay it is all from want of faith, but I can't help
it: it looks so far away now, like a friend that had failed me, that I
would rather not see it."

I saw that the struggling life within her was grievously oppressed, that
the things which surrounded her were no longer helpful. Her life had been
driven as to its innermost cave; and now, when it had been enticed to
venture forth and look abroad, a sudden pall had descended upon nature. I
could not help thinking that the good of our visit to Kilkhaven had come,
and that evil, from which I hoped we might yet escape, was following. I
left her, and sought Turner.

"It strikes me, Turner," I said, "that the sooner we get out of this the
better for Connie."

"I am quite of your opinion. I think the very prospect of leaving the place
would do something to restore her. If she is so uncomfortable now, think
what it will be in the many winter nights at hand."

"Do you think it would be safe to move her?"

"Far safer than to let her remain. At the worst, she is now far better than
when she came. Try her. Hint at the possibility of going home, and see how
she will take it."

"Well, I sha'n't like to be left alone; but if she goes they must all go,
except, perhaps, I might keep Wynnie. But I don't know how her mother would
get on without her."

"I don't see why you should stay behind. Mr. Weir would be as glad to come
as you would be to go; and it can make no difference to Mr. Shepherd."

It seemed a very sensible suggestion. I thought a moment. Certainly it was
a desirable thing for both my sister and her husband. They had no such
reasons as we had for disliking the place; and it would enable her to avoid
the severity of yet another winter. I said as much to Turner, and went back
to Connie's room.

The light of a lovely sunset was lying outside her window. She was sitting
so that she could not see it. I would find out her feeling in the matter
without any preamble.

"Would you like to go back to Marshmallows, Connie?" I asked.

Her countenance flashed into light.

"O, dear papa, do let us go," she said; "that would be delightful."

"Well, I think we can manage it, if you will only get a little stronger for
the journey. The weather is not so good to travel in as when we came down."

"No; but I am ever so much better, you know, than I was then."

The poor girl was already stronger from the mere prospect of going home
again. She moved restlessly on her couch, half mechanically put her hand to
the curtain, pulled it aside, looked out, faced the sun and the sea, and
did not draw back. My mind was made up. I left her, and went to find
Ethelwyn. She heartily approved of the proposal for Connie's sake, and said
that it would be scarcely less agreeable to herself. I could see a certain
troubled look above her eyes, however.

"You are thinking of Wynnie," I said.

"Yes. It is hard to make one sad for the sake of the rest."

"True. But it is one of the world's recognised necessities."

"No doubt."

"Besides, you don't suppose Percivale can stay here the whole winter. They
must part some time."

"Of course. Only they did not expect it so soon."

But here my wife was mistaken.

I went to my study to write to Weir. I had hardly finished my letter when
Walter came to say that Mr. Percivale wished to see me. I told him to show
him in.

"I am just writing home to say that I want my curate to change places with
me here, which I know he will be glad enough to do. I see Connie had better
go home."

"You will all go, then, I presume?" returned Percivale.

"Yes, yes; of course."

"Then I need not so much regret that I can stay no longer. I came to tell
you that I must leave to-morrow."

"Ah! Going to London?"

"Yes. I don't know how to thank you for all your kindness. You have made my
summer something like a summer; very different, indeed, from what it would
otherwise have been."

"We have had our share of advantage, and that a large one. We are all glad
to have made your acquaintance, Mr. Percivale."

He made no answer.

"We shall be passing through London within a week or ten days in all
probability. Perhaps you will allow us the pleasure of looking at some of
your pictures then?"

His face flushed. What did the flush mean? It was not one of mere pleasure.
There was confusion and perplexity in it. But he answered at once:

"I will show you them with pleasure. I fear, however, you will not care for
them."

Would this fear account for his embarrassment? I hardly thought it would;
but I could not for a moment imagine, with his fine form and countenance
before me, that he had any serious reason for shrinking from a visit.

He began to search for a card.

"O, I have your address. I shall be sure to pay you a visit. But you will
dine with us to-day, of course?" I said.

"I shall have much pleasure," he answered; and took his leave.

I finished my letter to Weir, and went out for a walk.

I remember particularly the thoughts that moved in me and made that walk
memorable. Indeed, I think I remember all outside events chiefly by virtue
of the inward conditions with which they were associated. Mere outside
things I am very ready to forget. Moods of my own mind do not so readily
pass away; and with the memory of some of them every outward circumstance
returns; for a man's life is where the kingdom of heaven is--within him.
There are people who, if you ask the story of their lives, have nothing to
tell you but the course of the outward events that have constituted, as it
were, the clothes of their history. But I know, at the same time, that some
of the most important crises in my own history (by which word _history_ I
mean my growth towards the right conditions of existence) have been beyond
the grasp and interpretation of my intellect. They have passed, as it were,
without my consciousness being awake enough to lay hold of their phenomena.
The wind had been blowing; I had heard the sound of it, but knew not whence
it came nor whither it went; only, when it was gone, I found myself more
responsible, more eager than before.

I remember this walk from the thoughts I had about the great change hanging
over us all. I had now arrived at the prime of middle life; and that change
which so many would escape if they could, but which will let no man pass,
had begun to show itself a real fact upon the horizon of the future. Death
looks so far away to the young, that while they acknowledge it unavoidable,
the path stretches on in such vanishing perspective before them, that they
see no necessity for thinking about the end of it yet; and far would I be
from saying they ought to think of it. Life is the true object of a man's
care: there is no occasion to make himself think about death. But when
the vision of the inevitable draws nigh, when it appears plainly on the
horizon, though but as a cloud the size of a man's hand, then it is equally
foolish to meet it by refusing to meet it, to answer the questions that
will arise by declining to think about them. Indeed, it is a question of
life then, and not of death. We want to keep fast hold of our life, and, in
the strength of that, to look the threatening death in the face. But to my
walk that morning.

I wandered on the downs till I came to the place where a solitary rock
stands on the top of a cliff looking seaward, in the suggested shape of a
monk praying. On the base on which he knelt I seated myself, and looked out
over the Atlantic. How faded the ocean appeared! It seemed as if all the
sunny dyes of the summer had been diluted and washed with the fogs of the
coming winter, when I thought of the splendour it wore when first from
these downs I gazed on the outspread infinitude of space and colour.

"What," I said to myself at length, "has she done since then? Where is
her work visible? She has riven, and battered, and destroyed, and her
destruction too has passed away. So worketh Time and its powers! The
exultation of my youth is gone; my head is gray; my wife is growing old;
our children are pushing us from our stools; we are yielding to the new
generation; the glory for us hath departed; our life lies weary before us
like that sea; and the night cometh when we can no longer work."

Something like this was passing vaguely through my mind. I sat in a
mournful stupor, with a half-consciousness that my mood was false, and that
I ought to rouse myself and shake it off. There is such a thing as a state
of moral dreaming, which closely resembles the intellectual dreaming in
sleep. I went on in this false dreamful mood, pitying myself like a child
tender over his hurt and nursing his own cowardice, till, all at once, "a
little pipling wind" blew on my cheek. The morning was very still: what
roused that little wind I cannot tell; but what that little wind roused I
will try to tell. With that breath on my cheek, something within me began
to stir. It grew, and grew, until the memory of a certain glorious sunset
of red and green and gold and blue, which I had beheld from these same
heights, dawned within me. I knew that the glory of my youth had not
departed, that the very power of recalling with delight that which I had
once felt in seeing, was proof enough of that; I knew that I could believe
in God all the night long, even if the night were long. And the next moment
I thought how I had been reviling in my fancy God's servant, the sea. To
how many vessels had she not opened a bounteous highway through the waters,
with labour, and food, and help, and ministration, glad breezes and
swelling sails, healthful struggle, cleansing fear and sorrow, yea, and
friendly death! Because she had been commissioned to carry this one or that
one, this hundred or that thousand of his own creatures from one world to
another, was I to revile the servant of a grand and gracious Master? It was
blameless in Connie to feel the late trouble so deeply that she could not
be glad: she had not had the experience of life, yea, of God, that I had
had; she must be helped from without. But for me, it was shameful that I,
who knew the heart of my Master, to whom at least he had so often shown his
truth, should ever be doleful and oppressed. Yet even me he had now helped
from within. The glory of existence as the child of the Infinite had
again dawned upon me. The first hour of the evening of my life had indeed
arrived; the shadows had begun to grow long--so long that I had begun to
mark their length; this last little portion of my history had vanished,
leaving its few gray ashes behind in the crucible of my life; and the final
evening must come, when all my life would lie behind me, and all the memory
of it return, with its mornings of gold and red, with its evenings of
purple and green; with its dashes of storm, and its foggy glooms; with its
white-winged aspirations, its dull-red passions, its creeping envies in
brown and black and earthy yellow. But from all the accusations of my
conscience, I would turn me to the Lord, for he was called Jesus because he
should save his people from their sins. Then I thought what a grand gift it
would be to give his people the power hereafter to fight the consequences
of their sins. Anyhow, I would trust the Father, who loved me with a
perfect love, to lead the soul he had made, had compelled to be, through
the gates of the death-birth, into the light of life beyond. I would cast
on him the care, humbly challenge him with the responsibility he had
himself undertaken, praying only for perfect confidence in him, absolute
submission to his will.

I rose from my seat beside the praying monk, and walked on. The thought of
seeing my own people again filled me with gladness. I would leave those
I had here learned to love with regret; but I trusted I had taught them
something, and they had taught me much; therefore there could be no end
to our relation to each other--it could not be broken, for it was _in the
Lord_, which alone can give security to any tie. I should not, therefore,
sorrow as if I were to see their faces no more.

I now took my farewell of that sea and those cliffs. I should see them
often ere we went, but I should not feel so near them again. Even this
parting said that I must "sit loose to the world"--an old Puritan phrase,
I suppose; that I could gather up only its uses, treasure its best things,
and must let all the rest go; that those things I called mine--earth, sky,
and sea, home, books, the treasured gifts of friends--had all to leave
me, belong to others, and help to educate them. I should not need them. I
should have my people, my souls, my beloved faces tenfold more, and could
well afford to part with these. Why should I mind this chain passing to
my eldest boy, when it was only his mother's hair, and I should have his
mother still?

So my thoughts went on thinking themselves, until at length I yielded
passively to their flow.

I found Wynnie looking very grave when I went into the drawing-room. Her
mother was there, too, and Mr. Percivale. It seemed rather a moody party.
They wakened up a little, however, after I entered, and before dinner was
over we were all chatting together merrily.

"How is Connie?" I asked Ethelwyn.

"Wonderfully better already," she answered.

"I think everybody seems better," I said. "The very idea of home seems
reviving to us all."

Wynnie darted a quick glance at me, caught my eyes, which was more than
she had intended, and blushed; sought refuge in a bewildered glance at
Percivale, caught his eye in turn, and blushed yet deeper. He plunged
instantly into conversation, not without a certain involuntary sparkle in
his eye.

"Did you go to see Mrs. Stokes this morning?" he asked.

"No," I answered. "She does not want much visiting now; she is going about
her work, apparently in good health. Her husband says she is not like the
same woman; and I hope he means that in more senses than one, though I do
not choose to ask him any questions about his wife."

I did my best to keep up the conversation, but every now and then after
this it fell like a wind that would not blow. I withdrew to my study.
Percivale and Wynnie went out for a walk. The next morning he left by the
coach--early. Turner went with him.

Wynnie did not seem very much dejected. I thought that perhaps the prospect
of meeting him again in London kept her up.




CHAPTER XII.

THE STUDIO.


I will not linger over our preparations or our leave-takings. The most
ponderous of the former were those of the two boys, who, as they had wanted
to bring down a chest as big as a corn-bin, full of lumber, now wanted to
take home two or three boxes filled with pebbles, great oystershells, and
sea-weed.

Weir, as I had expected, was quite pleased to make the exchange. An early
day had been fixed for his arrival; for I thought it might be of service
to him to be introduced to the field of his labours. Before he came, I had
gone about among the people, explaining to them some of my reasons for
leaving them sooner than I had intended, and telling them a little about my
successor, that he might not appear among them quite as a stranger. He was
much gratified with their reception of him, and had no fear of not finding
himself quite at home with them. I promised, if I could comfortably manage
it, to pay them a short visit the following summer, and as the weather was
now getting quite cold, hastened our preparations for departure.

I could have wished that Turner had been with us on the journey, but he
had been absent from his cure to the full extent that his conscience would
permit, and I had not urged him. He would be there to receive us, and we
had got so used to the management of Connie, that we did not feel much
anxiety about the travelling. We resolved, if she seemed strong enough as
we went along, to go right through to London, making a few days there the
only break in the transit.

It was a bright, cold morning when we started. But Connie could now bear
the air so well, that we set out with the carriage open, nor had we
occasion to close it. The first part of our railway journey was very
pleasant. But when we drew near London, we entered a thick fog, and before
we arrived, a small dense November rain was falling. Connie looked a little
dispirited, partly from weariness, but no doubt from the change in the
weather.

"Not very cheerful, this, Connie, my dear," I said.

"No, papa," she answered; "but we are going home, you know."

_Going home._ It set me thinking--as I had often been set thinking before,
always with fresh discovery and a new colour on the dawning sky of hope. I
lay back in the carriage and thought how the November fog this evening in
London, was the valley of the shadow of death we had to go through on the
way _home._ A. shadow like this would fall upon me; the world would grow
dark and life grow weary; but I should know it was the last of the way
home.

Then I began to question myself wherein the idea of this home consisted. I
knew that my soul had ever yet felt the discomfort of strangeness, more or
less, in the midst of its greatest blessedness. I knew that as the thought
of water to the thirsty _soul_, for it is the soul far more than the body
that thirsts even for the material water, such is the thought of home to
the wanderer in a strange country. As the weary soul pines for sleep, and
every heart for the cure of its own bitterness, so my heart and soul had
often pined for their home. Did I know, I asked myself, where or what that
home was? It could consist in no change of place or of circumstance; no
mere absence of care; no accumulation of repose; no blessed communion even
with those whom my soul loved; in the midst of it all I should be longing
for a homelier home--one into which I might enter with a sense of
infinitely more absolute peace, than a conscious child could know in the
arms, upon the bosom of his mother. In the closest contact of human soul
with human soul, when all the atmosphere of thought was rosy with love,
again and yet again on the far horizon would the dun, lurid flame of unrest
shoot for a moment through the enchanted air, and Psyche would know that
not yet had she reached her home. As I thought this I lifted my eyes, and
saw those of my wife and Connie fixed on mine, as if they were reproaching
me for saying in my soul that I could not be quite at home with them. Then
I said in my heart, "Come home with me, beloved--there is but one home for
us all. When we find--in proportion as each of us finds--that home, shall
we be gardens of delight to each other--little chambers of rest--galleries
of pictures--wells of water."

Again, what was this home? God himself. His thoughts, his will, his love,
his judgment, are man's home. To think his thoughts, to choose his will, to
love his loves, to judge his judgments, and thus to know that he is in us,
with us, is to be at home. And to pass through the valley of the shadow of
death is the way home, but only thus, that as all changes have hitherto
led us nearer to this home, the knowledge of God, so this greatest of all
outward changes--for it is but an outward change--will surely usher us into
a region where there will be fresh possibilities of drawing nigh in heart,
soul, and mind to the Father of us. It is the father, the mother, that make
for the child his home. Indeed, I doubt if the home-idea is complete to the
parents of a family themselves, when they remember that their fathers and
mothers have vanished.

At this point something rose in me seeking utterance.

"Won't it be delightful, wife," I began, "to see our fathers and mothers
such a long way back in heaven?"

But Ethelwyn's face gave so little response, that I felt at once how
dreadful a thing it was not to have had a good father or mother. I do not
know what would have become of me but for a good father. I wonder how
anybody ever can be good that has not had a good father. How dreadful not
to be a good father or good mother! Every father who is not good, every
mother who is not good, just makes it as impossible to believe in God as
it can be made. But he is our one good Father, and does not leave us, even
should our fathers and mothers have thus forsaken us, and left him without
a witness.

Here the evil odour of brick-burning invaded my nostrils, and I knew that
London was about us. A few moments after, we reached the station, where a
carriage was waiting to take us to our hotel.

Dreary was the change from the stillness and sunshine of Kilkhaven to the
fog and noise of London; but Connie slept better that night than she had
slept for a good many nights before.

After breakfast the next morning, I said to Wynnie,

"I am going to see Mr. Percivale's studio, my dear: have you any objection
to going with me?"

"No, papa," she answered, blushing. "I have never seen an artist's studio
in my life."

"Come along, then. Get your bonnet at once. It rains, but we shall take a
cab, and it won't matter."

She ran off, and was ready in a few minutes. We gave the driver directions,
and set off. It was a long drive. At length he stopped at the door of a
very common-looking house, in a very dreary-looking street, in which no man
could possibly identify his own door except by the number. I knocked. A
woman who looked at once dirty and cross, the former probably the cause of
the latter, opened the door, gave a bare assent to my question whether Mr.
Percivale was at home, withdrew to her den with the words "second-floor,"
and left us to find our own way up the two flights of stairs. This,
however, involved no great difficulty. We knocked at the door of the front
room. A well-known voice cried, "Come in," and we entered.

Percivale, in a short velvet coat, with his palette on his thumb, advanced
to meet us cordially. His face wore a slight flush, which I attributed
solely to pleasure, and nothing to any awkwardness in receiving us in such
a poor place as he occupied. I cast my eyes round the room. Any romantic
notions Wynnie might have indulged concerning the marvels of a studio,
must have paled considerably at the first glance around Percivale's
room--plainly the abode if not of poverty, then of self-denial, although I
suspected both. A common room, with no carpet save a square in front of the
fireplace; no curtains except a piece of something like drugget nailed
flat across all the lower half of the window to make the light fall from
upwards; two or three horsehair chairs, nearly worn out; a table in a
corner, littered with books and papers; a horrible lay-figure, at the
present moment dressed apparently for a scarecrow; a large easel, on which
stood a half-finished oil-painting--these constituted almost the whole
furniture of the room. With his pocket-handkerchief Percivale dusted one
chair for Wynnie and another for me. Then standing before us, he said:

"This is a very shabby place to receive you in, Miss Walton, but it is all
I have got."

"A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesses,"
I ventured to say.

"Thank you," said Percivale. "I hope not. It is well for me it should not."

"It is well for the richest man in England that it should not," I returned.
"If it were not so, the man who could eat most would be the most blessed."

"There are people, even of my acquaintance, however, who seem to think it
does."

"No doubt; but happily their thinking so will not make it so even for
themselves."

"Have you been very busy since you left us, Mr. Percivale?" asked Wynnie.

"Tolerably," he answered. "But I have not much to show for it. That on the
easel is all. I hardly like to let you look at it, though."

"Why?" asked Wynnie.

"First, because the subject is painful. Next, because it is so unfinished
that none but a painter could do it justice."

"But why should you paint subjects you would not like people to look at?"

"I very much want people to look at them."

"Why not us, then?" said Wynnie.

"Because you do not need to be pained."

"Are you sure it is good for you to pain anybody?" I said.

"Good is done by pain--is it not?" he asked.

"Undoubtedly. But whether _we_ are wise enough to know when and where and
how much, is the question."

"Of course I do not make the pain my object."

"If it comes only as a necessary accompaniment, that may alter the matter
greatly," I said. "But still I am not sure that anything in which the pain
predominates can be useful in the best way."

"Perhaps not," he returned.--"Will you look at the daub?"

"With much pleasure," I replied, and we rose and stood before the easel.
Percivale made no remark, but left us to find out what the picture meant.
Nor had I long to look before I understood it--in a measure at least.

It represented a garret-room in a wretchedly ruinous condition. The plaster
had come away in several places, and through between the laths in one spot
hung the tail of a great rat. In a dark corner lay a man dying. A woman sat
by his side, with her eyes fixed, not on his face, though she held his hand
in hers, but on the open door, where in the gloom you could just see the
struggles of two undertaker's men to get the coffin past the turn of the
landing towards the door. Through the window there was one peep of the blue
sky, whence a ray of sunlight fell on the one scarlet blossom of a geranium
in a broken pot on the window-sill outside.

"I do not wonder you did not like to show it," I said. "How can you bear to
paint such a dreadful picture?"

"It is a true one. It only represents a fact."

"All facts have not a right to be represented."

"Surely you would not get rid of painful things by huddling them out of
sight?"

"No; nor yet by gloating upon them."

"You will believe me that it gives me anything but pleasure to paint such
pictures--as far as the subject goes," he said with some discomposure.

"Of course. I know you well enough by this time to know that. But no one
could hang it on his wall who would not either gloat on suffering or grow
callous to it. Whence, then, would come the good I cannot doubt you propose
to yourself as your object in painting the picture? If it had come into my
possession, I would--"

"Put it in the fire," suggested Percivale with a strange smile.

"No. Still less would I sell it. I would hang it up with a curtain before
it, and only look at it now and then, when I thought my heart was in danger
of growing hardened to the sufferings of my fellow-men, and forgetting that
they need the Saviour."

"I could not wish it a better fate. That would answer my end."

"Would it, now? Is it not rather those who care little or nothing about
such matters that you would like to influence? Would you be content with
one solitary person like me? And, remember, I wouldn't buy it. I would
rather not have it. I could hardly bear to know it was in my house. I am
certain you cannot do people good by showing them _only_ the painful. Make
it as painful as you will, but put some hope into it--something to show
that action is worth taking in the affair. From mere suffering people will
turn away, and you cannot blame them. Every show of it, without hinting at
some door of escape, only urges them to forget it all. Why should they be
pained if it can do no good?"

"For the sake of sympathy, I should say," answered Percivale.

"They would rejoin, 'It is only a picture. Come along.' No; give people
hope, if you would have them act at all, in anything."

"I was almost hoping you would read the picture rather differently. You see
there is a bit of blue sky up there, and a bit of sunshiny scarlet in the
window."

He looked at me curiously as he spoke.

"I can read it so for myself, and have metamorphosed its meaning so. But
you only put in the sky and the scarlet to heighten the perplexity, and
make the other look more terrible."

"Now I know that as an artist I have succeeded, however I may have failed
otherwise. I did so mean it; but knowing you would dislike the picture,
I almost hoped in my cowardice, as I said, that you would read your own
meaning into it."

Wynnie had not said a word. As I turned away from the picture, I saw that
she was looking quite distressed, but whether by the picture or the freedom
with which I had remarked upon it, I do not know. My eyes falling on a
little sketch in sepia, I began to examine it, in the hope of finding
something more pleasant to say. I perceived in a moment, however, that it
was nearly the same thought, only treated in a gentler and more poetic
mode. A girl lay dying on her bed. A youth held her hand. A torrent of
summer sunshine fell through the window, and made a lake of glory upon the
floor. I turned away.

"You like that better, don't you, papa?" said Wynnie tremulously.

"It is beautiful, certainly," I answered. "And if it were only one, I
should enjoy it--as a mood. But coming after the other, it seems but the
same thing more weakly embodied."

I confess I was a little vexed; for I had got much interested in Percivale,
for his own sake as well as for my daughter's, and I had expected better
things from him. But I saw that I had gone too far.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Percivale," I said.

"I fear I have been too free in my remarks. I know, likewise, that I am a
clergyman, and not a painter, and therefore incapable of giving the praise
which I have little doubt your art at least deserves."

"I trust that honesty cannot offend me, however much and justly it may pain
me."

"But now I have said my worst, I should much like to see what else you have
at hand to show me."

"Unfortunately I have too much at hand. Let me see."

He strode to the other end of the room, where several pictures were leaning
against the wall, with their faces turned towards it. From these he chose
one, but, before showing it, fitted it into an empty frame that stood
beside. He then brought it forward and set it on the easel. I will describe
it, and then my reader will understand the admiration which broke from me
after I had regarded it for a time.

A dark hill rose against the evening sky, which shone through a few thin
pines on its top. Along a road on the hill-side four squires bore a dying
knight--a man past the middle age. One behind carried his helm, and another
led his horse, whose fine head only appeared in the picture. The head and
countenance of the knight were very noble, telling of many a battle, and
ever for the right. The last had doubtless been gained, for one might read
victory as well as peace in the dying look. The party had just reached the
edge of a steep descent, from which you saw the valley beneath, with the
last of the harvest just being reaped, while the shocks stood all about in
the fields, under the place of the sunset. The sun had been down for some
little time. There was no gold left in the sky, only a little dull saffron,
but plenty of that lovely liquid green of the autumn sky, divided with a
few streaks of pale rose. The depth of the sky overhead, which you could
not see for the arrangement of the picture, was mirrored lovelily in a
piece of water that lay in the centre of the valley.

"My dear fellow," I cried, "why did you not show me this first, and save me
from saying so many unkind things? Here is a picture to my own heart; it is
glorious. Look here, Wynnie," I went on; "you see it is evening; the sun's
work is done, and he has set in glory, leaving his good name behind him in
a lovely harmony of colour. The old knight's work is done too; his day has
set in the storm of battle, and he is lying lapt in the coming peace. They
are bearing him home to his couch and his grave. Look at their faces in
the dusky light. They are all mourning for and honouring the life that is
ebbing away. But he is gathered to his fathers like a shock of corn fully
ripe; and so the harvest stands golden in the valley beneath. The picture
would not be complete, however, if it did not tell us of the deep heaven
overhead, the symbol of that heaven whither he who has done his work is
bound. What a lovely idea to represent it by means of the water, the heaven
embodying itself in the earth, as it were, that we may see it! And observe
how that dusky hill-side, and those tall slender mournful-looking pines,
with that sorrowful sky between, lead the eye and point the heart upward
towards that heaven. It is indeed a grand picture, full of feeling--a
picture and a parable."

[Footnote: This is a description, from memory only, of a picture painted by
Arthur Hughes.]

I looked at the girl. Her eyes were full of tears, either called forth
by the picture itself or by the pleasure of finding Percivale's work
appreciated by me, who had spoken so hardly of the others.

"I cannot tell you how glad I am that you like it," she said.

"Like it!" I returned; "I am simply delighted with it, more than I can
express--so much delighted that if I could have this alongside of it, I
should not mind hanging that other--that hopeless garret--on the most
public wall I have."

"Then," said Wynnie bravely, though in a tremulous voice, "you
confess--don't you, papa?--that you were _too_ hard on Mr. Percivale at
first?"

"Not too hard on his picture, my dear; and that was all he had yet given me
to judge by. No man should paint a picture like that. You are not bound to
disseminate hopelessness; for where there is no hope there can be no sense
of duty."

"But surely, papa, Mr. Percivale has _some_ sense of duty," said Wynnie in
an almost angry tone.

"Assuredly my love. Therefore I argue that he has some hope, and therefore,
again, that he has no right to publish such a picture."

At the word _publish_ Percivale smiled. But Wynnie went on with her
defence:

"But you see, papa, that Mr. Percivale does not paint such pictures only.
Look at the other."

"Yes, my dear. But pictures are not like poems, lying side by side in the
same book, so that the one can counteract the other. The one of these might
go to the stormy Hebrides, and the other to the Vale of Avalon; but even
then I should be strongly inclined to criticise the poem, whatever position
it stood in, that had _nothing_--positively nothing--of the aurora in it."

Here let me interrupt the course of our conversation to illustrate it by a
remark on a poem which has appeared within the last twelvemonth from the
pen of the greatest living poet, and one who, if I may dare to judge, will
continue the greatest for many, many years to come. It is only a little
song, "I stood on a tower in the wet." I have found few men who, whether
from the influence of those prints which are always on the outlook for
something to ridicule, or from some other cause, did not laugh at the poem.
I thought and think it a lovely poem, although I am not quite sure of the
transposition of words in the last two lines. But I do not _approve_ of the
poem, just because there is no hope in it. It lacks that touch or hint
of _red_ which is as essential, I think, to every poem as to every
picture--the life-blood--the one pure colour. In his hopeful moods, let a
man put on his singing robes, and chant aloud the words of gladness--or of
grief, I care not which--to his fellows; in his hours of hopelessness,
let him utter his thoughts only to his inarticulate violin, or in the
evanescent sounds of any his other stringed instrument; let him commune
with his own heart on his bed, and be still; let him speak to God face to
face if he may--only he cannot do that and continue hopeless; but let him
not sing aloud in such a mood into the hearts of his fellows, for he cannot
do them much good thereby. If it were a fact that there is no hope, it
would not be a _truth_. No doubt, if it were a fact, it ought to be known;
but who will dare be confident that there is no hope? Therefore, I say, let
the hopeless moods, at least, if not the hopeless men, be silent.

"He could refuse to let the one go without the other," said Wynnie.

"Now you are talking like a child, Wynnie, as indeed all partisans do at
the best. He might sell them together, but the owner would part them.--If
you will allow me, I will come and see both the pictures again to-morrow."

Percivale assured me of welcome, and we parted, I declining to look at any
more pictures that day, but not till we had arranged that he should dine
with us in the evening.




CHAPTER XIII.

HOME AGAIN.


I will not detain my readers with the record of the few days we spent in
London. In writing the account of it, as in the experience of the time
itself, I feel that I am near home, and grow the more anxious to reach it.
Ah! I am growing a little anxious after another home, too; for the house of
my tabernacle is falling to ruins about me. What a word _home_ is! To think
that God has made the world so that you have only to be born in a certain
place, and live long enough in it to get at the secret of it, and
henceforth that place is to you a _home_ with all the wonderful meaning in
the word. Thus the whole earth is a home to the race; for every spot of it
shares in the feeling: some one of the family loves it as _his_ home. How
rich the earth seems when we so regard it--crowded with the loves of home!
Yet I am now getting ready to _go home_--to leave this world of homes and
go home. When I reach that home, shall I even then seek yet to go home?
Even then, I believe, I shall seek a yet warmer, deeper, truer home in the
deeper knowledge of God--in the truer love of my fellow-man. Eternity will
be, my heart and my faith tell me, a travelling homeward, but in jubilation
and confidence and the vision of the beloved.

When we had laid Connie once more in her own room, at least the room which
since her illness had come to be called hers, I went up to my study. The
familiar faces of my books welcomed me. I threw myself in my reading-chair,
and gazed around me with pleasure. I felt it so homely here. All my old
friends--whom somehow I hoped to see some day--present there in the spirit
ready to talk with me any moment when I was in the mood, making no claim
upon my attention when I was not! I felt as if I should like, when the
hour should come, to die in that chair, and pass into the society of the
witnesses in the presence of the tokens they had left behind them.

I heard shouts on the stair, and in rushed the two boys.

"Papa, papa!" they were crying together.

"What is the matter?"

"We've found the big chest just where we left it."

"Well, did you expect it would have taken itself off?"

"But there's everything in it just as we left it."

"Were you afraid, then, that the moment you left it it would turn itself
upside down, and empty itself of all its contents on the floor?"

They laughed, but apparently with no very keen appreciation of the attempt
at a joke.

"Well, papa, I did not think anything about it; but--but--but--there
everything is as we left it."

With this triumphant answer they turned and hurried, a little abashed, out
of the room; but not many moments elapsed before the sounds that arose from
them were sufficiently reassuring as to the state of their spirits.
When they were gone, I forgot my books in the attempt to penetrate and
understand the condition of my boys' thoughts; and I soon came to see that
they were right and I was wrong. It was the movement of that undeveloped
something in us which makes it possible for us in everything to give
thanks. It was the wonder of the discovery of the existence of law. There
was nothing that they could understand, _à priori_, to necessitate the
remaining of the things where they had left them. No doubt there was a
reason in the nature of God, why all things should hold together, whence
springs the law of gravitation, as we call it; but as far as the boys could
understand of this, all things might as well have been arranged for flying
asunder, so that no one could expect to find anything where he had left it.
I began to see yet further into the truth that in everything we must give
thanks, and whatever is not of faith is sin. Even the laws of nature reveal
the character of God, not merely as regards their ends, but as regards
their kind, being of necessity fashioned after ideal facts of his own being
and will.

I rose and went down to see if everybody was getting settled, and how the
place looked. I found Ethel already going about the house as if she had
never left it, and as if we all had just returned from a long absence and
she had to show us home-hospitality. Wynnie had vanished; but I found her
by and by in the favourite haunt of her mother before her marriage--beside
the little pond called the Bishop's Basin, of which I do not think I have
ever told my readers the legend. But why should I mention it, for I cannot
tell it now? The frost lay thick in the hollow when I went down there to
find her; the branches, lately clothed with leaves, stood bare and icy
around her. Ethelwyn and I had almost forgotten that there was anything out
of the common in connection with the house. The horror of this mysterious
spot had laid hold upon Wynnie. I resolved that that night I would, in her
mother's presence, tell her all the legend of the place, and the whole
story of how I won her mother. I did so; and I think it made her trust us
more. But now I left her there, and went to Connie. She lay in her bed;
for her mother had got her thither at once, a perfect picture of blessed
comfort. There was no occasion to be uneasy about her. I was so pleased
to be at home again with such good hopes, that I could not rest, but went
wandering everywhere--into places even which I had not entered for ten
years at least, and found fresh interest in everything; for this was home,
and here I was.

Now I fancy my readers, looking forward to the end, and seeing what a small
amount of print is left, blaming me; some, that I have roused curiosity
without satisfying it; others, that I have kept them so long over a dull
book and a lame conclusion. But out of a life one cannot always cut
complete portions, and serve them up in nice shapes. I am well aware that I
have not told them the _fate_, as some of them would call it, of either of
my daughters. This I cannot develop now, even as far as it is known to me;
but, if it is any satisfaction to them to know this much--and it will be
all that some of them mean by _fate_, I fear--I may as well tell them now
that Wynnie has been Mrs. Percivale for many years, with a history well
worth recounting; and that Connie has had a quiet, happy life for nearly
as long, as Mrs. Turner. She has never got strong, but has very tolerable
health. Her husband watches her with the utmost care and devotion. My
Ethelwyn is still with me. Harry is gone home. Charlie is a barrister of
the Middle Temple. And Dora--I must not forget Dora--well, I will say
nothing about her _fate_, for good reasons--it is not quite determined yet.
Meantime she puts up with the society of her old father and mother, and is
something else than unhappy, I fully believe.

"And Connie's baby?" asks some one out of ten thousand readers. I have no
time to tell you about her now; but as you know her so little, it cannot be
such a trial to remain, for a time at least, unenlightened with regard to
her _fate._

The only other part of my history which could contain anything like
incident enough to make it interesting in print, is a period I spent in
London some few years after the time of which I have now been writing. But
I am getting too old to regard the commencement of another history with
composure. The labour of thinking into sequences, even the bodily labour of
writing, grows more and more severe. I fancy I can think correctly still;
but the effort necessary to express myself with corresponding correctness
becomes, in prospect, at least, sometimes almost appalling. I must
therefore take leave of my patient reader--for surely every one who
has followed me through all that I have here written, well deserves the
epithet--as if the probability that I shall write no more were a certainty,
bidding him farewell with one word: _"Friend, hope thou in God,"_ and for
a parting gift offering him a new, and, I think, a true rendering of the
first verse of the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews:

  "Now faith is the essence of hopes, the trying of things unseen."

Good-bye.



THE END.









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