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Title: The Seaboard Parish Volume 1

Author: George MacDonald

Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8551]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on July 22, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEABOARD PARISH VOLUME 1 ***




Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team




THE SEABOARD PARISH

BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, LL.D.

VOL. I.




CONTENTS OF VOL. I.




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





CHAPTER I.

HOMILETIC.


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

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

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

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

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

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






CHAPTER II.

CONSTANCE'S BIRTHDAY.





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It is a long ride," I answered.

"Too much for the pony?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"In consequence of what?"

"In consequence of your thinking you understood it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, but that's not work."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Nobody does."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Please do, papa."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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






CHAPTER III.

THE SICK CHAMBER.





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

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

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

"I am so happy!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Lying in bed and doing nothing!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After I had done talking, she said--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What is it like, papa?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I see that, papa."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I have tried to read him a little."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You did show me, papa."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Certainly I do, my dear."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How do you mean, my dear?"

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

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

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

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






CHAPTER IV.

A SUNDAY EVENING.





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I sat up too, and listened.

"There is some creature," I granted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I think I do," I answered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I knelt down, and said:

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

Then I said to Ethelwyn,

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

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

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






CHAPTER V.

MY DREAM.





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

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

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

"What is the matter, husband?"

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

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






CHAPTER VI.

THE NEW BABY.





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why?" I asked.

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

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

"But you don't want the child."

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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






CHAPTER VII.

ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING.





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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






CHAPTER VIII.

THEODORA'S DOOM.





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Susan was the old nurse.

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

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

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

"Still troubling yourself about that, husband?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

said Ethel.

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

"Yes, thank you, I do."

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

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

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


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

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

"Wisdom, Harry, not cunning."

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

My wife laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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






CHAPTER IX.

A SPRING CHAPTER.





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I promised, and repeated the poem.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We have done, papa."

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

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

When Ethelwyn came, I went on.

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

Various guesses were hazarded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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






CHAPTER X.

AN IMPORTANT LETTER.





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"About the beginning of June."

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

"The better, I do think."

"Has she had any increase of pain since?"

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

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

"It is a long journey."

"She could make it by easy stages."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Of what?" she asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"My darling! You have hurt yourself!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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






CHAPTER XI.

CONNIE'S DREAM.





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

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

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

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

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

"Doesn't _he_ enjoy this?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her merriment returned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"There must be the best of it."

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

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

"I was afraid to do that, papa."

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

"Where do you mean, papa?"

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






CHAPTER XII.

THE JOURNEY.





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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






CHAPTER XIII.

WHAT WE DID WHEN WE ARRIVED.





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

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

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

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

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

Here Connie woke up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What do you mean, my child?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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






CHAPTER XIV.

MORE ABOUT KILKHAVEN.





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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






CHAPTER XV.

THE OLD CHURCH.





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

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

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

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

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

"The church knows me, sir."

"But what has that to do with it?"

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

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

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

I was tempted to go on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And your boys?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Are you quite sure of that, sir?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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






CHAPTER XVI.

CONNIE'S WATCH-TOWER.





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

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

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

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

"What is, my dear?"

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

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

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

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

Connie gave a little shrug of her shoulders.

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

I laughed at her fastidious fancy.

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

"O, yes; I should like that."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another silence followed. Then Connie spoke.

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

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

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

I looked for some time before I could discover him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Have you, Dora? Where?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Counting the dewy pebbles, fixed in thought."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Of course not. Nobody will be judged like any other body. To his own
Master, who knows all about him, every man stands or falls. Depend upon it,
God likes fair play, to use a homely phrase, far better than any sailor of
them all. But that's not exactly the question. It seems to me the question
is this: shall we, who know what a blessed thing life is because we know
what God is like, who can trust in him with all our hearts because he is
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the friend of sinners, shall we not
try all we can to let them, too, know the blessedness of trusting in their
Father in heaven? If we could only get them to say the Lord's prayer,
_meaning_ it, think what that would be! Look here! This can't be called
bribery, for they are in want of it, and it will show them I am friendly.
Here's another sovereign. Give them my compliments, and say that if any
of them happen to be in Kilkhaven tomorrow, I shall be quite pleased to
welcome them to church. Tell them I will give them of my best there if they
will come. Make the invitation merrily, you know. No long faces and solemn
speech. I will give them the solemn speech when they come to church. But
even there I hope God will keep the long face far from me. That is fittest
for fear and suffering. And the house of God is the casket that holds the
antidote against all fear and most suffering. But I am preaching my sermon
on Saturday instead of Sunday, and keeping you from your ministration to
the poor fellows. Good-bye."

"I will give them your message as near as I can," he said, and we shook
hands and parted.

This was the first experience we had of the might and battle of the ocean.
To our eyes it lay quiet as a baby asleep. On that Sunday morning there had
been no commotion here. Yet now at last, on the Saturday morning, home come
the conquered and spoiled of the sea. As if with a mock she takes all they
have, and flings them on shore again, with her weeds, and her shells, and
her sand. Before the winter was over we had learned--how much more of that
awful power that surrounds the habitable earth! By slow degrees the sense
of its might grew upon us, first by the vision of its many aspects and
moods, and then by more awful things that followed; for there are few
coasts upon which the sea rages so wildly as upon this, the whole force of
the Atlantic breaking upon it. Even when there is no storm within perhaps
hundreds of miles, when all is still as a church on the land, the storm
that raves somewhere out upon the vast waste, will drive the waves in
upon the shore with such fury that not even a lifeboat could make its way
through their yawning hollows, and their fierce, shattered, and tumbling
crests.






CHAPTER XVII.

MY FIRST SERMON IN THE SEABOARD PARISH.





In the hope that some of the shipwrecked mariners might be present in the
church the next day, I proceeded to consider my morning's sermon for the
occasion. There was no difficulty in taking care at the same time that it
should be suitable to the congregation, whether those sailors were there or
not. I turned over in my mind several subjects. I thought, for instance,
of showing them how this ocean that lay watchful and ready all about our
island, all about the earth, was but a visible type or symbol of two other
oceans, one very still, the other very awful and fierce; in fact, that
three oceans surrounded us: one of the known world; one of the unseen
world, that is, of death; one of the spirit--the devouring ocean of
evil--and might I not have added yet another, encompassing and silencing
all the rest--that of truth! The visible ocean seemed to make war upon the
land, and the dwellers thereon. Restrained by the will of God and by him
made subject more and more to the advancing knowledge of those who were
created to rule over it, it was yet like a half-tamed beast ever ready to
break loose and devour its masters. Of course this would have been but one
aspect or appearance of it--for it was in truth all service; but this was
the aspect I knew it must bear to those, seafaring themselves or not, to
whom I had to speak. Then I thought I might show, that its power, like that
of all things that man is ready to fear, had one barrier over which no
commotion, no might of driving wind, could carry it, beyond which its
loudest waves were dumb--the barrier of death. Hitherto and no further
could its power reach. It could kill the body. It could dash in pieces the
last little cock-boat to which the man clung, but thus it swept the man
beyond its own region into the second sea of stillness, which we call
death, out upon which the thoughts of those that are left behind can follow
him only in great longings, vague conjectures, and mighty faith. Then I
thought I could show them how, raving in fear, or lying still in calm
deceit, there lay about the life of man a far more fearful ocean than that
which threatened his body; for this would cast, could it but get a hold of
him, both body and soul into hell--the sea of evil, of vice, of sin, of
wrong-doing--they might call it by what name they pleased. This made war
against the very essence of life, against God who is the truth, against
love, against fairness, against fatherhood, motherhood, sisterhood,
brotherhood, manhood, womanhood, against tenderness and grace and beauty,
gathering into one pulp of festering death all that is noble, lovely,
worshipful in the human nature made so divine that the one fearless man,
the Lord Jesus Christ, shared it with us. This, I thought I might make them
understand, was the only terrible sea, the only hopeless ocean from whose
awful shore we must shrink and flee, the end of every voyage upon whose
bosom was the bottom of its filthy waters, beyond the reach of all that is
thought or spoken in the light, beyond life itself, but for the hand that
reaches down from the upper ocean of truth, the hand of the Redeemer of
men. I thought, I say, for a while, that I could make this, not definite,
but very real to them. But I did not feel quite confident about it. Might
they not in the symbolism forget the thing symbolised? And would not the
symbol itself be ready to fade quite from their memory, or to return
only in the vaguest shadow? And with the thought I perceived a far more
excellent way. For the power of the truth lies of course in its revelation
to the mind, and while for this there are a thousand means, none are so
mighty as its embodiment in human beings and human life. There it is itself
alive and active. And amongst these, what embodiment comes near to that in
him who was perfect man in virtue of being at the root of the secret of
humanity, in virtue of being the eternal Son of God? We are his sons in
time: he is his Son in eternity, of whose sea time is but the broken
sparkle. Therefore, I would talk to them about--but I will treat my reader
now as if he were not my reader, but one of my congregation on that bright
Sunday, my first in the Seaboard Parish, with the sea outside the church,
flashing in the sunlight.

While I stood at the lectern, which was in front of the altar-screen, I
could see little of my congregation, partly from my being on a level with
them, partly from the necessity for keeping my eyes and thoughts upon that
which I read. When, however, I rose from prayer in the pulpit; then I felt,
as usual with me, that I was personally present for personal influence with
my people, and then I saw, to my great pleasure, that one long bench nearly
in the middle of the church was full of such sunburnt men as could not be
mistaken for any but mariners, even if their torn and worn garments had
not revealed that they must be the very men about whom we had been so much
interested. Not only were they behaving with perfect decorum, but their
rough faces wore an aspect of solemnity which I do not suppose was by any
means their usual aspect.

I gave them no text. I had one myself, which was the necessary thing. They
should have it by and by.

"Once upon a time," I said, "a man went up a mountain, and stayed there
till it was dark, and stayed on. Now, a man who finds himself on a mountain
as the sun is going down, especially if he is alone, makes haste to get
down before it is dark. But this man went up when the sun was going down,
and, as I say, continued there for a good long while after it was dark. You
will want to know why. I will tell you. He wished to be alone. He hadn't a
house of his own. He never had all the time he lived. He hadn't even a room
of his own into which he could go, and bolt the door of it. True, he had
kind friends, who gave him a bed: but they were all poor people, and their
houses were small, and very likely they had large families, and he could
not always find a quiet place to go into. And I dare say, if he had had a
room, he would have been a little troubled with the children constantly
coming to find him; for however much he loved them--and no man was ever so
fond of children as he was--he needed to be left quiet sometimes. So, upon
this occasion, he went up the mountain just to be quiet. He had been all
day with a crowd of people, and he felt that it was time to be alone. For
he had been talking with men all day, which tires and sometimes confuses a
man's thoughts, and now he wanted to talk with God--for that makes a man
strong, and puts all the confusion in order again, and lets a man know
what he is about. So he went to the top of the hill. That was his secret
chamber. It had no door; but that did not matter--no one could see him
but God. There he stayed for hours--sometimes, I suppose, kneeling in his
prayer to God; sometimes sitting, tired with his own thinking, on a stone;
sometimes walking about, looking forward to what would come next--not
anxious about it, but contemplating it. For just before he came up here,
some of the people who had been with him wanted to make him a king; and
this would not do--this was not what God wanted of him, and therefore he
got rid of them, and came up here to talk to God. It was so quiet up here!
The earth had almost vanished. He could see just the bare hilltop beneath
him, a glimmer below, and the sky and the stars over his head. The people
had all gone away to their own homes, and perhaps next day would hardly
think about him at all, busy catching fish, or digging their gardens, or
making things for their houses. But he knew that God would not forget him
the next day any more than this day, and that God had sent him not to be
the king that these people wanted him to be, but their servant. So, to make
his heart strong, I say, he went up into the mountain alone to have a talk
with his Father. How quiet it all was up here, I say, and how noisy it had
been down there a little while ago! But God had been in the noise then as
much as he was in the quiet now--the only difference being that he could
not then be alone with him. I need not tell you who this man was--it was
the king of men, the servant of men, the Lord Jesus Christ, the everlasting
son of our Father in heaven.

"Now this mountain on which he was praying had a small lake at the foot of
it--that is, about thirteen miles long, and five miles broad. Not wanting
even his usual companions to be with him this evening--partly, I presume,
because they were of the same mind as those who desired to take him by
force and make him a king--he had sent them away in their boat, to go
across this water to the other side, where were their homes and their
families. Now, it was not pitch dark either on the mountain-top or on the
water down below; yet I doubt if any other man than he would have been
keen-eyed enough to discover that little boat down in the middle of the
lake, much distressed by the west wind that blew right in their teeth. But
he loved every man in it so much, that I think even as he was talking
to his Father, his eyes would now and then go looking for and finding
it--watching it on its way across to the other side. You must remember that
it was a little boat; and there are often tremendous storms upon these
small lakes with great mountains about them. For the wind will come all
at once, rushing down through the clefts in as sudden a squall as ever
overtook a sailor at sea. And then, you know, there is no sea-room. If
the wind get the better of them, they are on the shore in a few minutes,
whichever way the wind may blow. He saw them worn out at the oar, toiling
in rowing, for the wind was contrary unto them. So the time for loneliness
and prayer was over, and the time to go down out of his secret chamber and
help his brethren was come. He did not need to turn and say good-bye to
his Father, as if he dwelt on that mountain-top alone: his Father was down
there on the lake as well. He went straight down. Could not his Father, if
he too was down on the lake, help them without him? Yes. But he wanted him
to do it, that they might see that he did it. Otherwise they would only
have thought that the wind fell and the waves lay down, without supposing
for a moment that their Master or his Father had had anything to do with
it. They would have done just as people do now-a-days: they think that the
help comes of itself, instead of by the will of him who determined from the
first that men should be helped. So the Master went down the hill. When he
reached the border of the lake, the wind being from the other side, he must
have found the waves breaking furiously upon the rocks. But that made no
difference to him. He looked out as he stood alone on the edge amidst the
rushing wind and the noise of the water, out over the waves under the
clear, starry sky, saw where the tiny boat was tossed about like a
nutshell, and set out."

The mariners had been staring at me up to this point, leaning forward on
their benches, for sailors are nearly as fond of a good yarn as they are of
tobacco; and I heard afterwards that they had voted parson's yarn a good
one. Now, however, I saw one of them, probably more ignorant than the
others, cast a questioning glance at his neighbour. It was not returned,
and he fell again into a listening attitude. He had no idea of what was
coming. He probably thought parson had forgotten to say how Jesus had come
by a boat.

"The companions of our Lord had not been willing to go away and leave him
behind. Now, I dare say, they wished more than ever that he had been with
them--not that they thought he could do anything with a storm, only that
somehow they would have been less afraid with his face to look at. They had
seen him cure men of dreadful diseases; they had seen him turn water into
wine--some of them; they had seen him feed five thousand people the day
before with five loaves and two small fishes; but had one of their number
suggested that if he had been with them, they would have been safe from the
storm, they would not have talked any nonsense about the laws of nature,
not having learned that kind of nonsense, but they would have said that was
quite a different thing--altogether too much to expect or believe: _nobody_
could make the wind mind what it was about, or keep the water from
drowning you if you fell into it and couldn't swim; or such-like.

"At length, when they were nearly worn out, taking feebler and feebler
strokes, sometimes missing the water altogether, at other times burying
their oars in it up to the handles--as they rose on the crest of a huge
wave, one of them gave a cry, and they all stopped rowing and stared,
leaning forward to peer through the darkness. And through the spray which
the wind tore from the tops of the waves and scattered before it like dust,
they saw, perhaps a hundred yards or so from the boat, something standing
up from the surface of the water. It seemed to move towards them. It was a
shape like a man. They all cried out with fear, as was natural, for they
thought it must be a ghost."

How the faces of the sailors strained towards me at this part of the story!
I was afraid one of them especially was on the point of getting up to
speak, as we have heard of sailors doing in church. I went on.

"But then, over the noise of the wind and the waters came the voice they
knew so well. It said, 'Be of good cheer: it is I. Be not afraid.' I should
think, between wonder and gladness, they hardly knew for some moments where
they were or what they were about. Peter was the first to recover himself
apparently. In the first flush of his delight he felt strong and full of
courage. 'Lord, if it be thou,' he said, 'bid me come unto thee on the
water.' Jesus just said, 'Come;' and Peter unshipped his oar, and scrambled
over the gunwale on to the sea. But when he let go his hold of the boat,
and began to look about him, and saw how the wind was tearing the water,
and how it tossed and raved between him and Jesus, he began to be afraid.
And as soon as he began to be afraid he began to sink; but he had,
notwithstanding his fear, just sense enough to do the one sensible thing;
he cried out, 'Lord, save me.' And Jesus put out his hand, and took hold of
him, and lifted him up out of the water, and said to him, 'O thou of little
faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? And then they got into the boat, and the
wind fell all at once, and altogether.

"Now, you will not think that Peter was a coward, will you? It wasn't that
he hadn't courage, but that he hadn't enough of it. And why was it that he
hadn't enough of it? Because he hadn't faith enough. Peter was always very
easily impressed with the look of things. It wasn't at all likely that
a man should be able to walk on the water; and yet Peter found himself
standing on the water: you would have thought that when once he found
himself standing on the water, he need not be afraid of the wind and the
waves that lay between him and Jesus. But they looked so ugly that the
fearfulness of them took hold of his heart, and his courage went. You would
have thought that the greatest trial of his courage was over when he got
out of the boat, and that there was comparatively little more ahead of him.
Yet the sight of the waves and the blast of the boisterous wind were too
much for him. I will tell you how I fancy it was; and I think there are
several instances of the same kind of thing in Peter's life. When he got
out of the boat, and found himself standing on the water, he began to think
much of himself for being able to do so, and fancy himself better and
greater than his companions, and an especial favourite of God above them.
Now, there is nothing that kills faith sooner than pride. The two are
directly against each other. The moment that Peter grew proud, and began
to think about himself instead of about his Master, he began to lose his
faith, and then he grew afraid, and then he began to sink--and that brought
him to his senses. Then he forgot himself and remembered his Master, and
then the hand of the Lord caught him, and the voice of the Lord gently
rebuked him for the smallness of his faith, asking, 'Wherefore didst thou
doubt?' I wonder if Peter was able to read his own heart sufficiently well
to answer that _wherefore_. I do not think it likely at this period of his
history. But God has immeasurable patience, and before he had done teaching
Peter, even in this life, he had made him know quite well that pride and
conceit were at the root of all his failures. Jesus did not point it out to
him now. Faith was the only thing that would reveal that to him, as well as
cure him of it; and was, therefore, the only thing he required of him in
his rebuke. I suspect Peter was helped back into the boat by the eager
hands of his companions already in a humbler state of mind than when he
left it; but before his pride would be quite overcome, it would need that
same voice of loving-kindness to call him Satan, and the voice of the cock
to bring to his mind his loud boast, and his sneaking denial; nay, even the
voice of one who had never seen the Lord till after his death, but was yet
a readier disciple than he--the voice of St. Paul, to rebuke him because he
dissembled, and was not downright honest. But at the last even he gained
the crown of martyrdom, enduring all extremes, nailed to the cross like
his Master, rather than deny his name. This should teach us to distrust
ourselves, and yet have great hope for ourselves, and endless patience with
other people. But to return to the story and what the story itself teaches
us.

"If the disciples had known that Jesus saw them from the top of the
mountain, and was watching them all the time, would they have been
frightened at the storm, as I have little doubt they were, for they were
only fresh-water fishermen, you know? Well, to answer my own question"--I
went on in haste, for I saw one or two of the sailors with an audible
answer hovering on their lips--"I don't know that, as they then were, it
would have made so much difference to them; for none of them had risen much
above the look of the things nearest them yet. But supposing you, who know
something about him, were alone on the sea, and expecting your boat to be
swamped every moment--if you found out all at once, that he was looking
down at you from some lofty hilltop, and seeing all round about you in time
and space too, would you be afraid? He might mean you to go to the bottom,
you know. Would you mind going to the bottom with him looking at you? I do
not think I should mind it myself. But I must take care lest I be boastful
like Peter.

"Why should we be afraid of anything with him looking at us who is the
Saviour of men? But we are afraid of him instead, because we do not believe
that he is what he says he is--the Saviour of men. We do not believe what
he offers us is salvation. We think it is slavery, and therefore continue
slaves. Friends, I will speak to you who think you do believe in him. I am
not going to say that you do not believe in him; but I hope I am going to
make you say to yourselves that you too deserve to have those words of the
Saviour spoken to you that were spoken to Peter, 'O ye of little faith!'
Floating on the sea of your troubles, all kinds of fears and anxieties
assailing you, is He not on the mountain-top? Sees he not the little boat
of your fortunes tossed with the waves and the contrary wind? Assuredly he
will come to you walking on the waters. It may not be in the way you wish,
but if not, you will say at last, 'This is better.' It may be that he will
come in a form that will make you cry out for fear in the weakness of your
faith, as the disciples cried out--not believing any more than they did,
that it can be he. But will not each of you arouse his courage that to you
also he may say, as to the woman with the sick daughter whose confidence he
so sorely tried, 'Great is thy faith'? Will you not rouse yourself, I say,
that you may do him justice, and cast off the slavery of your own dread?
O ye of little faith, wherefore will ye doubt? Do not think that the Lord
sees and will not come. Down the mountain assuredly he will come, and you
are now as safe in your troubles as the disciples were in theirs with Jesus
looking on. They did not know it, but it was so: the Lord was watching
them. And when you look back upon your past lives, cannot you see some
instances of the same kind--when you felt and acted as if the Lord had
forgotten you, and found afterwards that he had been watching you all the
time?

"But the reason why you do not trust him more is that you obey him so
little. If you would only, ask what God would have you to do, you would
soon find your confidence growing. It is because you are proud, and
envious, and greedy after gain, that you do not trust him more. Ah! trust
him if it were only to get rid of these evil things, and be clean and
beautiful in heart.

"O sailors with me on the ocean of life, will you, knowing that he is
watching you from his mountain-top, do and say the things that hurt, and
wrong, and disappoint him? Sailors on the waters that surround this globe,
though there be no great mountain that overlooks the little lake on which
you float, not the less does he behold you, and care for you, and watch
over you. Will you do that which is unpleasing, distressful to him? Will
you be irreverent, cruel, coarse? Will you say evil things, lie, and
delight in vile stories and reports, with his eye on you, watching your
ship on its watery ways, ever ready to come over the waves to help you? It
is a fine thing, sailors, to fear nothing; but it would be far finer to
fear nothing _because_ he is above all, and over all, and in you all. For
his sake and for his love, give up everything bad, and take him for your
captain. He will be both captain and pilot to you, and steer you safe into
the port of glory. Now to God the Father," &c.

This is very nearly the sermon I preached that first Sunday morning. I
followed it up with a short enforcement in the afternoon.

END OF VOL. I.





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