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+Project Gutenberg's The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2, by George MacDonald
+#30 in our series by George MacDonald
+
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
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+
+Title: The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2
+
+Author: George MacDonald
+
+Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8552]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on July 22, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEABOARD PARISH VOL. 2 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+THE SEABOARD PARISH
+
+BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, LL.D.
+
+VOL. II.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
+
+
+
+
+
+   I. ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING
+  II. NICEBOOTS
+ III. THE BLACKSMITH
+  IV. THE LIFE-BOAT
+   V. MR. PERCIVALE
+  VI. THE SHADOW OF DEATH
+ VII. AT THE FARM
+VIII. THE KEEVE
+  IX. THE WALK TO CHURCH
+   X. THE OLD CASTLE
+  XI. JOE AND HIS TROUBLE
+ XII. A SMALL ADVENTURE
+XIII. THE HARVEST
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING.
+
+
+
+
+
+In the evening we met in Connie's room, as usual, to have our talk. And
+this is what came out of it.
+
+The window was open. The sun was in the west. We sat a little aside out
+of the course of his radiance, and let him look full into the room. Only
+Wynnie sat back in a dark corner, as if she would get out of his way. Below
+him the sea lay bluer than you could believe even when you saw it--blue
+with a delicate yet deep silky blue, the exquisiteness of which was thrown
+up by the brilliant white lines of its lapping on the high coast, to the
+northward. We had just sat down, when Dora broke out with--
+
+"I saw Niceboots at church. He did stare at you, papa, as if he had never
+heard a sermon before."
+
+"I daresay he never heard such a sermon before!" said Connie, with the
+perfect confidence of inexperience and partiality--not to say ignorance,
+seeing she had not heard the sermon herself.
+
+Here Wynnie spoke from her dark corner, apparently forcing herself to
+speak, and thereby giving what seemed an unpleasant tone to what she said.
+
+"Well, papa, I don't know what to think. You are always telling us to trust
+in Him; but how can we, if we are not good?"
+
+"The first good thing you can do is to look up to him. That is the
+beginning of trust in him, and the most sensible thing that it is possible
+for us to do. That is faith."
+
+"But it's no use sometimes."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"Because you--I mean I--can't feel good, or care about it at all."
+
+"But is that any ground for saying that it is no use--that he does not heed
+you? that he disregards the look cast up to him? that, till the heart goes
+with the will, he who made himself strong to be the helper of the weak, who
+pities most those who are most destitute--and who so destitute as those who
+do not love what they want to love--except, indeed, those who don't want to
+love?--that, till you are well on towards all right by earnestly
+seeking it, he won't help you? You are to judge him from yourself, are
+you?--forgetting that all the misery in you is just because you have not
+got his grand presence with you?"
+
+I spoke so earnestly as to be somewhat incoherent in words. But my reader
+will understand. Wynnie was silent. Connie, as if partly to help her
+sister, followed on the same side.
+
+"I don't know exactly how to say what I mean, papa, but I wish I could get
+this lovely afternoon, all full of sunshine and blue, into unity with all
+that you teach us about Jesus Christ. I wish this beautiful day came in
+with my thought of him, like the frame--gold and red and blue--that you
+have to that picture of him at home. Why doesn't it?"
+
+"Just because you have not enough of faith in him, my dear. You do not know
+him well enough yet. You do not yet believe that he means you all gladness,
+heartily, honestly, thoroughly."
+
+"And no suffering, papa?"
+
+"I did not say that, my dear. There you are on your couch and can't move.
+But he does mean you such gladness, such a full sunny air and blue sea of
+blessedness that this suffering shall count for little in it; nay more,
+shall be taken in for part, and, like the rocks that interfere with the
+roll of the sea, flash out the white that glorifies and intensifies the
+whole--to pass away by and by, I trust, none the less. What a chance you
+have, my Connie, of believing in him, of offering upon his altar!"
+
+"But," said my wife, "are not these feelings in a great measure dependent
+upon the state of one's health? I find it so different when the sunshine is
+inside me as well as outside me."
+
+"Not a doubt of it, my dear. But that is only the more reason for rising
+above all that. From the way some people speak of physical difficulties--I
+don't mean you, wife--you would think that they were not merely the
+inevitable which they are, but the insurmountable which they are not. That
+they are physical and not spiritual is not only a great consolation, but a
+strong argument for overcoming them. For all that is physical is put, or
+is in the process of being put, under the feet of the spiritual. Do not
+mistake me. I do not say you can make yourself feel merry or happy when you
+are in a physical condition which is contrary to such mental condition. But
+you can withdraw from it--not all at once; but by practice and effort you
+can learn to withdraw from it, refusing to allow your judgments and actions
+to be ruled by it. You can climb up out of the fogs, and sit quiet in the
+sunlight on the hillside of faith. You cannot be merry down below in the
+fog, for there is the fog; but you can every now and then fly with the
+dove-wings of the soul up into the clear, to remind yourself that all this
+passes away, is but an accident, and that the sun shines always, although
+it may not at any given moment be shining on you. 'What does that matter?'
+you will learn to say. 'It is enough for me to know that the sun does
+shine, and that this is only a weary fog that is round about me for
+the moment. I shall come out into the light beyond presently.' This is
+faith--faith in God, who is the light, and is all in all. I believe that
+the most glorious instances of calmness in suffering are thus achieved;
+that the sufferers really do not suffer what one of us would if thrown into
+their physical condition without the refuge of their spiritual condition as
+well; for they have taken refuge in the inner chamber. Out of the spring of
+their life a power goes forth that quenches the flames of the furnace of
+their suffering, so far at least that it does not touch the deep life,
+cannot make them miserable, does not drive them from the possession of
+their soul in patience, which is the divine citadel of the suffering. Do
+you understand me, Connie?"
+
+"I do, papa. I think perfectly."
+
+"Still less, then, is the fact that the difficulty is physical to be used
+as an excuse for giving way to ill-temper, and, in fact, leaving ourselves
+to be tossed and shaken by every tremble of our nerves. That is as if a
+man should give himself into the hands and will and caprice of an
+organ-grinder, to work upon him, not with the music of the spheres, but
+with the wretched growling of the streets."
+
+"But," said Wynnie, "I have heard you yourself, papa, make excuse for
+people's ill-temper on this very ground, that they were out of health.
+Indeed," she went on, half-crying, "I have heard you do so for myself, when
+you did not know that I was within hearing."
+
+"Yes, my dear, most assuredly. It is no fiction, but a real difference that
+lies between excusing ourselves and excusing other people. No doubt the
+same excuse is just for ourselves that is just for other people. But we can
+do something to put ourselves right upon a higher principle, and therefore
+we should not waste our time in excusing, or even in condemning ourselves,
+but make haste up the hill. Where we cannot work--that is, in the life of
+another--we have time to make all the excuse we can. Nay more; it is only
+justice there. We are not bound to insist on our own rights, even of
+excuse; the wisest thing often is to forego them. But we are bound by
+heaven, earth, and hell to give them to other people. And, besides, what
+a comfort to ourselves to be able to say, 'It is true So-and-so was cross
+to-day. But it wasn't in the least that he wasn't friendly, or didn't like
+me; it was only that he had eaten something that hadn't agreed with him.
+I could see it in his eye. He had one of his headaches.' Thus, you see,
+justice to our neighbour, and comfort to ourselves, is one and the same
+thing. But it would be a sad thing to have to think that when we found
+ourselves in the same ungracious condition, from whatever cause, we had
+only to submit to it, saying, 'It is a law of nature,' as even those who
+talk most about laws will not do, when those laws come between them and
+their own comfort. They are ready enough then to call in the aid of higher
+laws, which, so far from being contradictory, overrule the lower to get
+things into something like habitable, endurable condition. It may be a law
+of nature; but what has the Law of the Spirit of Life to _propound anent_
+it? as the Scotch lawyers would say."
+
+A little pause followed, during which I hope some of us were thinking. That
+Wynnie, at least, was, her next question made evident.
+
+"What you say about a law of nature and a law of the Spirit makes me think
+again how that walking on the water has always been a puzzle to me."
+
+"It could hardly be other, seeing that we cannot possibly understand it," I
+answered.
+
+"But I find it so hard to believe. Can't you say something, papa, to help
+me to believe it?"
+
+"I think if you admit what goes before, you will find there is nothing
+against reason in the story."
+
+"Tell me, please, what you mean."
+
+"If all things were made by Jesus, the Word of God, would it be reasonable
+that the water that he had created should be able to drown him?"
+
+"It might drown his body."
+
+"It would if he had not the power over it still, to prevent it from laying
+hold of him. But just think for a moment. God is a Spirit. Spirit is
+greater than matter. Spirit makes matter. Think what it was for a human
+body to have such a divine creative power dwelling in it as that which
+dwelt in the human form of Jesus! What power, and influence, and utter rule
+that spirit must have over the body in which it dwells! We cannot imagine
+how much; but if we have so much power over our bodies, how much more must
+the pure, divine Jesus, have had over his! I suspect this miracle was
+wrought, not through anything done to the water, but through the power of
+the spirit over the body of Jesus, which was all obedient thereto. I am not
+explaining the miracle, for that I cannot do. One day I think it will be
+plain common sense to us. But now I am only showing you what seems to me to
+bring us a step nearer to the essential region of the miracle, and so far
+make it easier to believe. If we look at the history of our Lord, we shall
+find that, true real human body as his was, it was yet used by his spirit
+after a fashion in which we cannot yet use our bodies. And this is only
+reasonable. Let me give you an instance. You remember how, on the Mount of
+Transfiguration, that body shone so that the light of it illuminated
+all his garments. You do not surely suppose that this shine was
+external--physical light, as we say, _merely?_ No doubt it was physical
+light, for how else would their eyes have seen it? But where did it come
+from? What was its source? I think it was a natural outburst of glory from
+the mind of Jesus, filled with the perfect life of communion with his
+Father--the light of his divine blessedness taking form in physical
+radiance that permeated and glorified all that surrounded him. As the
+body is the expression of the soul, as the face of Jesus himself was the
+expression of the being, the thought, the love of Jesus in like manner this
+radiance was the natural expression of his gladness, even in the face of
+that of which they had been talking--Moses, Elias, and he--namely,
+the decease that he should accomplish at Jerusalem. Again, after his
+resurrection, he convinced the hands, as well as eyes, of doubting Thomas,
+that he was indeed there in the body; and yet that body could appear and
+disappear as the Lord willed. All this is full of marvel, I grant you; but
+probably far more intelligible to us in a further state of existence than
+some of the most simple facts with regard to our own bodies are to us now,
+only that we are so used to them that we never think how unintelligible
+they really are."
+
+"But then about Peter, papa? What you have been saying will not apply to
+Peter's body, you know."
+
+"I confess there is more difficulty there. But if you can suppose that such
+power were indwelling in Jesus, you cannot limit the sphere of its action.
+As he is the head of the body, his church, in all spiritual things, so I
+firmly believe, however little we can understand about it, is he in all
+natural things as well. Peter's faith in him brought even Peter's body
+within the sphere of the outgoing power of the Master. Do you suppose that
+because Peter ceased to be brave and trusting, therefore Jesus withdrew
+from him some sustaining power, and allowed him to sink? I do not believe
+it. I believe Peter's sinking followed naturally upon his loss of
+confidence. Thus he fell away from the life of the Master; was no longer,
+in that way I mean, connected with the Head, was instantly under the
+dominion of the natural law of gravitation, as we call it, and began to
+sink. Therefore the Lord must take other means to save him. He must draw
+nigh to him in a bodily manner. The pride of Peter had withdrawn him from
+the immediate spiritual influence of Christ, conquering his matter; and
+therefore the Lord must come over the stormy space between, come nearer to
+him in the body, and from his own height of safety above the sphere of the
+natural law, stretch out to him the arm of physical aid, lift him up, lead
+him to the boat. The whole salvation of the human race is figured in this
+story. It is all Christ, my love.--Does this help you to believe at all?"
+
+"I think it does, papa. But it wants thinking over a good deal. I always
+find as I think, that lighter bits shine out here and there in a thing I
+have no hope of understanding altogether. That always helps me to believe
+that the rest might be understood too, if I were only clever enough."
+
+"Simple enough, not clever enough, my dear."
+
+"But there's one thing," said my wife, "that is more interesting to me than
+what you have been talking about. It is the other instances in the life of
+St. Peter in which you said he failed in a similar manner from pride or
+self-satisfaction."
+
+"One, at least, seems to me very clear. You have often remarked to me,
+Ethel, how little praise servants can stand; how almost invariably after
+you have commended the diligence or skill of any of your household, as you
+felt bound to do, one of the first visible results was either a falling
+away in the performance by which she had gained the praise, or a more
+or less violent access, according to the nature of the individual, of
+self-conceit, soon breaking out in bad temper or impertinence. Now you will
+see precisely the same kind of thing in Peter."
+
+Here I opened my New Testament, and read fragmentarily, "'But whom say ye
+that I am?... Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.... Blessed
+art thou, Simon.... My Father hath revealed that unto thee. I will give
+unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.... I must suffer many things,
+and be killed, and be raised again the third day.... Be it far from thee,
+Lord. This shall not be unto thee.... Get thee behind me, Satan. Thou art
+an offence unto me.' Just contemplate the change here in the words of our
+Lord. 'Blessed art thou.' 'Thou art an offence unto me.' Think what change
+has passed on Peter's mood before the second of these words could be
+addressed to him to whom the first had just been spoken. The Lord had
+praised him. Peter grew self-sufficient, even to the rebuking of him whose
+praise had so uplifted him. But it is ever so. A man will gain a great
+moral victory: glad first, then uplifted, he will fall before a paltry
+temptation. I have sometimes wondered, too, whether his denial of our Lord
+had anything to do with his satisfaction with himself for making that
+onslaught upon the high priest's servant. It was a brave thing and a
+faithful to draw a single sword against a multitude. In his fiery eagerness
+and inexperience, the blow, well meant to cleave Malchus's head, missed,
+and only cut off his ear; but Peter had herein justified his confident
+saying that he would not deny him. He was not one to deny his Lord who had
+been the first to confess him! Yet ere the cock had crowed, ere the morning
+had dawned, the vulgar grandeur of the palace of the high priest (for let
+it be art itself, it was vulgar grandeur beside that grandeur which it
+caused Peter to deny), and the accusing tone of a maid-servant, were enough
+to make him quail whom the crowd with lanterns, and torches, and weapons,
+had only roused to fight. True, he was excited then, and now he was cold in
+the middle of the night, with Jesus gone from his sight a prisoner, and for
+the faces of friends that had there surrounded him and strengthened him
+with their sympathy, now only the faces of those who were, or whom at least
+Peter thought to be on the other side, looking at him curiously, as a
+strange intruder into their domains. Alas, that the courage which led him
+to follow the Lord should have thus led him, not to deny him, but into the
+denial of him! Yet why should I say _alas?_ If the denial of our Lord
+lay in his heart a possible thing, only prevented by his being kept in
+favourable circumstances for confessing him, it was a thousand times better
+that he should deny him, and thus know what a poor weak thing that heart of
+his was, trust it no more, and give it up to the Master to make it strong,
+and pure, and grand. For such an end the Lord was willing to bear all the
+pain of Peter's denial. O, the love of that Son of Man, who in the midst of
+all the wretched weaknesses of those who surrounded him, loved the best in
+them, and looked forward to his own victory for them that they might become
+all that they were meant to be--like him; that the lovely glimmerings of
+truth and love that were in them now--the breakings forth of the light that
+lighteneth every man--might grow into the perfect human day; loving them
+even the more that they were so helpless, so oppressed, so far from that
+ideal which was their life, and which all their dim desires were reaching
+after!"
+
+Here I ceased, and a little overcome with the great picture in my soul
+to which I had been able only to give the poorest expression, rose, and
+retired to my own room. There I could only fall on my knees and pray that
+the Lord Christ, who had died for me, might have his own way with me--that
+it might be worth his while to have done what he did and what he was doing
+now for me. To my Elder Brother, my Lord, and my God, I gave myself yet
+again, confidently, because he cared to have me, and my very breath was
+his. I _would_ be what he wanted, who knew all about it, and had done
+everything that I might be a son of God--a living glory of gladness.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+NICEBOOTS.
+
+
+
+
+
+The next morning the captain of the lost vessel called upon me early to
+thank me for himself and his men. He was a fine honest-looking burly
+fellow, dressed in blue from head to heel. He might have sat for a portrait
+of Chaucer's shipman, as far as his hue and the first look of him went. It
+was clear that "in many a tempest had his beard be shake," and certainly
+"the hote somer had made his hew all broun;" but farther the likeness would
+hardly go, for the "good fellow" which Chaucer applies with such irony to
+the shipman of his time, who would filch wine, and drown all the captives
+he made in a sea-fight, was clearly applicable in good earnest to this
+shipman. Still, I thought I had something to bring against him, and
+therefore before we parted I said to him--
+
+"They tell me, captain, that your vessel was not seaworthy, and that you
+could not but have known that."
+
+"She was my own craft, sir, and I judged her fit for several voyages more.
+If she had been A 1 she couldn't have been mine; and a man must do what he
+can for his family."
+
+"But you were risking your life, you know."
+
+"A few chances more or less don't much signify to a sailor, sir. There
+ain't nothing to be done without risk. You'll find an old tub go voyage
+after voyage, and she beyond bail, and a clipper fresh off the stocks go
+down in the harbour. It's all in the luck, sir, I assure you."
+
+"Well, if it were your own life I should have nothing to say, seeing you
+have a family to look after; but what about the poor fellows who made the
+voyage with you? Did they know what kind of a vessel they were embarking
+in?"
+
+"Wherever the captain's ready to go he'll always find men ready to follow
+him. Bless you, sir, they never asks no questions. If a sailor was always
+to be thinking of the chances, he'd never set his foot off shore."
+
+"Still, I don't think it's right they shouldn't know."
+
+"I daresay they knowed all about the old brig as well as I did myself. You
+gets to know all about a craft just as you do about her captain. She's got
+a character of her own, and she can't hide it long, any more than you can
+hide yours, sir, begging your pardon."
+
+"I daresay that's all correct, but still I shouldn't like anyone to say to
+me, 'You ought to have told me, captain.' Therefore, you see, I'm telling
+you, captain, and now I'm clear.--Have a glass of wine before you go," I
+concluded, ringing the bell.
+
+"Thank you, sir. I'll turn over what you've been saying, and anyhow I take
+it kind of you."
+
+So we parted. I have never seen him since, and shall not, most likely,
+in this world. But he looked like a man that could understand why and
+wherefore I spoke as I did. And I had the advantage of having had a chance
+of doing something for him first of all. Let no man who wants to do
+anything for the soul of a man lose a chance of doing something for his
+body. He ought to be willing, and ready, which is more than willing, to do
+that whether or not; but there are those who need this reminder. Of many a
+soul Jesus laid hold by healing the suffering the body brought upon it. No
+one but himself can tell how much the nucleus of the church was composed of
+and by those who had received health from his hands, loving-kindness from
+the word of his mouth. My own opinion is that herein lay the very germ of
+the kernel of what is now the ancient, was then the infant church; that
+from them, next to the disciples themselves, went forth the chief power of
+life in love, for they too had seen the Lord, and in their own humble way
+could preach and teach concerning him. What memories of him theirs must
+have been!
+
+Things went on very quietly, that is, as I mean now, from the view-point of
+a historian, without much to record bearing notably upon after events,
+for the greater part of the next week. I wandered about my parish, making
+acquaintance with different people in an outside sort of way, only now
+and then finding an opportunity of seeing into their souls except by
+conclusion. But I enjoyed endlessly the aspects of the country. It was not
+picturesque except in parts. There was little wood and there were no
+hills, only undulations, though many of them were steep enough even from a
+pedestrian's point of view. Neither, however, were there any plains except
+high moorland tracts. But the impression of the whole country was large,
+airy, sunshiny, and it was clasped in the arms of the infinite, awful, yet
+how bountiful sea--if one will look at the ocean in its world-wide, not to
+say its eternal aspects, and not out of the fears of a hidebound love of
+life! The sea and the sky, I must confess, dwarfed the earth, made it of
+small account beside them; but who could complain of such an influence? At
+least, not I.
+
+My children bathed in this sea every day, and gathered strength and
+knowledge from it. It was, as I have indicated, a dangerous coast to bathe
+upon. The sweep of the tides varied with the varying sands that were cast
+up. There was now in one place, now in another, a strong _undertow_, as
+they called it--a reflux, that is, of the inflowing waters, which was quite
+sufficient to carry those who could not swim out into the great deep, and
+rendered much exertion necessary, even in those who could, to regain the
+shore. But there was a fine strong Cornish woman to take charge of the
+ladies and the little boys, and she, watching the ways of the wild monster,
+knew the when and the where, and all about it.
+
+Connie got out upon the downs every day. She improved in health certainly,
+and we thought a little even in her powers of motion. The weather continued
+superb. What rain there was fell at night, just enough for Nature to wash
+her face with and so look quite fresh in the morning. We contrived a dinner
+on the sands on the other side of the bay, for the Friday of this same
+week.
+
+The morning rose gloriously. Harry and Charlie were turning the house
+upside down, to judge by their noise, long before I was in the humour to
+get up, for I had been reading late the night before. I never made much
+objection to mere noise, knowing that I could stop it the moment I pleased,
+and knowing, which was of more consequence, that so far from there being
+anything wrong in making a noise, the sea would make noise enough in our
+ears before we left Kilkhaven. The moment, however, that I heard a
+thread of whining or a burst of anger in the noise, I would interfere at
+once--treating these just as things that must be dismissed at once. Harry
+and Charlie were, I say, to use their own form of speech, making such a row
+that morning, however, that I was afraid of some injury to the house or
+furniture, which were not our own. So I opened my door and called out--
+
+"Harry! Charlie! What on earth are you about?"
+
+"Nothing, papa," answered Charlie. "Only it's so jolly!"
+
+"What is jolly, my boy?" I asked.
+
+"O, I don't know, papa! It's _so_ jolly!"
+
+"Is it the sunshine?" thought I; "and the wind? God's world all over? The
+God of gladness in the hearts of the lads? Is it that? No wonder, then,
+that they cannot tell yet what it is!"
+
+I withdrew into my room; and so far from seeking to put an end to the
+noise--I knew Connie did not mind it--listened to it with a kind of
+reverence, as the outcome of a gladness which the God of joy had kindled
+in their hearts. Soon after, however, I heard certain dim growls of
+expostulation from Harry, and having, from experience, ground for believing
+that the elder was tyrannising over the younger, I stopped that and the
+noise together, sending Charlie to find out where the tide would be between
+one and two o'clock, and Harry to run to the top of the hill, and find out
+the direction of the wind. Before I was dressed, Charlie was knocking at my
+door with the news that it would he half-tide about one; and Harry speedily
+followed with the discovery that the wind was north-east by south-west,
+which of course determined that the sun would shine all day.
+
+As the dinner-hour drew near, the servants went over, with Walter at their
+head, to choose a rock convenient for a table, under the shelter of the
+rocks on the sands across the bay. Thither, when Walter returned, we bore
+our Connie, carrying her litter close by the edge of the retreating tide,
+which sometimes broke in a ripple of music under her, wetting our feet with
+innocuous rush. The child's delight was extreme, as she thus skimmed the
+edge of the ocean, with the little ones gambolling about her, and her mamma
+and Wynnie walking quietly on the landward side, for she wished to have no
+one between her and the sea.
+
+After scrambling with difficulty over some rocky ledges, and stopping at
+Connie's request, to let her look into a deep pool in the sand, which
+somehow or other retained the water after the rest had retreated, we set
+her down near the mouth of a cave, in the shadow of a rock. And there was
+our dinner nicely laid for us on a flat rock in front of the cave. The
+cliffs rose behind us, with curiously curved and variously angled strata.
+The sun in his full splendour threw dark shadows on the brilliant yellow
+sand, more and more of which appeared as the bright blue water withdrew
+itself, now rippling over it as if it meant to hide it all up again, now
+uncovering more as it withdrew for another rush. Before we had finished our
+dinner, the foremost wavelets appeared so far away over the plain of the
+sand, that it seemed a long walk to the edge that had been almost at
+our feet a little while ago. Between us and it lay a lovely desert of
+glittering sand.
+
+When even Charlie and Harry had arrived at the conclusion that it was time
+to stop eating, we left the shadow and went out into the sun, carrying
+Connie and laying her down in the midst of "the ribbed sea-sand," which
+was very ribby to-day. On a shawl a little way off from her lay her baby,
+crowing and kicking with the same jollity that had possessed the boys ever
+since the morning. I wandered about with Wynnie on the sands, picking
+up amongst other things strange creatures in thin shells ending in
+vegetable-like tufts, if I remember rightly. My wife sat on the end of
+Connie's litter, and Dora and the boys, a little way off, were trying how
+far the full force of three wooden spades could, in digging a hole, keep
+ahead of the water which was ever tumbling in the sand from the sides of
+the same. Behind, the servants were busy washing the plates in a pool, and
+burying the fragments of the feast; for I made it a rule wherever we went
+that the fair face of nature was not to be defiled. I have always taken the
+part of excursionists in these latter days of running to and fro, against
+those who complain that the loveliest places are being destroyed by their
+inroads. But there is one most offensive, even disgusting habit amongst
+them--that of leaving bones, fragments of meat pies, and worse than all,
+pieces of greasy paper about the place, which I cannot excuse, or at least
+defend. Even the surface of Cumberland and Westmoreland lakes will be
+defiled with these floating abominations--not abominations at all if they
+are decently burned or buried when done with, but certainly abominations
+when left to be cast hither and thither in the wind, over the grass, or on
+the eddy and ripple of the pure water, for days after those who have thus
+left their shame behind them have returned to their shops or factories. I
+forgive them for trampling down the grass and the ferns. That cannot be
+helped, and in comparison of the good they get, is not to be considered at
+all. But why should they leave such a savage trail behind them as this,
+forgetting too that though they have done with the spot, there are others
+coming after them to whom these remnants must be an offence?
+
+At length in our roaming, Wynnie and I approached a long low ridge of rock,
+rising towards the sea into which it ran. Crossing this, we came suddenly
+upon the painter whom Dora had called Niceboots, sitting with a small easel
+before him. We were right above him ere we knew. He had his back towards
+us, so that we saw at once what he was painting.
+
+"O, papa!" cried Wynnie involuntarily, and the painter looked round.
+
+"I beg your pardon," I said. "We came over from the other side, and did not
+see you before. I hope we have not disturbed you much."
+
+"Not in the least," he answered courteously, and rose as he spoke.
+
+I saw that the subject on his easel suggested that of which Wynnie had been
+making a sketch at the same time, on the day when Connie first lay on
+the top of the opposite cliff. But he was not even looking in the same
+direction now.
+
+"Do you mind having your work seen before it is finished?"
+
+"Not in the least, if the spectators will do me the favour to remember that
+most processes have to go through a seemingly chaotic stage," he answered.
+
+I was struck with the mode and tone of the remark.
+
+"Here is no common man," I said to myself, and responded to him in
+something of a similar style.
+
+"I wish we could always keep that in mind with regard to human beings
+themselves, as well as their works," I said aloud.
+
+The painter looked at me, and I looked at him.
+
+"We speak each from the experience of his own profession, I presume," he
+said.
+
+"But," I returned, glancing at the little picture in oils upon his easel,
+"your work here, though my knowledge of painting is next to nothing--
+perhaps I ought to say nothing at all--this picture must have long ago
+passed the chaotic stage."
+
+"It is nearly as much finished as I care to make it," he returned. "I
+hardly count this work at all. I am chiefly amusing, or rather pleasing, my
+own fancy at present."
+
+"Apparently," I remarked, "you had the conical rock outside the hay for
+your model, and now you are finishing it with your back turned towards it.
+How is that?"
+
+"I will soon explain," he answered. "The moment I saw this rock, it
+reminded me of Dante's Purgatory."
+
+"Ah, you are a reader of Dante?" I said. "In the original, I hope."
+
+"Yes. A friend of mine, a brother painter, an Italian, set me going with
+that, and once going with Dante, nobody could well stop. I never knew what
+intensity _per se_ was till I began to read Dante."
+
+"That is quite my own feeling. Now, to return to your picture."
+
+"Without departing at all from natural forms, I thought to make it suggest
+the Purgatorio to anyone who remembered the description given of the place
+_ab extra_ by Ulysses, in the end of the twenty-sixth canto of the Inferno.
+Of course, that thing there is a mere rock, yet it has certain mountain
+forms about it. I have put it at a much greater distance, you see, and have
+sought to make it look a solitary mountain in the midst of a great water.
+You will discover even now that the circles of the Purgatory are suggested
+without any approach, I think, to artificial structure; and there are
+occasional hints at figures, which you cannot definitely detach from the
+rocks--which, by the way, you must remember, were in one part full of
+sculptures. I have kept the mountain near enough, however, to indicate
+the great expanse of wild flowers on the top, which Matilda was so busy
+gathering. I want to indicate too the wind up there in the terrestrial
+paradise, ever and always blowing one way. You remember, Mr. Walton?"--
+for the young man, getting animated, began to talk as if we had known each
+other for some time--and here he repeated the purport of Dante's words in
+English:
+
+  "An air of sweetness, changeless in its flow,
+  With no more strength than in a soft wind lies,
+  Smote peacefully against me on the brow.
+  By which the leaves all trembling, level-wise,
+  Did every one bend thitherward to where
+  The high mount throws its shadow at sunrise."
+
+"I thought you said you did not use translations?"
+
+"I thought it possible that--Miss Walton (?)" interrogatively this--"might
+not follow the Italian so easily, and I feared to seem pedantic."
+
+"She won't lag far behind, I flatter myself," I returned. "Whose
+translation do you quote?"
+
+He hesitated a moment; then said carelessly:
+
+"I have cobbled a few passages after that fashion myself."
+
+"It has the merit of being near the original at least," I returned; "and
+that seems to me one of the chief merits a translation can possess."
+
+"Then," the painter resumed, rather hastily, as if to avoid any further
+remark upon his verses, "you see those white things in the air above?" Here
+he turned to Wynnie. "Miss Walton will remember--I think she was making a
+drawing of the rock at the same time I was--how the seagulls, or some such
+birds--only two or three of them--kept flitting about the top of it?"
+
+"I remember quite well," answered Wynnie, with a look of appeal to me.
+
+"Yes," I interposed; "my daughter, in describing what she had been
+attempting to draw, spoke especially of the birds over the rock. For she
+said the white lapping of the waves looked like spirits trying to get
+loose, and the white birds like foam that had broken its chains, and risen
+in triumph into the air."
+
+Here Mr. Niceboots, for as yet I did not know what else to call him, looked
+at Wynnie almost with a start.
+
+"How wonderfully that falls in with my fancy about the rock!" he said.
+"Purgatory indeed! with imprisoned souls lapping at its foot, and the free
+souls winging their way aloft in ether. Well, this world is a kind of
+purgatory anyhow--is it not, Mr. Walton?"
+
+"Certainly it is. We are here tried as by fire, to see what our work
+is--whether wood, hay, and stubble, or gold and silver and precious
+stones."
+
+"You see," resumed the painter, "if anybody only glanced at my little
+picture, he would take those for sea-birds; but if he looked into it, and
+began to suspect me, he would find out that they were Dante and Beatrice on
+their way to the sphere of the moon."
+
+"In one respect at least, then, your picture has the merit of corresponding
+to fact; for what thing is there in the world, or what group of things, in
+which the natural man will not see merely the things of nature, but the
+spiritual man the things of the spirit?"
+
+"I am no theologian," said the painter, turning away, I thought somewhat
+coldly.
+
+But I could see that Wynnie was greatly interested in him. Perhaps she
+thought that here was some enlightenment of the riddle of the world for
+her, if she could but get at what he was thinking. She was used to my way
+of it: here might be something new.
+
+"If I can be of any service to Miss Walton with her drawing, I shall be
+happy," he said, turning again towards me.
+
+But his last gesture had made me a little distrustful of him, and I
+received his advances on this point with a coldness which I did not wish to
+make more marked than his own towards my last observation.
+
+"You are very kind," I said; "but Miss Walton does not presume to be an
+artist."
+
+I saw a slight shade pass over Wynnie's countenance. When I turned to
+Mr. Niceboots, a shade of a different sort was on his. Surely I had said
+something wrong to cast a gloom on two young faces. I made haste to make
+amends.
+
+"We are just going to have some coffee," I said, "for my servants, I see,
+have managed to kindle a fire. Will you come and allow me to introduce you
+to Mrs. Walton?"
+
+"With much pleasure," he answered, rising from the rock whereon, as he
+spoke about his picture, he had again seated himself. He was a fine-built,
+black-bearded, sunburnt fellow, with clear gray eyes notwithstanding, a
+rather Roman nose, and good features generally. But there was an air of
+suppression, if not of sadness, about him, however, did not in the least
+interfere with the manliness of his countenance, or of its expression.
+
+"But," I said, "how am I to effect an introduction, seeing I do not yet
+know your name."
+
+I had had to keep a sharp look-out on myself lest I should call him Mr.
+Niceboots. He smiled very graciously and replied,
+
+"My name is Percivale--Charles Percivale."
+
+"A descendant of Sir Percivale of King Arthur's Round Table?"
+
+"I cannot count quite so far back," he answered, "as that--not quite to the
+Conquest," he added, with a slight deepening of his sunburnt hue. "I do
+come of a fighting race, but I cannot claim Sir Percivale."
+
+We were now walking along the edge of the still retreating waves towards
+the group upon the sands, Mr. Percivale and I foremost, and Wynnie
+lingering behind.
+
+"O, do look here papa!" she cried, from some little distance.
+
+We turned and saw her gazing at something on the sand at her feet.
+Hastening back, we found it to be a little narrow line of foam-bubbles,
+which the water had left behind it on the sand, slowly breaking and passing
+out of sight. Why there should be foam-bubbles there then, and not always,
+I do not know. But there they were--and such colours! deep rose and grassy
+green and ultramarine blue; and, above all, one dark, yet brilliant and
+intensely-burnished, metallic gold. All of them were of a solid-looking
+burnished colour, like opaque body-colour laid on behind translucent
+crystal. Those little ocean bubbles were well worth turning to see; and so
+I said to Wynnie. But, as we gazed, they went on vanishing, one by one.
+Every moment a heavenly glory of hue burst, and was nowhere.
+
+We walked away again towards the rest of our party.
+
+"Don't you think those bubbles more beautiful than any precious stones you
+ever saw, papa?"
+
+"Yes, my love, I think they are, except it be the opal. In the opal, God
+seems to have fixed the evanescent and made the vanishing eternal."
+
+"And flowers are more beautiful things than jewels?' she said
+interrogatively.
+
+"Many--perhaps most flowers are," I granted. "And did you ever see such
+curves and delicate textures anywhere else as in the clouds, papa?"
+
+"I think not--in the cirrhous clouds at least--the frozen ones. But what
+are you putting me to my catechism for in this way, my child?"
+
+"O, papa, I could go on a long time with that catechism; but I will end
+with one question more, which you will perhaps find a little harder to
+answer. Only I daresay you have had an answer ready for years lest one of
+us should ask you some day."
+
+"No, my love. I never got an answer ready for anything lest one of my
+children should ask me. But it is not surprising either that children
+should be puzzled about the things that have puzzled their father, or that
+by the time they are able to put the questions, he should have found out
+some sort of an answer to most of them. Go on with your catechism, Wynnie.
+Now for your puzzle!"
+
+"It's not a funny question, papa; it's a very serious one. I can't think
+why the unchanging God should have made all the most beautiful things
+wither and grow ugly, or burst and vanish, or die somehow and be no more.
+Mamma is not so beautiful as she once was, is she?"
+
+"In one way, no; but in another and better way, much more so. But we will
+not talk about her kind of beauty just now; we will keep to the more
+material loveliness of which you have been speaking--though, in truth, no
+loveliness can be only material. Well, then, for my answer; it is, I think,
+because God loves the beauty so much that he makes all beautiful things
+vanish quickly."
+
+"I do not understand you, papa."
+
+"I daresay not, my dear. But I will explain to you a little, if Mr.
+Percivale will excuse me."
+
+"On the contrary, I am greatly interested, both in the question and the
+answer."
+
+"Well, then, Wynnie; everything has a soul and a body, or something like
+them. By the body we know the soul. But we are always ready to love the
+body instead of the soul. Therefore, God makes the body die continually,
+that we may learn to love the soul indeed. The world is full of beautiful
+things, but God has saved many men from loving the mere bodies of them, by
+making them poor; and more still by reminding them that if they be as rich
+as Croesus all their lives, they will be as poor as Diogenes--poorer,
+without even a tub--when this world, with all its pictures, scenery, books,
+and--alas for some Christians!--bibles even, shall have vanished away."
+
+"Why do you say _alas_, papa--if they are Christians especially?"
+
+"I say _alas_ only from their point of view, not from mine. I mean such as
+are always talking and arguing from the Bible, and never giving themselves
+any trouble to do what it tells them. They insist on the anise and cummin,
+and forget the judgment, mercy, and faith. These worship the body of the
+truth, and forget the soul of it. If the flowers were not perishable, we
+should cease to contemplate their beauty, either blinded by the passion for
+hoarding the bodies of them, or dulled by the hebetude of commonplaceness
+that the constant presence of them would occasion. To compare great things
+with small, the flowers wither, the bubbles break, the clouds and sunsets
+pass, for the very same holy reason, in the degree of its application to
+them, for which the Lord withdrew from his disciples and ascended again to
+his Father--that the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, the Soul of things,
+might come to them and abide with them, and so the Son return, and the
+Father be revealed. The flower is not its loveliness, and its loveliness
+we must love, else we shall only treat them as flower-greedy children,
+who gather and gather, and fill hands and baskets, from a mere desire
+of acquisition, excusable enough in them, but the same in kind, however
+harmless in mode, and degree, and object, as the avarice of the miser.
+Therefore God, that we may always have them, and ever learn to love their
+beauty, and yet more their truth, sends the beneficent winter that we may
+think about what we have lost, and welcome them when they come again with
+greater tenderness and love, with clearer eyes to see, and purer hearts
+to understand, the spirit that dwells in them. We cannot do without the
+'winter of our discontent.' Shakspere surely saw that when he makes Titania
+say, in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_:
+
+  'The human mortals want their winter here'--
+
+namely, to set things right; and none of those editors who would alter the
+line seem to have been capable of understanding its import."
+
+"I think I understand you a little," answered Wynnie. Then, changing her
+tone, "I told you, papa, you would have an answer ready; didn't I?"
+
+"Yes, my child; but with this difference--I found the answer to meet my own
+necessities, not yours."
+
+"And so you had it ready for me when I wanted it."
+
+"Just so. That is the only certainty you have in regard to what you give
+away. No one who has not tasted it and found it good has a right to offer
+any spiritual dish to his neighbour."
+
+Mr. Percivale took no part in our conversation. The moment I had presented
+him to Mrs. Walton and Connie, and he had paid his respects by a somewhat
+stately old-world obeisance, he merged the salutation into a farewell, and,
+either forgetting my offer of coffee, or having changed his mind, withdrew,
+a little to my disappointment, for, notwithstanding his lack of response
+where some things he said would have led me to expect it, I had begun to
+feel much interested in him.
+
+He was scarcely beyond hearing, when Dora came up to me from her digging,
+with an eager look on her sunny face.
+
+"Hasn't he got nice boots, papa?"
+
+"Indeed, my dear, I am unable to support you in that assertion, for I never
+saw his boots."
+
+"I did, then," returned the child; "and I never saw such nice boots."
+
+"I accept the statement willingly," I replied; and we heard no more of the
+boots, for his name was now substituted for his nickname. Nor did I see
+himself again for some days--not in fact till next Sunday--though why he
+should come to church at all was something of a puzzle to me, especially
+when I knew him better.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE BLACKSMITH.
+
+
+
+
+
+The next day I set out after breakfast to inquire about a blacksmith. It
+was not every or any blacksmith that would do. I must not fix on the first
+to do my work because he was the first. There was one in the village, I
+soon learned; but I found him an ordinary man, who, I have no doubt, could
+shoe a horse and avoid the quick, but from whom any greater delicacy of
+touch was not to be expected. Inquiring further, I heard of a young smith
+who had lately settled in a hamlet a couple of miles distant, but still
+within the parish. In the afternoon I set out to find him. To my surprise,
+he was a pale-faced, thoughtful-looking man, with a huge frame, which
+appeared worn rather than naturally thin, and large eyes that looked at the
+anvil as if it was the horizon of the world. He had got a horse-shoe in his
+tongs when I entered. Notwithstanding the fire that glowed on the hearth,
+and the sparks that flew like a nimbus in eruption from about his person,
+the place looked very dark to me entering from the glorious blaze of the
+almost noontide sun, and felt cool after the deep lane through which I had
+come, and which had seemed a very reservoir of sunbeams. I could see the
+smith by the glow of his horse-shoe; but all between me and the shoe was
+dark.
+
+"Good-morning," I said. "It is a good thing to find a man by his work. I
+heard you half a mile off or so, and now I see you, but only by the glow of
+your work. It is a grand thing to work in fire."
+
+He lifted his hammered hand to his forehead courteously, and as lightly as
+if the hammer had been the butt-end of a whip.
+
+"I don't know if you would say the same if you had to work at it in weather
+like this," he answered.
+
+"If I did not," I returned, "that would be the fault of my weakness, and
+would not affect the assertion I have just made, that it is a fine thing to
+work in fire."
+
+"Well, you may be right," he rejoined with a sigh, as, throwing the
+horse-shoe he had been fashioning from the tongs on the ground, he next let
+the hammer drop beside the anvil, and leaning against it held his head
+for a moment between his hands, and regarded the floor. "It does not much
+matter to me," he went on, "if I only get through my work and have done
+with it. No man shall say I shirked what I'd got to do. And then when it's
+over there won't be a word to say agen me, or--"
+
+He did not finish the sentence. And now I could see the sunlight lying in a
+somewhat dreary patch, if the word _dreary_ can be truly used with respect
+to any manifestation of sunlight, on the dark clay floor.
+
+"I hope you are not ill," I said.
+
+He made no answer, but taking up his tongs caught with it from a beam one
+of a number of roughly-finished horse-shoes which hung there, and put it on
+the fire to be fashioned to a certain fit. While he turned it in the fire,
+and blew the bellows, I stood regarding him. "This man will do for my
+work," I said to myself; "though I should not wonder from the look of him
+if it was the last piece of work he ever did under the New Jerusalem." The
+smith's words broke in on my meditations.
+
+"When I was a little boy," he said, "I once wanted to stay at home from
+school. I had, I believe, a little headache, but nothing worth minding. I
+told my mother that I had a headache, and she kept me, and I helped her at
+her spinning, which was what I liked best of anything. But in the afternoon
+the Methodist preacher came in to see my mother, and he asked me what was
+the matter with me, and my mother answered for me that I had a bad head,
+and he looked at me; and as my head was quite well by this time, I could
+not help feeling guilty. And he saw my look, I suppose, sir, for I can't
+account for what he said any other way; and he turned to me, and he said to
+me, solemn-like, 'Is your head bad enough to send you to the Lord Jesus
+to make you whole?' I could not speak a word, partly from bashfulness, I
+suppose, for I was but ten years old. So he followed it up, as they say:
+'Then you ought to be at school,' says he. I said nothing, because I
+couldn't. But never since then have I given in as long as I could stand.
+And I can stand now, and lift my hammer, too," he said, as he took the
+horse-shoe from the forge, laid it on the anvil, and again made a nimbus of
+coruscating iron.
+
+"You are just the man I want," I said. "I've got a job for you, down to
+Kilkhaven, as you say in these parts."
+
+"What is it, sir? Something about the church? I should ha' thought the
+church was all spick and span by this time."
+
+"I see you know who I am," I said.
+
+"Of course I do," he answered. "I don't go to church myself, being brought
+up a Methodist; but anything that happens in the parish is known the next
+day all over it."
+
+"You won't mind doing my job though you are a Methodist, will you?" I
+asked.
+
+"Not I, sir. If I've read right, it's the fault of the Church that we don't
+pull all alongside. You turned us out, sir; we didn't go out of ourselves.
+At least, if all they say is true, which I can't be sure of, you know, in
+this world."
+
+"You are quite right there though," I answered. "And in doing so, the
+Church had the worst of it--as all that judge and punish their neighbours
+have. But you have been the worse for it, too: all of which is to be laid
+to the charge of the Church. For there is not one clergyman I know--mind, I
+say, that I know--who would have made such a cruel speech to a boy as that
+the Methodist parson made to you."
+
+"But it did me good, sir?"
+
+"Are you sure of that? I am not. Are you sure, first of all, it did
+not make you proud? Are you sure it has not made you work beyond your
+strength--I don't mean your strength of arm, for clearly that is all that
+could be wished, but of your chest, your lungs? Is there not some danger of
+your leaving someone who is dependent on you too soon unprovided for? Is
+there not some danger of your having worked as if God were a hard master?
+--of your having worked fiercely, indignantly, as if he wronged you by not
+caring for you, not understanding you?"
+
+He returned me no answer, but hammered momently on his anvil. Whether he
+felt what I meant, or was offended at my remark, I could not then tell. I
+thought it best to conclude the interview with business.
+
+"I have a delicate little job that wants nice handling, and I fancy you are
+just the man to do it to my mind," I said.
+
+"What is it, sir?" he asked, in a friendly manner enough.
+
+"If you will excuse me, I would rather show it to you than talk about it,"
+I returned.
+
+"As you please, sir. When do you want me?"
+
+"The first hour you can come."
+
+"To-morrow morning?"
+
+"If you feel inclined."
+
+"For that matter, I'd rather go to bed."
+
+"Come to me instead: it's light work."
+
+"I will, sir--at ten o'clock."
+
+"If you please."
+
+And so it was arranged.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE LIFE-BOAT.
+
+
+
+
+
+The next day rose glorious. Indeed, early as the sun rose, I saw him
+rise--saw him, from the down above the house, over the land to the east and
+north, ascend triumphant into his own light, which had prepared the way for
+him; while the clouds that hung over the sea glowed out with a faint flush,
+as anticipating the hour when the west should clasp the declining glory in
+a richer though less dazzling splendour, and shine out the bride of the
+bridegroom east, which behold each other from afar across the intervening
+world, and never mingle but in the sight of the eyes. The clear pure light
+of the morning made me long for the truth in my heart, which alone could
+make me pure and clear as the morning, tune me up to the concert-pitch of
+the nature around me. And the wind that blew from the sunrise made me hope
+in the God who had first breathed into my nostrils the breath of life, that
+he would at length so fill me with his breath, his wind, his spirit, that
+I should think only his thoughts and live his life, finding therein my own
+life, only glorified infinitely.
+
+After breakfast and prayers, I would go to the church to await the arrival
+of my new acquaintance the smith. In order to obtain entrance, I had,
+however, to go to the cottage of the sexton. This was not my first visit
+there, so that I may now venture to take my reader with me. To reach the
+door, I had to cross a hollow by a bridge, built, for the sake of the
+road, over what had once been the course of a rivulet from the heights
+above. Now it was a kind of little glen, or what would in Scotland be
+called a den, I think, grown with grass and wild flowers and ferns, some
+of them, rare and fine. The roof of the cottage came down to the road,
+and, until you came quite near, you could not but wonder where the body
+that supported this head could be. But you soon saw that the ground fell
+suddenly away, leaving a bank against which the cottage was built.
+Crossing a garden of the smallest, the principal flowers of which were the
+stonecrop on its walls, by a flag-paved path, you entered the building,
+and, to your surprise, found yourself, not in a little cottage kitchen, as
+you expected, but in a waste-looking space, that seemed to have forgotten
+the use for which it had been built. There was a sort of loft along one
+side of it, and it was heaped with indescribable lumber-looking stuff with
+here and there a hint at possible machinery. The place had been a mill for
+grinding corn, and its wheel had been driven by the stream which had run
+for ages in the hollow of which I have already spoken. But when the canal
+came to be constructed, the stream had to be turned aside from its former
+course, and indeed was now employed upon occasion to feed the canal; so
+that the mill of necessity had fallen into disuse and decay. Crossing this
+floor, you entered another door, and turning sharp to the left, went down
+a few steps of a ladder-sort of stair, and after knocking your hat against
+a beam, emerged in the comfortable quaint little cottage kitchen you had
+expected earlier. A cheerful though small fire burns in the grate--for
+even here the hearth-fire has vanished from the records of cottage-life--
+and is pleasant here even in the height of summer, though it is counted
+needful only for cooking purposes. The ceiling, which consists only of the
+joists and the boards that floor the bedroom above, is so low, that
+necessity, if not politeness, would compel you to take off your already-
+bruised hat. Some of these joists, you will find, are made further useful
+by supporting each a shelf, before which hangs a little curtain of printed
+cotton, concealing the few stores and postponed eatables of the house--
+forming, in fact, both store-room and larder of the family. On the walls
+hang several coloured prints, and within a deep glazed frame the figure of
+a ship in full dress, carved in rather high relief in sycamore.
+
+As I now entered, Mrs. Coombes rose from a high-backed settle near the
+fire, and bade me good-morning with a courtesy.
+
+"What a lovely day it is, Mrs. Coombes! It is so bright over the sea,"
+I said, going to the one little window which looked out on the great
+Atlantic, "that one almost expects a great merchant navy to come sailing
+into Kilkhaven--sunk to the water's edge with silks, and ivory, and spices,
+and apes, and peacocks, like the ships of Solomon that we read about--just
+as the sun gets up to the noonstead."
+
+Before I record her answer, I turn to my reader, who in the spirit
+accompanies me, and have a little talk with him. I always make it a rule to
+speak freely with the less as with the more educated of my friends. I never
+_talk down_ to them, except I be expressly explaining something to them.
+The law of the world is as the law of the family. Those children grow much
+the faster who hear all that is going on in the house. Reaching ever above
+themselves, they arrive at an understanding at fifteen, which, in the usual
+way of things, they would not reach before five-and-twenty or thirty; and
+this in a natural way, and without any necessary priggishness, except such
+as may belong to their parents. Therefore I always spoke to the poor and
+uneducated as to my own people,--freely, not much caring whether I should
+be quite understood or not; for I believed in influences not to be measured
+by the measure of the understanding.
+
+But what was the old woman's answer? It was this:
+
+"I know, sir. And when I was as young as you"--I was not so very young,
+my reader may well think--"I thought like that about the sea myself.
+Everything come from the sea. For my boy Willie he du bring me home the
+beautifullest parrot and the talkingest you ever see, and the red shawl all
+worked over with flowers: I'll show it to you some day, sir, when you have
+time. He made that ship you see in the frame there, sir, all with his own
+knife, out on a bit o' wood that he got at the Marishes, as they calls it,
+sir--a bit of an island somewheres in the great sea. But the parrot's
+gone dead like the rest of them, sir.--Where am I? and what am I talking
+about?" she added, looking down at her knitting as if she had dropped
+a stitch, or rather as if she had forgotten what she was making, and
+therefore what was to come next.
+
+"You were telling me how you used to think of the sea--"
+
+"When I was as young as you. I remember, sir. Well, that lasted a long
+time--lasted till my third boy fell asleep in the wide water; for it du
+call it falling asleep, don't it, sir?"
+
+"The Bible certainly does," I answered.
+
+"It's the Bible I be meaning, of course," she returned. "Well, after that,
+but I don't know what began it, only I did begin to think about the sea as
+something that took away things and didn't bring them no more. And somehow
+or other she never look so blue after that, and she give me the shivers.
+But now, sir, she always looks to me like one o' the shining ones that come
+to fetch the pilgrims. You've heard tell of the _Pilgrim's Progress_, I
+daresay, sir, among the poor people; for they du say it was written by
+a tinker, though there be a power o' good things in it that I think the
+gentlefolk would like if they knowed it."
+
+"I do know the book--nearly as well as I know the Bible," I answered; "and
+the shining ones are very beautiful in it. I am glad you can think of the
+sea that way."
+
+"It's looking in at the window all day as I go about the house," she
+answered, "and all night too when I'm asleep; and if I hadn't learned to
+think of it that way, it would have driven me mad, I du believe. I was
+forced to think that way about it, or not think at all. And that wouldn't
+be easy, with the sound of it in your ears the last thing at night and the
+first thing in the morning."
+
+"The truth of things is indeed the only refuge from the look of things," I
+replied. "But now I want the key of the church, if you will trust me with
+it, for I have something to do there this morning; and the key of the tower
+as well, if you please."
+
+With her old smile, ripened only by age, she reached the ponderous keys
+from the nail where they hung, and gave them into my hand. I left her in
+the shadow of her dwelling, and stepped forth into the sunlight. The first
+thing I observed was the blacksmith waiting for me at the church door.
+
+Now that I saw him in the full light of day, and now that he wore his
+morning face upon which the blackness of labour had not yet gathered, I
+could see more plainly how far he was from well. There was a flush on his
+thin cheek by which the less used exercise of walking revealed his inward
+weakness, and the light in his eyes had something of the far-country in
+them--"the light that never was on sea or shore." But his speech was
+cheerful, for he had been walking in the light of this world, and that had
+done something to make the light within him shine a little more freely.
+
+"How do you find yourself to-day?" I asked.
+
+"Quite well, sir, I thank you," he answered. "A day like this does a man
+good. But," he added, and his countenance fell, "the heart knoweth its own
+bitterness."
+
+"It may know it too much," I returned, "just because it refuses to let a
+stranger intermeddle therewith."
+
+He made no reply. I turned the key in the great lock, and the iron-studded
+oak opened and let us into the solemn gloom.
+
+It did not require many minutes to make the man understand what I wanted of
+him.
+
+"We must begin at the bells and work down," he said.
+
+So we went up into the tower, where, with the help of a candle I fetched
+for him from the cottage, he made a good many minute measurements; found
+that carpenter's work was necessary for the adjustment of the hammers and
+cranks and the leading of the rods, undertook the management of the whole,
+and in the course of an hour and a half went home to do what had to be done
+before any fixing could be commenced, assuring me that he had no doubt of
+bringing the job to a satisfactory conclusion, although the force of
+the blow on the bell would doubtless have to be regulated afterwards by
+repeated trials.
+
+"In a fortnight, I hope you will be able to play a tune to the parish,
+sir," he added, as he took his leave.
+
+I resolved, if possible, to know more of the man, and find out his trouble,
+if haply I might be able to give him any comfort, for I was all but certain
+that there was a deeper cause for his gloom than the state of his health.
+
+When he was gone I stood with the key of the church in my hand, and looked
+about me. Nature at least was in glorious health--sunshine in her eyes,
+light fantastic cloud-images passing through her brain, her breath coming
+and going in soft breezes perfumed with the scents of meadows and wild
+flowers, and her green robe shining in the motions of her gladness. I
+turned to lock the church door, though in my heart I greatly disapproved of
+locking the doors of churches, and only did so now because it was not my
+church, and I had no business to force my opinions upon other customs. But
+when I turned I received a kind of questioning shock. There was the fallen
+world, as men call it, shining in glory and gladness, because God was
+there; here was the way into the lost Paradise, yea, the door into an
+infinitely higher Eden than that ever had or ever could have been,
+iron-clamped and riveted, gloomy and low-browed like the entrance to a
+sepulchre, and surrounded with the grim heads of grotesque monsters of the
+deep. What did it mean? Here was contrast enough to require harmonising,
+or if that might not be, then accounting for. Perhaps it was enough to say
+that although God made both the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of grace,
+yet the symbol of the latter was the work of man, and might not altogether
+correspond to God's idea of the matter. I turned away thoughtful, and went
+through the churchyard with my eye on the graves.
+
+As I left the churchyard, still looking to the earth, the sound of voices
+reached my ear. I looked up. There, down below me, at the foot of the high
+bank on which I stood, lay a gorgeous shining thing upon the bosom of the
+canal, full of men, and surrounded by men, women, and children, delighting
+in its beauty. I had never seen such a thing before, but I knew at once,
+as by instinct, which of course it could not have been, that it was the
+life-boat. But in its gorgeous colours, red and white and green, it looked
+more like the galley that bore Cleopatra to Actium. Nor, floating so light
+on the top of the water, and broad in the beam withal, curved upward and
+ornamented at stern and stem, did it look at all like a creature formed to
+battle with the fierce elements. A pleasure-boat for floating between river
+banks it seemed, drawn by swans mayhap, and regarded in its course by
+fair eyes from green terrace-walks, or oriel windows of ancient houses on
+verdant lawns. Ten men sat on the thwarts, and one in the stern by the yet
+useless rudder, while men and boys drew the showy thing by a rope downward
+to the lock-gates. The men in the boat, wore blue jerseys, but you could
+see little of the colour for strange unshapely things that they wore above
+them, like an armour cut out of a row of organ pipes. They were their
+cork-jackets; for every man had to be made into a life-boat himself. I
+descended the bank, and stood on the edge of the canal as it drew near.
+Then I saw that every oar was loosely but firmly fastened to the rowlock,
+so that it could be dropped and caught again in a moment; and that the gay
+sides of the unwieldy-looking creature were festooned with ropes from the
+gunwale, for the men to lay hold of when she capsized, for the earlier
+custom of fastening the men to their seats had been quite given up, because
+their weight under the water might prevent the boat from righting itself
+again, and the men could not come to the surface. Now they had a better
+chance in their freedom, though why they should not be loosely attached to
+the boat, I do not quite see.
+
+They towed the shining thing through the upper gate of the lock, and slowly
+she sank from my sight, and for some moments was no more to be seen, for I
+had remained standing where first she passed me. All at once there she was
+beyond the covert of the lock-head, abroad and free, fleeting from the
+strokes of ten swift oars over the still waters of the bay towards the
+waves that roared further out where the ground-swell was broken by the rise
+of the sandy coast. There was no vessel in danger now, as the talk of the
+spectators informed me; it was only for exercise and show that they went
+out. It seemed all child's play for a time; but when they got among the
+broken waves, then it looked quite another thing. The motion of the waters
+laid hold upon her, and soon tossed her fearfully, now revealing the whole
+of her capacity on the near side of one of their slopes, now hiding her
+whole bulk in one of their hollows beyond. She, careless as a child in the
+troubles of the world, floated about amongst them with what appeared too
+much buoyancy for the promise of a safe return. Again and again she was
+driven from her course towards the low rocks on the other side of the bay,
+and again and again, returned to disport herself, like a sea-animal, as it
+seemed, upon the backs of the wild, rolling, and bursting billows.
+
+"Can she go no further?" I asked of the captain of the coastguard, whom I
+found standing by my side.
+
+"Not without some danger," he answered.
+
+"What, then, must it be in a storm!" I remarked.
+
+"Then of course," he returned, "they must take their chance. But there
+is no good in running risks for nothing. That swell is quite enough for
+exercise."
+
+"But is it enough to accustom them to face the danger that will come?" I
+asked.
+
+"With danger comes courage," said the old sailor.
+
+"Were you ever afraid?"
+
+"No, sir. I don't think I ever was afraid. Yes, I believe I was once for
+one moment, no more, when I fell from the maintop-gallant yard, and felt
+myself falling. But it was soon over, for I only fell into the maintop.
+I was expecting the smash on deck when I was brought up there. But," he
+resumed, "I don't care much about the life-boat. My rockets are worth a
+good deal more, as you may see, sir, before the winter is over; for seldom
+does a winter pass without at least two or three wrecks close by here on
+this coast. The full force of the Atlantic breaks here, sir. I _have_ seen
+a life-boat--not that one--_she's_ done nothing yet--pitched stern over
+stem; not capsized, you know, sir, in the ordinary way, but struck by a
+wave behind while she was just hanging in the balance on the knife-edge of
+a wave, and flung a somerset, as I say, stern over stem, and four of her
+men lost."
+
+While we spoke I saw on the pier-head the tall figure of the painter
+looking earnestly at the boat. I thought he was regarding it chiefly from
+an artistic point of view, but I became aware before long that that would
+not have been consistent with the character of Charles Percivale. He had
+been, I learned afterwards, a crack oarsman at Oxford, and had belonged to
+the University boat, so that he had some almost class-sympathy with the
+doings of the crew.
+
+In a little while the boat sped swiftly back, entered the lock, was lifted
+above the level of the storm-heaved ocean, and floated up the smooth canal
+calmly as if she had never known what trouble was. Away up to the pretty
+little Tudor-fashioned house in which she lay--one could almost fancy
+dreaming of storms to come--she went, as softly as if moved only by her
+"own sweet will," in the calm consolation for her imprisonment of having
+tried her strength, and found therein good hope of success for the time
+when she should rush to the rescue of men from that to which, as a monster
+that begets monsters, she a watching Perseis, lay ready to offer battle.
+The poor little boat lying in her little house watching the ocean, was
+something signified in my eyes, and not less so after what came in the
+course of changing seasons and gathered storms.
+
+All this time I had the keys in my hand, and now went back to the cottage
+to restore them to their place upon the wall. When I entered there was a
+young woman of a sweet interesting countenance talking to Mrs. Coombes. Now
+as it happened, I had never yet seen the daughter who lived with her, and
+thought this was she.
+
+"I've found your daughter at last then?" I said, approaching them.
+
+"Not yet, sir. She goes out to work, and her hands be pretty full at
+present. But this be almost my daughter, sir," she added. "This is my next
+daughter, Mary Trehern, from the south. She's got a place near by, to be
+near her mother that is to be, that's me."
+
+Mary was hanging her head and blushing, as the old woman spoke.
+
+"I understand," I said. "And when are you going to get your new mother,
+Mary? Soon I hope."
+
+But she gave me no reply--only hung her head lower and blushed deeper.
+
+Mrs. Coombes spoke for her.
+
+"She's shy, you see, sir. But if she was to speak her mind, she would ask
+you whether you wouldn't marry her and Willie when he comes home from his
+next voyage."
+
+Mary's hands were trembling now, and she turned half away.
+
+"With all my heart," I said.
+
+The girl tried to turn towards me, but could not. I looked at her face a
+little more closely. Through all its tremor, there was a look of constancy
+that greatly pleased me. I tried to make her speak.
+
+"When do you expect Willie home?" I said.
+
+She made a little gasp and murmur, but no articulate words came.
+
+"Don't be frightened, Mary," said her mother, as I found she always called
+her. "The gentleman won't be sharp with you."
+
+She lifted a pair of soft brown eyes with one glance and a smile, and then
+sank them again.
+
+"He'll be home in about a month, we think," answered the mother. "She's a
+good ship he's aboard of, and makes good voyages."
+
+"It is time to think about the bans, then," I said.
+
+"If you please, sir," said the mother.
+
+"Just come to me about it, and I will attend to it--when you think proper."
+
+I thought I could hear a murmured "Thank you, sir," from the girl, but I
+could not be certain that she spoke. I shook hands with them, and went for
+a stroll on the other side of the bay.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+MR. PERCIVALE.
+
+
+
+
+
+When I reached home I found that Connie was already on her watch-tower.
+For while I was away, they had carried her out that she might see the
+life-boat. I followed her, and found the whole family about her couch, and
+with them Mr. Percivale, who was showing her some sketches that he had made
+in the neighbourhood. Connie knew nothing of drawing; but she seemed to
+me always to catch the feeling of a thing. Her remarks therefore were
+generally worth listening to, and Mr. Percivale was evidently interested in
+them. Wynnie stood behind Connie, looking over her shoulder at the drawing
+in her hand.
+
+"How do you get that shade of green?" I heard her ask as I came up.
+
+And then Mr. Percivale proceeded to tell her; from which beginning they
+went on to other things, till Mr. Percivale said--
+
+"But it is hardly fair, Miss Walton; to criticise my work while you keep
+your own under cover."
+
+"I wasn't criticising, Mr. Percivale; was I, Connie?"
+
+"I didn't hear her make a single remark, Mr. Percivale," said Connie,
+taking her sister's side.
+
+To my surprise they were talking away with the young man as if they had
+known him for years, and my wife was seated at the foot of the couch,
+apparently taking no exception to the suddenness of the intimacy. I am
+afraid, when I think of it, that a good many springs would be missing from
+the world's history if they might not flow till the papas gave their wise
+consideration to everything about the course they were to take.
+
+"I think, though," added Connie, "it is only fair that Mr. Percivale
+_should_ see your work, Wynnie."
+
+"Then I will fetch my portfolio, if Mr. Percivale will promise to remember
+that I have no opinion of it. At the same time, if I could do what I wanted
+to do, I think I should not be ashamed of showing my drawings even to him."
+
+And now I was surprised to find how like grown women my daughters could
+talk. To me they always spoke like the children they were; but when I
+heard them now it seemed as if they had started all at once into ladies
+experienced in the ways of society. There they were chatting lightly,
+airily, and yet decidedly, a slight tone of badinage interwoven, with a
+young man of grace and dignity, whom they had only seen once before, and
+who had advanced no farther, with Connie at least, than a stately bow. They
+had, however, been a whole hour together before I arrived, and their mother
+had been with them all the while, which gives great courage to good girls,
+while, I am told, it shuts the mouths of those who are sly. But then it
+must be remembered that there are as great differences in mothers as in
+girls. And besides, I believe wise girls have an instinct about men that
+all the experience of other men cannot overtake. But yet again, there are
+many girls foolish enough to mistake a mere impulse for instinct, and
+vanity for insight.
+
+As Wynnie spoke, she turned and went back to the house to fetch some of her
+work. Now, had she been going a message for me, she would have gone like
+the wind; but on this occasion she stepped along in a stately manner, far
+from devoid of grace, but equally free from frolic or eagerness. And I
+could not help noting as well that Mr. Percivale's eyes followed her. What
+I felt or fancied is of no consequence to anybody. I do not think, even if
+I were writing an autobiography, I should be forced to tell _all_ about
+myself. But an autobiography is further from my fancy, however much I may
+have trenched upon its limits, than any other form of literature with which
+I am acquainted.
+
+She was not long in returning, however, though she came back with the same
+dignified motion.
+
+"There is nothing really worth either showing or concealing," she said to
+Mr. Percivale, as she handed him the portfolio, to help himself, as it
+were. She then turned away, as if a little feeling of shyness had come over
+her, and began to look for something to do about Connie. I could see that,
+although she had hitherto been almost indifferent about the merit of her
+drawings, she had a new-born wish that they might not appear altogether
+contemptible in the eyes of Mr. Percivale. And I saw, too, that Connie's
+wide eyes were taking in everything. It was wonderful how Connie's
+deprivations had made her keen in observing. Now she hastened to her
+sister's rescue even from such a slight inconvenience as the shadow of
+embarrassment in which she found herself--perhaps from having seen some
+unusual expression in my face, of which I was unconscious, though conscious
+enough of what might have occasioned such.
+
+"Give me your hand, Wynnie," said Connie, "and help me to move one inch
+further on my side.--I may move just that much on my side, mayn't I, papa?"
+
+"I think you had better not, my dear, if you can do without it," I
+answered; for the doctor's injunctions had been strong.
+
+"Very well, papa; but I feel as if it would do me good."
+
+"Mr. Turner will be here next week, you know; and you must try to stick
+to his rules till he comes to see you. Perhaps he will let you relax a
+little."
+
+Connie smiled very sweetly and lay still, while Wynnie stood holding her
+hand.
+
+Meantime Mr. Percivale, having received the drawings, had walked away with
+them towards what they called the storm tower--a little building standing
+square to the points of the compass, from little windows, in which the
+coastguard could see with their telescopes along the coast on both sides
+and far out to sea. This tower stood on the very edge of the cliff, but
+behind it there was a steep descent, to reach which apparently he went
+round the tower and disappeared. He evidently wanted to make a leisurely
+examination of the drawings--somewhat formidable for Wynnie, I thought. At
+the same time, it impressed me favourably with regard to the young man
+that he was not inclined to pay a set of stupid and untrue compliments the
+instant the portfolio was opened, but, on the contrary, in order to speak
+what was real about them, would take the trouble to make himself in some
+adequate measure acquainted with them. I therefore, to Wynnie's relief, I
+fear, strolled after him, seeing no harm in taking a peep at his person,
+while he was taking a peep at my daughter's mind. I went round the tower
+to the other side, and there saw him at a little distance below me, but
+further out on a great rock that overhung the sea, connected with the cliff
+by a long narrow isthmus, a few yards lower than the cliff itself, only
+just broad enough to admit of a footpath along its top, and on one side
+going sheer down with a smooth hard rock-face to the sands below. The other
+side was less steep, and had some grass upon it. But the path was too
+narrow, and the precipice too steep, for me to trust my head with the
+business of guiding my feet along it. So I stood and saw him from the
+mainland--saw his head at least bent over the drawings; saw how slowly he
+turned from one to the other; saw how, after having gone over them once,
+he turned to the beginning and went over them again, even more slowly than
+before; saw how he turned the third time to the first. Then, getting tired,
+I went back to the group on the down; caught sight of Charlie and Harry
+turning heels over head down the slope toward the house; found that my wife
+had gone home--in fact, that only Connie and Wynnie were left. The sun
+had disappeared under a cloud, and the sea had turned a little slaty; the
+yellow flowers in the short down-grass no longer caught the eye with their
+gold, and the wind that bent their tops had just the suspicion of an edge
+in it. And Wynnie's face looked a little cloudy too, I thought, and I
+feared that it was my fault. I fancied there was just a tinge of beseeching
+in Connie's eye, as I looked at her, thinking there might be danger for her
+in the sunlessness of the wind. But I do not know that all this, even the
+clouding of the sun, may not have come out of my own mind, the result of my
+not being quite satisfied with myself because of the mood I had been in. My
+feeling had altered considerably in the mean time.
+
+"Run, Wynnie, and ask Mr. Percivale, with my compliments, to come and lunch
+with us," I said--more to let her see I was not displeased, however I might
+have looked, than for any other reason. She went--sedately as before.
+
+Almost as soon as she was gone, I saw that I had put her in a difficulty.
+For I had discovered, very soon after coming into these parts, that her
+head was no more steady than my own on high places, for she up had never
+been used to such in our own level country, except, indeed, on the stair
+that led down to the old quarry and the well, where, I can remember now,
+she always laid her hand on the balustrade with some degree of tremor,
+although she had been in the way of going up and down from childhood. But
+if she could not cross that narrow and really dangerous isthmus, still less
+could she call to a man she had never seen but once, across the intervening
+chasm. I therefore set off after her, leaving Connie lying there in
+loneliness, between the sea and the sky. But when I got to the other side
+of the little tower, instead of finding her standing hesitating on the
+brink of action, there she was on the rock beyond. Mr. Percivale had risen,
+and was evidently giving an answer to my invitation; at least, the next
+moment she turned to come back, and he followed. I stood trembling almost
+to see her cross the knife-back of that ledge. If I had not been almost
+fascinated, I should have turned and left them to come together, lest the
+evil fancy should cross her mind that I was watching them, for it was one
+thing to watch him with her drawings, and quite another to watch him with
+herself. But I stood and stared as she crossed. In the middle of the path,
+however--up to which point she had been walking with perfect steadiness and
+composure--she lifted her eyes--by what influence I cannot tell--saw me,
+looked as if she saw ghost, half lifted her arms, swayed as if she would
+fall, and, indeed, was falling over the precipice when Percivale, who was
+close behind her caught her in his arms, almost too late for both of them.
+So nearly down was she already, that her weight bent him over the rocky
+side, till it seemed as if he must yield, or his body snap. For he bent
+from the waist, and looked as if his feet only kept a hold on the ground.
+It was all over in a moment, but in that moment it made a sun-picture on my
+brain, which returns, ever and again, with such vivid agony that I cannot
+hope to get rid of it till I get rid of the brain itself in which lies the
+impress. In another moment they were at my side--she with a wan, terrified
+smile, he in a ruddy alarm. I was unable to speak, and could only, with
+trembling steps, lead the way from the dreadful spot. I reproached myself
+afterwards for my want of faith in God; but I had not had time to correct
+myself yet. Without a word on their side either, they followed me. Before
+we reached Connie, I recovered myself sufficiently to say, "Not a word to
+Connie," and they understood me. I told Wynnie to run to the house, and
+send Walter to help me to carry Connie home. She went, and, until Walter
+came, I talked to Mr. Percivale as if nothing had happened. And what made
+me feel yet more friendly towards him was, that he did not do as some young
+men wishing to ingratiate themselves would have done: he did not offer to
+help me to carry Connie home. I saw that the offer rose in his mind, and
+that he repressed it. He understood that I must consider such a permission
+as a privilege not to be accorded to the acquaintance of a day; that I must
+know him better before I could allow the weight of my child to rest on his
+strength. I was even grateful to him for this knowledge of human nature.
+But he responded cordially to my invitation to lunch with us, and walked by
+my side as Walter and I bore the precious burden home.
+
+During our meal, he made himself quite agreeable; talked well on the topics
+of the day, not altogether as a, man who had made up his mind, but not the
+less, rather the more, as a man who had thought about them, and one who did
+not find it so easy to come to a conclusion as most people do--or possibly
+as not feeling the necessity of coming to a conclusion, and therefore
+preferring to allow the conclusion to grow instead of constructing one for
+immediate use. This I rather liked than otherwise. His behaviour, I need
+hardly say, after what I have told of him already, was entirely that of a
+gentleman; and his education was good. But what I did not like was, that
+as often as the conversation made a bend in the direction of religious
+matters, he was sure to bend it away in some other direction as soon as
+ever he laid his next hold upon it. This, however, might have various
+reasons to account for it, and I would wait.
+
+After lunch, as we rose from the table, he took Wynnie's portfolio from the
+side-table where he had laid it, and with no more than a bow and thanks
+returned it to her. She, I thought, looked a little disappointed, though
+she said as lightly as she could:
+
+"I am afraid you have not found anything worthy of criticism in my poor
+attempts, Mr. Percivale?"
+
+"On the contrary, I shall be most happy to tell you what I think of them if
+you would like to hear the impression they have made upon me," he replied,
+holding out his hand to take the portfolio again.
+
+"I shall be greatly obliged to you," she said, returning it, "for I have
+had no one to help me since I left school, except a book called _Modern
+Painters_, which I think has the most beautiful things in it I ever read,
+but which I lay down every now and then with a kind of despair, as if I
+never could do anything worth doing. How long the next volume is in coming!
+Do you know the author, Mr. Percivale?"
+
+"I wish I did. He has given me much help. I do not say I can agree with
+everything he writes; but when I do not, I have such a respect for him that
+I always feel as if he must be right whether he seems to me to be right or
+not. And if he is severe, it is with the severity of love that will speak
+only the truth."
+
+This last speech fell on my ear like the tone of a church bell. "That will
+do, my friend" thought I. But I said nothing to interrupt.
+
+By this time he had laid the portfolio open on the side-table, and placed a
+chair in front of it for my daughter. Then seating himself by her side, but
+without the least approach to familiarity, he began to talk to her about
+her drawings, praising, in general, the feeling, but finding fault with the
+want of nicety in the execution--at least so it appeared to me from what I
+could understand of the conversation.
+
+"But," said my daughter, "it seems to me that if you get the feeling right,
+that is the main thing."
+
+"No doubt," returned Mr. Percivale; "so much the main thing that any
+imperfection or coarseness or untruth which interferes with it becomes of
+the greatest consequence."
+
+"But can it really interfere with the feeling?"
+
+"Perhaps not with most people, simply because most people observe so
+badly that their recollections of nature are all blurred and blotted and
+indistinct, and therefore the imperfections we are speaking of do not
+affect them. But with the more cultivated it is otherwise. It is for them
+you ought to work, for you do not thereby lose the others. Besides, the
+feeling is always intensified by the finish, for that belongs to the
+feeling too, and must, I should think, have some influence even where it is
+not noted."
+
+"But is it not a hopeless thing to attempt the finish of nature?"
+
+"Not at all; to the degree, that is, in which you can represent anything
+else of nature. But in this drawing now you have no representative of,
+nothing to hint at or recall the feeling of the exquisiteness of nature's
+finish. Why should you not at least have drawn a true horizon-line there?
+Has the absolute truth of the meeting of sea and sky nothing to do with the
+feeling which such a landscape produces? I should have thought you would
+have learned that, if anything, from Mr. Ruskin."
+
+Mr. Percivale spoke earnestly. Wynnie, either from disappointment or
+despair, probably from a mixture of both, apparently fancied that, or
+rather felt as if, he was scolding her, and got cross. This was anything
+but dignified, especially with a stranger, and one who was doing his
+best to help her. And yet, somehow, I must with shame confess I was not
+altogether sorry to see it. In fact, my reader, I must just uncover my sin,
+and say that I felt a little jealous of Mr. Percivale. The negative reason
+was that I had not yet learned to love him. The only cure for jealousy is
+love. But I was ashamed too of Wynnie's behaving so childishly. Her face
+flushed, the tears came in her eyes, and she rose, saying, with a little
+choke in her voice--
+
+"I see it's no use trying. I won't intrude any more into things I am
+incapable of. I am much obliged to you, Mr. Percivale, for showing me how
+presumptuous I have been."
+
+The painter rose as she rose, looking greatly concerned. But he did not
+attempt to answer her. Indeed she gave him no time. He could only spring
+after her to open the door for her. A more than respectful bow as she left
+the room was his only adieu. But when he turned his face again towards me,
+it expressed even a degree of consternation.
+
+"I fear," he said, approaching me with an almost military step, much at
+variance with the shadow upon his countenance, "I fear I have been rude to
+Miss Walton, but nothing was farther--"
+
+"You mistake entirely, Mr. Percivale. I heard all you were saying, and you
+were not in the least rude. On the contrary, I consider you were very kind
+to take the trouble with her you did. Allow me to make the apology for my
+daughter which I am sure she will wish made when she recovers from the
+disappointment of finding more obstacles in the way of her favourite
+pursuit than she had previously supposed. She is only too ready to lose
+heart, and she paid too little attention to your approbation and too
+much--in proportion, I mean--to your--criticism. She felt discouraged and
+lost her temper, but more with herself and her poor attempts, I venture
+to assure you, than with your remarks upon them. She is too much given to
+despising her own efforts."
+
+"But I must have been to blame if I caused any such feeling with regard to
+those drawings, for I assure you they contain great promise."
+
+"I am glad you think so. That I should myself be of the same opinion can be
+of no consequence."
+
+"Miss Walton at least sees what ought to be represented. All she needs is
+greater severity in the quality of representation. And that would have
+grown without any remark from onlookers. Only a friendly criticism is
+sometimes a great help. It opens the eyes a little sooner than they would
+have opened of themselves. And time," he added, with a half sigh and with
+an appeal in his tone, as if he would justify himself to my conscience, "is
+half the battle in this world. It is over so soon."
+
+"No sooner than it ought to be," I rejoined.
+
+"So it may appear to you," he returned; "for you, I presume to
+conjecture, have worked hard and done much. I may or may not have worked
+hard--sometimes I think I have, sometimes I think I have not--but I
+certainly have done little. Here I am nearly thirty, and have made no mark
+on the world yet."
+
+"I don't know that that is of so much consequence," I said. "I have never
+hoped for more than to rub out a few of the marks already made."
+
+"Perhaps you are right," he returned. "Every man has something he can do,
+and more, I suppose, that he can't do. But I have no right to turn a visit
+into a visitation. Will you please tell Miss Walton that I am very sorry I
+presumed on the privileges of a drawing-master, and gave her pain. It was
+so far from my intention that it will be a lesson to me for the future."
+
+With these words he took his leave, and I could not help being greatly
+pleased both with them and with his bearing. He was clearly anything but a
+common man.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE SHADOW OP DEATH.
+
+
+
+
+
+When Wynnie appeared at dinner she looked ashamed of herself, and her face
+betrayed that she had been crying. But I said nothing, for I had confidence
+that all she needed was time to come to herself, that the voice that speaks
+louder than any thunder might make its stillness heard. And when I came
+home from my walk the next morning I found Mr. Percivale once more in the
+group about Connie, and evidently on the best possible terms with all. The
+same afternoon Wynnie went out sketching with Dora. I had no doubt that
+she had made some sort of apology to Mr. Percivale; but I did not make the
+slightest attempt to discover what had passed between them, for though it
+is of all things desirable that children should be quite open with their
+parents, I was most anxious to lay upon them no burden of obligation. For
+such burden lies against the door of utterance, and makes it the more
+difficult to open. It paralyses the speech of the soul. What I desired was
+that they should trust me so that faith should overcome all difficulty that
+might lie in the way of their being open with me. That end is not to he
+gained by any urging of admonition. Against such, growing years at least,
+if nothing else, will bring a strong reaction. Nor even, if so gained would
+the gain be at all of the right sort. The openness would not be faith.
+Besides, a parent must respect the spiritual person of his child, and
+approach it with reverence, for that too looks the Father in the face, and
+has an audience with him into which no earthly parent can enter even if he
+dared to desire it. Therefore I trusted my child. And when I saw that she
+looked at me a little shyly when we next met, I only sought to show her the
+more tenderness and confidence, telling her all about my plans with the
+bells, and my talks with the smith and Mrs. Coombes. She listened with just
+such interest as I had always been accustomed to see in her, asking such
+questions, and making such remarks as I might have expected, but I still
+felt that there was the thread of a little uneasiness through the web of
+our intercourse,--such a thread of a false colour as one may sometimes find
+wandering through the labour of the loom, and seek with pains to draw from
+the woven stuff. But it was for Wynnie to take it out, not for me. And she
+did not leave it long. For as she bade me good-night in my study, she said
+suddenly, yet with hesitating openness,
+
+"Papa, I told Mr. Percivale that I was sorry I had behaved so badly about
+the drawings."
+
+"You did right, my child," I replied. At the same moment a pang of anxiety
+passed through me lest under the influence of her repentance she should
+have said anything more than becoming. But I banished the doubt instantly
+as faithlessness in the womanly instincts of my child. For we men are
+always so ready and anxious to keep women right, like the wretched
+creature, Laertes, in _Hamlet_, who reads his sister such a lesson on her
+maidenly duties, but declines almost with contempt to listen to a word from
+her as to any co-relative obligation on his side!
+
+And here I may remark in regard to one of the vexed questions of the
+day--the rights of women--that what women demand it is not for men to
+withhold. It is not their business to lay the law for women. That women
+must lay down for themselves. I confess that, although I must herein seem
+to many of my readers old-fashioned and conservative, I should not like to
+see any woman I cared much for either in parliament or in an anatomical
+class-room; but on the other hand I feel that women must be left free to
+settle that matter. If it is not good, good women will find it out and
+recoil from it. If it is good then God give them good speed. One thing they
+_have_ a right to--a far wider and more valuable education than they
+have been in the way of receiving. When the mothers are well taught the
+generations will grow in knowledge at a fourfold rate. But still the
+teaching of life is better than all the schools, and common sense than all
+learning. This common sense is a rare gift, scantier in none than in those
+who lay claim to it on the ground of following commonplace, worldly, and
+prudential maxims. But I must return to my Wynnie.
+
+"And what did Mr. Percivale say?" I resumed, for she was silent.
+
+"He took the blame all on himself, papa."
+
+"Like a gentleman," I said.
+
+"But I could not leave it so, you know, papa, because that was not the
+truth."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I told him that I had lost my temper from disappointment; that I had
+thought I did not care for my drawings because I was so far from satisfied
+with them, but when he made me feel that they were worth nothing, then I
+found from the vexation I felt that I had cared for them. But I do think,
+papa, I was more ashamed of having shown them, and vexed with myself, than
+cross with him. But I was very silly."
+
+"Well, and what did he say?"
+
+"He began to praise them then. But you know I could not take much of that,
+for what could he do?"
+
+"You might give him credit for a little honesty, at least."
+
+"Yes; but things may be true in a way, you know, and not mean much."
+
+"He seems to have succeeded in reconciling you to the prosecution of your
+efforts, however; for I saw you go out with your sketching apparatus this
+afternoon."
+
+"Yes," she answered shyly. "He was so kind that somehow I got heart to try
+again. He's very nice, isn't he?"
+
+My answer was not quite ready.
+
+"Don't you like him, papa?"
+
+"Well--I like him--yes. But we must not be in haste with our judgments, you
+know. I have had very little opportunity of seeing into him. There is much
+in him that I like, but--"
+
+"But what? please, papa."
+
+"To tell the truth then, Wynnie, for I can speak my mind to you, my child,
+there is a certain shyness of approaching the subject of religion; so that
+I have my fears lest he should belong to any of these new schools of
+a fragmentary philosophy which acknowledge no source of truth but
+the testimony of the senses and the deductions made therefrom by the
+intellect."
+
+"But is not that a hasty conclusion, papa?"
+
+"That is a hasty question, my dear. I have come to no conclusion. I was
+only speaking confidentially about my fears."
+
+"Perhaps, papa, it's only that he's not sure enough, and is afraid of
+appearing to profess more than he believes. I'm sure, if that's it, I have
+the greatest sympathy with him."
+
+I looked at her, and saw the tears gathering fast in her eyes.
+
+"Pray to God on the chance of his hearing you, my darling, and go to
+sleep," I said. "I will not think hardly of you because you cannot be so
+sure as I am. How could you be? You have not had my experience. Perhaps you
+are right about Mr. Percivale too. But it would be an awkward thing to get
+intimate with him, you know, and then find out that we did not like him
+after all. You couldn't like a man much, could you, who did not believe
+in anything greater than himself, anything marvellous, grand, beyond our
+understanding--who thought that he had come out of the dirt and was going
+back to the dirt?"
+
+"I could, papa, if he tried to do his duty notwithstanding--for I'm sure I
+couldn't. I should cry myself to death."
+
+"You are right, my child. I should honour him too. But I should be very
+sorry for him. For he would be so disappointed in himself."
+
+I do not know whether this was the best answer to make, but I had little
+time to think.
+
+"But you don't know that he's like that."
+
+"I do not, my dear. And more, I will not associate the idea with him till I
+know for certain. We will leave it to ignorant old ladies who lay claim to
+an instinct for theology to jump at conclusions, and reserve ours--as even
+such a man as we have been supposing might well teach us--till we have
+sufficient facts from which to draw them. Now go to bed, my child."
+
+"Good-night then, dear papa," she said, and left me with a kiss.
+
+I was not altogether comfortable after this conversation. I had tried to be
+fair to the young man both in word and thought, but I could not relish the
+idea of my daughter falling in love with him, which looked likely enough,
+before I knew more about him, and found that _more_ good and hope-giving.
+There was but one rational thing left to do, and that was to cast my care
+on him that careth for us--on the Father who loved my child more than even
+I could love her--and loved the young man too, and regarded my anxiety, and
+would take its cause upon himself. After I had lifted up my heart to him I
+was at ease, read a canto of Dante's _Paradise_, and then went to bed. The
+prematurity of a conversation with my wife, in which I found that she was
+very favourably impressed with Mr. Percivale, must be pardoned to the
+forecasting hearts of fathers and mothers.
+
+As I went out for my walk the next morning, I caught sight of the sexton,
+with whom as yet I had had but little communication, busily trimming some
+of the newer graves in the churchyard. I turned in through the nearer gate,
+which was fashioned like a lych-gate, with seats on the sides and a stone
+table in the centre, but had no roof. The one on the other side of the
+church was roofed, but probably they had found that here no roof could
+resist the sea-blasts in winter. The top of the wall where the roof should
+have rested, was simply covered with flat slates to protect it from the
+rain.
+
+"Good-morning, Coombes," I said.
+
+He turned up a wizened, humorous old face, the very type of a
+gravedigger's, and with one hand leaning on the edge of the green mound,
+upon which he had been cropping with a pair of shears the too long and
+too thin grass, touched his cap with the other, and bade me a cheerful
+good-morning in return.
+
+"You're making things tidy," I said.
+
+"It take time to make them all comfortable, you see, sir," he returned,
+taking up his shears again and clipping away at the top and sides of the
+mound.
+
+"You mean the dead, Coombes?"
+
+"Yes, sir; to be sure, sir."
+
+"You don't think it makes much difference to their comfort, do you, whether
+the grass is one length or another upon their graves?"
+
+"Well no, sir. I don't suppose it makes _much_ difference to them. But it
+look more comfortable, you know. And I like things to look comfortable.
+Don't you, sir?"
+
+"To be sure I do, Coombes. And you are quite right. The resting-place
+of the body, although the person it belonged to be far away, should be
+respected."
+
+"That's what I think, though I don't get no credit for it. I du believe the
+people hereabouts thinks me only a single hair better than a Jack Ketch.
+But I'm sure I du my best to make the poor things comfortable."
+
+He seemed unable to rid his mind of the idea that the comfort of the
+departed was dependent upon his ministrations.
+
+"The trouble I have with them sometimes! There's now this same one as lies
+here, old Jonathan Giles. He have the gout so bad! and just as I come
+within a couple o' inches o' the right depth, out come the edge of a great
+stone in the near corner at the foot of the bed. Thinks I, he'll never lie
+comfortable with that same under his gouty toe. But the trouble I had
+to get out that stone! I du assure you, sir, it took me nigh half the
+day.--But this be one of the nicest places to lie in all up and down the
+coast--a nice gravelly soil, you see, sir; dry, and warm, and comfortable.
+Them poor things as comes out of the sea must quite enjoy the change, sir."
+
+There was something grotesque in the man's persistence in regarding the
+objects of his interest from this point of view. It was a curious way for
+the humanity that was in him to find expression; but I did not like to let
+him go on thus. It was so much opposed to all that I believed and felt
+about the change from this world to the next!
+
+"But, Coombes," I said, "why will you go on talking as if it made an atom
+of difference to the dead bodies where they were buried? They care no more
+about it than your old coat would care where it was thrown after you had
+done with it."
+
+He turned and regarded his coat where it hung beside him on the headstone
+of the same grave at which he was working, shook his head with a smile that
+seemed to hint a doubt whether the said old coat would be altogether so
+indifferent to its treatment when, it was past use as I had implied. Then
+he turned again to his work, and after a moment's silence began to approach
+me from another side. I confess he had the better of me before I was aware
+of what he was about.
+
+"The church of Boscastle stands high on the cliff. You've been to
+Boscastle, sir?"
+
+I told him I had not yet, but hoped to go before the summer was over.
+
+"Ah, you should see Boscastle, sir. It's a wonderful place. That's where I
+was born, sir. When I was a by that church was haunted, sir. It's a damp
+place, and the wind in it awful. I du believe it stand higher than any
+church in the country, and have got more wind in it of a stormy night than
+any church whatsomever. Well, they said it was haunted; and sure enough
+every now and then there was a knocking heard down below. And this always
+took place of a stormy night, as if there was some poor thing down in the
+low wouts (_vaults_), and he wasn't comfortable and wanted to get out.
+Well, one night it was so plain and so fearful it was that the sexton he
+went and took the blacksmith and a ship's carpenter down to the harbour,
+and they go up together, and they hearken all over the floor, and they open
+one of the old family wouts that belongs to the Penhaligans, and they go
+down with a light. Now the wind it was a-blowing all as usual, only worse
+than common. And there to be sure what do they see but the wout half-full
+of sea-water, and nows and thens a great spout coming in through a hole in
+the rock; for it was high-water and a wind off the sea, as I tell you.
+And there was a coffin afloat on the water, and every time the spout come
+through, it set it knocking agen the side o' the wout, and that was the
+ghost."
+
+"What a horrible idea!" I said, with a half-shudder at the unrest of the
+dead.
+
+The old man uttered a queer long-drawn sound,--neither a chuckle, a crow,
+nor a laugh, but a mixture of all three,--and turned himself yet again
+to the work which, as he approached the end of his narration, he had
+suspended, that he might make his story _tell_, I suppose, by looking me
+in the face. And as he turned he said, "I thought you would like to be
+comfortable then as well as other people, sir."
+
+I could not help laughing to see how the cunning old fellow had caught me.
+I have not yet been able to find out how much of truth there was in his
+story. From the twinkle of his eye I cannot help suspecting that if he did
+not invent the tale, he embellished it, at least, in order to produce the
+effect which he certainly did produce. Humour was clearly his predominant
+disposition, the reflex of which was to be seen, after a mild lunar
+fashion, on the countenance of his wife. Neither could I help thinking
+with pleasure, as I turned away, how the merry little old man would enjoy
+telling his companions how he had posed the new parson. Very welcome was
+he to his laugh for my part. Yet I gladly left the churchyard, with its
+sunshine above and its darkness below. Indeed I had to look up to the
+glittering vanes on the four pinnacles of the church-tower, dwelling aloft
+in the clean sunny air, to get the feeling of the dark vault, and the
+floating coffin, and the knocking heard in the windy church, out of my
+brain. But the thing that did free me was the reflection with what
+supreme disregard the disincarcerated spirit would look upon any possible
+vicissitudes of its abandoned vault. For in proportion as the body of man's
+revelation ceases to be in harmony with the spirit that dwells therein,
+it becomes a vault, a prison, from which it must be freedom to escape at
+length. The house we like best would be a prison of awful sort if doors and
+windows were built up. Man's abode, as age begins to draw nigh, fares thus.
+Age is in fact the mason that builds up the doors and the windows, and
+death is the angel that breaks the prison-house and lets the captives free.
+Thus I got something out of the sexton's horrible story.
+
+But before the week was over, death came near indeed--in far other fashion
+than any funereal tale could have brought it.
+
+One day, after lunch, I had retired to my study, and was dozing in my
+chair, for the day was hot, when I was waked by Charlie rushing into the
+room with the cry, "Papa, papa, there's a man drowning."
+
+I started up, and hurried down to the drawing-room, which looked out over
+the bay. I could see nothing but people running about on the edge of the
+quiet waves. No sign of human being was on--the water. But the one boat
+belonging to the pilot was coming out from the shelter of the lock of the
+canal where it usually lay, and my friend of the coastguard was running
+down from the tower on the cliff with ropes in his hand. He would not stop
+the boat even for the moment it would need to take him on board, but threw
+them in and urged to haste. I stood at the window and watched. Every now
+and then I fancied I saw something white heaved up on the swell of a wave,
+and as often was satisfied that I had but fancied it. The boat seemed to be
+floating about lazily, if not idly. The eagerness to help made it appear as
+if nothing was going on. Could it, after all, have been a false alarm? Was
+there, after all, no insensible form swinging about in the sweep of those
+waves, with life gradually oozing away? Long, long as it seemed to me, I
+watched, and still the boat kept moving from place to place, so far out
+that I could see nothing distinctly of the motions of its crew. At length I
+saw something. Yes; a long white thing rose from the water slowly, and was
+drawn into the boat. It rowed swiftly to the shore. There was but one place
+fit to land upon,--a little patch of sand, nearly covered at high-water,
+but now lying yellow in the sun, under the window at which I stood, and
+immediately under our garden-wall. Thither the boat shot along; and there
+my friend of the coastguard, earnest and sad, was waiting to use, though
+without hope, every appliance so well known to him from the frequent
+occurrence of such necessity in the course of his watchful duties along
+miles and miles of stormy coast.
+
+I will not linger over the sad details of vain endeavour. The honoured head
+of a family, he had departed and left a good name behind him. But even in
+the midst of my poor attentions to the quiet, speechless, pale-faced wife,
+who sat at the head of the corpse, I could not help feeling anxious about
+the effect on my Connie. It was impossible to keep the matter concealed
+from her. The undoubted concern on the faces of the two boys was enough to
+reveal that something serious and painful had occurred; while my wife and
+Wynnie, and indeed the whole household, were busy in attending to every
+remotest suggestion of aid that reached them from the little crowd gathered
+about the body. At length it was concluded, on the verdict of the medical
+man who had been sent for, that all further effort was useless. The body
+was borne away, and I led the poor lady to her lodging, and remained there
+with her till I found that, as she lay on the sofa, the sleep that so
+often dogs the steps of sorrow had at length thrown its veil over her
+consciousness, and put her for the time to rest. There is a gentle
+consolation in the firmness of the grasp of the inevitable, known but to
+those who are led through the valley of the shadow. I left her with her son
+and daughter, and returned to my own family. They too were of course in the
+skirts of the cloud. Had they only heard of the occurrence, it would have
+had little effect; but death had appeared to them. Everyone but Connie had
+seen the dead lying there; and before the day was over, I wished that she
+too had seen the dead. For I found from what she said at intervals, and
+from the shudder that now and then passed through her, that her imagination
+was at work, showing but the horrors that belong to death; for the
+enfolding peace that accompanies it can be known but by sight of the dead.
+When I spoke to her, she seemed, and I suppose for the time felt tolerably
+quiet and comfortable; but I could see that the words she had heard fall in
+the going and coming, and the communications of Charlie and Harry to each
+other, had made as it were an excoriation on her fancy, to which her
+consciousness was ever returning. And now I became more grateful than I
+had yet been for the gift of that gipsy-child. For I felt no anxiety about
+Connie so long as she was with her. The presence even of her mother could
+not relieve her, for she and Wynnie were both clouded with the same
+awe, and its reflex in Connie was distorted by her fancy. But the sweet
+ignorance of the baby, which rightly considered is more than a type or
+symbol of faith, operated most healingly; for she appeared in her sweet
+merry ways--no baby was ever more filled with the mere gladness of life
+than Connie's baby--to the mood in which they all were, like a little sunny
+window in a cathedral crypt, telling of a whole universe of sunshine and
+motion beyond those oppressed pillars and low-groined arches. And why
+should not the baby know best? I believe the babies do know best. I
+therefore favoured her having the child more than I might otherwise have
+thought good for her, being anxious to get the dreary, unhealthy impression
+healed as soon as possible, lest it should, in the delicate physical
+condition in which she was, turn to a sore.
+
+But my wife suffered for a time nearly as much as Connie. As long as she
+was going about the house or attending to the wants of her family, she was
+free; but no sooner did she lay her head on the pillow than in rushed the
+cry of the sea, fierce, unkind, craving like a wild beast. Again and again
+she spoke of it to me, for it came to her mingled with the voice of the
+tempter, saying, "_Cruel chance_," over and over again. For although the
+two words contradict each other when put together thus, each in its turn
+would assert itself.
+
+A great part of the doubt in the world comes from the fact that there are
+in it so many more of the impressible as compared with the originating
+minds. Where the openness to impression is balanced by the power of
+production, the painful questions of the world are speedily met by their
+answers; where such is not the case, there are often long periods of
+suffering till the child-answer of truth is brought to the birth. Hence the
+need for every impressible mind to be, by reading or speech, held in living
+association with an original mind able to combat those suggestions of doubt
+and even unbelief, which the look of things must often occasion--a look
+which comes from our inability to gain other than fragmentary visions of
+the work that the Father worketh hitherto. When the kingdom of heaven is at
+hand, one sign thereof will be that all clergymen will be more or less of
+the latter sort, and mere receptive goodness, no more than education and
+moral character, will be considered sufficient reason for a man's occupying
+the high position of an instructor of his fellows. But even now this
+possession of original power is not by any means to be limited to those
+who make public show of the same. In many a humble parish priest it shows
+itself at the bedside of the suffering, or in the admonition of the closet,
+although as yet there are many of the clergy who, so far from being able to
+console wisely, are incapable of understanding the condition of those that
+need consolation.
+
+"It is all a fancy, my dear," I said to her. "There is nothing more
+terrible in this than in any other death. On the contrary, I can hardly
+imagine a less fearful one. A big wave falls on the man's head and stuns
+him, and without further suffering he floats gently out on the sea of the
+unknown."
+
+"But it is so terrible for those left behind!"
+
+"Had you seen the face of his widow, so gentle, so loving, so resigned in
+its pallor, you would not have thought it so _terrible_."
+
+But though she always seemed satisfied, and no doubt felt nearly so, after
+any conversation of the sort, yet every night she would call out once and
+again, "O, that sea, out there!" I was very glad indeed when Mr. Turner,
+who had arranged to spend a short holiday with us, arrived.
+
+He was concerned at the news I gave him of the shock both Connie and her
+mother had received, and counselled an immediate change, that time might,
+in the absence of surrounding associations, obliterate something of the
+impression that had been made. The consequence was, that we resolved to
+remove our household, for a short time, to some place not too far off to
+permit of my attending to my duties at Kilkhaven, but out of the sight and
+sound of the sea. It was Thursday when Mr. Turner arrived, and he spent the
+next two days in inquiring and looking about for a suitable spot to which
+we might repair as early in the week as possible.
+
+On the Saturday the blacksmith was busy in the church-tower, and I went in
+to see how he was getting on.
+
+"You had a sad business here the last week, sir," he said, after we had
+done talking about the repairs.
+
+"A very sad business indeed," I answered.
+
+"It was a warning to us all," he said.
+
+"We may well take it so," I returned. "But it seems to me that we are too
+ready to think of such remarkable things only by themselves, instead of
+being roused by them to regard everything, common and uncommon, as ordered
+by the same care and wisdom."
+
+"One of our local preachers made a grand use of it."
+
+I made no reply. He resumed.
+
+"They tell me you took no notice of it last Sunday, sir."
+
+"I made no immediate allusion to it, certainly. But I preached under the
+influence of it. And I thought it better that those who could reflect on
+the matter should be thus led to think for themselves than that they should
+be subjected to the reception of my thoughts and feelings about it; for in
+the main it is life and not death that we have to preach."
+
+"I don't quite understand you, sir. But then you don't care much for
+preaching in your church."
+
+"I confess," I answered, "that there has been much indifference on that
+point. I could, however, mention to you many and grand exceptions. Still
+there is, even in some of the best in the church, a great amount of
+disbelief in the efficacy of preaching. And I allow that a great deal of
+what is called preaching, partakes of its nature only in the remotest
+degree. But, while I hold a strong opinion of its value--that is, where it
+is genuine--I venture just to suggest that the nature of the preaching to
+which the body you belong to has resorted, has had something to do, by way
+of a reaction, in driving the church to the other extreme."
+
+"How do you mean that, sir?"
+
+"You try to work upon people's feelings without reference to their
+judgment. Anyone who can preach what you call rousing sermons is considered
+a grand preacher amongst you, and there is a great danger of his being led
+thereby to talk more nonsense than sense. And then when the excitement
+goes off, there is no seed left in the soil to grow in peace, and they are
+always craving after more excitement."
+
+"Well, there is the preacher to rouse them up again."
+
+"And the consequence is that they continue like children--the good ones, I
+mean--and have hardly a chance of making a calm, deliberate choice of that
+which is good; while those who have been only excited and nothing more, are
+hardened and seared by the recurrence of such feeling as is neither aroused
+by truth nor followed by action."
+
+"You daren't talk like that if you knew the kind of people in this country
+that the Methodists, as you call them, have got a hold of. They tell me it
+was like hell itself down in those mines before Wesley come among them."
+
+"I should be a fool or a bigot to doubt that the Wesleyans have done
+incalculable good in the country. And that not alone to the people who
+never went to church. The whole Church of England is under obligations to
+Methodism such as no words can overstate."
+
+"I wonder you can say such things against them, then."
+
+"Now there you show the evil of thinking too much about the party you
+belong to. It makes a man touchy; and then he fancies when another is
+merely, it may be, analysing a difference, or insisting strongly on some
+great truth, that he is talking against his party."
+
+"But you said, sir, that our clergy don't care about moving our judgments,
+only our feelings. Now I know preachers amongst us of whom that would be
+anything but true."
+
+"Of course there must be. But there is what I say--your party-feeling makes
+you touchy. A man can't always be saying in the press of utterance, '_Of
+course there are exceptions_.' That is understood. I confess I do not know
+much about your clergy, for I have not had the opportunity. But I do know
+this, that some of the best and most liberal people I have ever known have
+belonged to your community."
+
+"They do gather a deal of money for good purposes."
+
+"Yes. But that was not what I meant by _liberal_. It is far easier to give
+money than to be generous in judgment. I meant by _liberal_, able to see
+the good and true in people that differ from you--glad to be roused to the
+reception of truth in God's name from whatever quarter it may come, and not
+readily finding offence where a remark may have chanced to be too sweeping
+or unguarded. But I see that I ought to be more careful, for I have made
+you, who certainly are not one of the quarrelsome people I have been
+speaking of, misunderstand me."
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir. I was hasty. But I do think I am more ready to
+lose my temper since--"
+
+Here he stopped. A fit of coughing came on, and, to my concern, was
+followed by what I saw plainly could be the result only of a rupture in the
+lungs. I insisted on his dropping his work and coming home with me, where I
+made him rest the remainder of the day and all Sunday, sending word to
+his mother that I could not let him go home. When we left on the Monday
+morning, we took him with us in the carriage hired for the journey, and set
+him down at his mother's, apparently no worse than usual.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+AT THE FARM.
+
+
+
+
+
+Leaving the younger members of the family at home with the servants, we set
+out for a farmhouse, some twenty miles off, which Turner had discovered
+for us. Connie had stood the journey down so well, and was now so much
+stronger, that we had no anxiety about her so far as regarded the
+travelling. Through deep lanes with many cottages, and here and there a
+very ugly little chapel, over steep hills, up which Turner and Wynnie and
+I walked, and along sterile moors we drove, stopping at roadside inns, and
+often besides to raise Connie and let her look about upon the extended
+prospect, so that it was drawing towards evening before we arrived at our
+destination. On the way Turner had warned us that we were not to expect a
+beautiful country, although the place was within reach of much that was
+remarkable. Therefore we were not surprised when we drew up at the door of
+a bare-looking, shelterless house, with scarcely a tree in sight, and a
+stretch of undulating fields on every side.
+
+"A dreary place in winter, Turner," I said, after we had seen Connie
+comfortably deposited in the nice white-curtained parlour, smelling of
+dried roses even in the height of the fresh ones, and had strolled out
+while our tea--dinner was being got ready for us.
+
+"Not a doubt of it; but just the place I wanted for Miss Connie," he
+replied. "We are high above the sea, and the air is very bracing, and not,
+at this season, too cold. A month later I should not on any account have
+brought her here."
+
+"I think even now there is a certain freshness in the wind that calls up a
+kind of will in the nerves to meet it."
+
+"That is precisely what I wanted for you all. You observe there is no rasp
+in its touch, however. There are regions in this island of ours where
+even in the hottest day in summer you would frequently discover a certain
+unfriendly edge in the air, that would set you wondering whether the
+seasons had not changed since you were a boy, and used to lie on the grass
+half the idle day."
+
+"I often do wonder whether it may not be so, but I always come to the
+conclusion that even this is but an example of the involuntary tendency of
+the mind of man towards the ideal. He forgets all that comes between and
+divides the hints of perfection scattered here and there along the scope of
+his experience. I especially remember one summer day in my childhood, which
+has coloured all my ideas of summer and bliss and fulfilment of content.
+It is made up of only mossy grass, and the scent of the earth and wild
+flowers, and hot sun, and perfect sky--deep and blue, and traversed by
+blinding white clouds. I could not have been more than five or six, I
+think, from the kind of dress I wore, the very pearl buttons of which,
+encircled on their face with a ring of half-spherical hollows, have their
+undeniable relation in my memory to the heavens and the earth, to the march
+of the glorious clouds, and the tender scent of the rooted flowers; and,
+indeed, when I think of it, must, by the delight they gave me, have opened
+my mind the more to the enjoyment of the eternal paradise around me. What a
+thing it is to please a child!"
+
+"I know what you mean perfectly," answered Turner. "It is as I get older
+that I understand what Wordsworth says about childhood. It is indeed a
+mercy that we were not born grown men, with what we consider our wits about
+us. They are blinding things those wits we gather. I fancy that the single
+thread by which God sometimes keeps hold of a man is such an impression of
+his childhood as that of which you have been speaking."
+
+"I do not doubt it; for conscience is so near in all those memories to
+which you refer. The whole surrounding of them is so at variance with sin!
+A sense of purity, not in himself, for the child is not feeling that he
+is pure, is all about him; and when afterwards the condition returns upon
+him,--returns when he is conscious of so much that is evil and so much that
+is unsatisfied in him,--it brings with it a longing after the high clear
+air of moral well-being."
+
+"Do you think, then, that it is only by association that nature thus
+impresses us? that she has no power of meaning these things?"
+
+"Not at all. No doubt there is something in the recollection of the
+associations of childhood to strengthen the power of nature upon us; but
+the power is in nature herself, else it would be but a poor weak thing to
+what it is. There _is_ purity and state in that sky. There _is_ a peace
+now in this wide still earth--not so very beautiful, you own--and in that
+overhanging blue, which my heart cries out that it needs and cannot be well
+till it gains--gains in the truth, gains in God, who is the power of truth,
+the living and causing truth. There is indeed a rest that remaineth, a rest
+pictured out even here this night, to rouse my dull heart to desire it and
+follow after it, a rest that consists in thinking the thoughts of Him who
+is the Peace because the Unity, in being filled with that spirit which now
+pictures itself forth in this repose of the heavens and the earth."
+
+"True," said Turner, after a pause. "I must think more about such things.
+The science the present day is going wild about will not give us that
+rest."
+
+"No; but that rest will do much to give you that science. A man with this
+repose in his heart will do more by far, other capabilities being equal, to
+find out the laws that govern things. For all law is living rest."
+
+"What you have been saying," resumed Turner, after another pause, "reminds
+me much of one of Wordsworth's poems. I do not mean the famous ode."
+
+"You mean the 'Ninth Evening Voluntary,' I know--one of his finest and
+truest and deepest poems. It begins, 'Had this effulgence disappeared.'"
+
+"Yes, that is the one I mean. I shall read it again when I go home. But
+you don't agree with Wordsworth, do you, about our having had an existence
+previous to this?"
+
+He gave a little laugh as he asked the question.
+
+"Not in the least. But an opinion held by such men as Plato, Origen, and
+Wordsworth, is not to be laughed at, Mr. Turner. It cannot be in its nature
+absurd. I might have mentioned Shelley as holding it, too, had his opinion
+been worth anything."
+
+"Then you don't think much of Shelley?"
+
+"I think his _feeling_ most valuable; his _opinion_ nearly worthless."
+
+"Well, perhaps I had no business to laugh, at it; but--"
+
+"Do not suppose for a moment that I even lean to it. I dislike it. It would
+make me unhappy to think there was the least of sound argument for it. But
+I respect the men who have held it, and know there must be _something_ good
+in it, else they could not have held it."
+
+"Are you able then to sympathise with that ode of Wordsworth's? Does it not
+depend for all its worth on the admission of this theory?"
+
+"Not in the least. Is it necessary to admit that we must have had a
+conscious life before this life to find meaning in the words,--
+
+  'But trailing clouds of glory do we come
+  From God who is our home'?
+
+Is not all the good in us his image? Imperfect and sinful as we are, is not
+all the foundation of our being his image? Is not the sin all ours, and the
+life in us all God's? We cannot be the creatures of God without partaking
+of his nature. Every motion of our conscience, every admiration of what
+is pure and noble, is a sign and a result of this. Is not every
+self-accusation a proof of the presence of his spirit? That comes not of
+ourselves--that is not without him. These are the clouds of glory we come
+trailing from him. All feelings of beauty and peace and loveliness and
+right and goodness, we trail with us from our home. God is the only home
+of the human soul. To interpret in this manner what Wordsworth says, will
+enable us to enter into perfect sympathy with all that grandest of his
+poems. I do not say this is what he meant; but I think it includes what he
+meant by being greater and wider than what he meant. Nor am I guilty of
+presumption in saying so, for surely the idea that we are born of God is a
+greater idea than that we have lived with him a life before this life. But
+Wordsworth is not the first among our religious poets to give us at least
+what is valuable in the notion. I came upon a volume amongst my friend
+Shepherd's books, with which I had made no acquaintance before--Henry
+Vaughan's poems. I brought it with me, for it has finer lines, I almost
+think, than any in George Herbert, though not so fine poems by any means as
+his best. When we go into the house I will read one of them to you."
+
+"Thank you," said Turner. "I wish I could have such talk once a week. The
+shades of the prison-house, you know, Mr. Walton, are always trying to
+close about us, and shut out the vision of the glories we have come from,
+as Wordsworth says."
+
+"A man," I answered, "who ministers to the miserable necessities of his
+fellows has even more need than another to believe in the light and the
+gladness--else a poor Job's comforter will he be. _I_ don't want to be
+treated like a musical snuff-box."
+
+The doctor laughed.
+
+"No man can _prove_," he said, "that there is not a being inside the
+snuff-box, existing in virtue of the harmony of its parts, comfortable when
+they go well, sick when they go badly, and dying when it is dismembered, or
+even when it stops."
+
+"No," I answered. "No man can prove it. But no man can convince a human
+being of it. And just as little can anyone convince me that my conscience,
+making me do sometimes what I _don't_ like, comes from a harmonious action
+of the particles of my brain. But it is time we went in, for by the law of
+things in general, I being ready for my dinner, my dinner ought to be ready
+for me."
+
+"A law with more exceptions than instances, I fear," said Turner.
+
+"I doubt that," I answered. "The readiness is everything, and that we
+constantly blunder in. But we had better see whether we are really ready
+for it, by trying whether it is ready for us."
+
+Connie went to bed early, as indeed we all did, and she was rather better
+than worse the next morning. My wife, for the first time for many nights,
+said nothing about the crying of the sea. The following day Turner and I
+set out to explore the neighbourhood. The rest remained quietly at home.
+
+It was, as I have said, a high bare country. The fields lay side by side,
+parted from each other chiefly, as so often in Scotland, by stone
+walls; and these stones being of a laminated nature, the walls were not
+unfrequently built by laying thin plates on their edges, which gave a
+neatness to them not found in other parts of the country as far as I am
+aware. In the middle of the fields came here and there patches of yet
+unreclaimed moorland.
+
+Now in a region like this, beauty must be looked for below the surface.
+There is a probability of finding hollows of repose, sunken spots of
+loveliness, hidden away altogether from the general aspect of sternness,
+or perhaps sterility, that meets the eye in glancing over the outspread
+landscape; just as in the natures of stern men you may expect to find, if
+opportunity should be afforded you, sunny spots of tender verdure, kept
+ever green by that very sternness which is turned towards the common
+gaze--thus existent because they are below the surface, and not laid bare
+to the sweep of the cold winds that roam the world. How often have not men
+started with amaze at the discovery of some feminine sweetness, some grace
+of protection in the man whom they had judged cold and hard and rugged,
+inaccessible to the more genial influences of humanity! It may be that such
+men are only fighting against the wind, and keep their hearts open to the
+sun.
+
+I knew this; and when Turner and I set out that morning to explore, I
+expected to light upon some instance of it--some mine or other in which
+nature had hidden away rare jewels; but I was not prepared to find such as
+I did find. With our hearts full of a glad secret we returned home, but we
+said nothing about it, in order that Ethelwyn and Wynnie might enjoy the
+discovery even as we had enjoyed it.
+
+There was another grand fact with regard to the neighbourhood about which
+we judged it better to be silent for a few days, that the inland influences
+might be free to work. We were considerably nearer the ocean than my wife
+and daughters supposed, for we had made a great round in order to arrive
+from the land-side. We were, however, out of the sound of its waves, which
+broke all along the shore, in this part, at the foot of tremendous cliffs.
+What cliffs they were we shall soon find.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE KEEVE.
+
+
+
+
+
+"Now, my dear! now, Wynnie!" I said, after prayers the next morning, "you
+must come out for a walk as soon as ever you can get your bonnets on."
+
+"But we can't leave Connie, papa," objected Wynnie.
+
+"O, yes, you can, quite well. There's nursie to look after her. What do you
+say, Connie?"
+
+For, for some time now, Connie had been able to get up so early, that it
+was no unusual thing to have prayers in her room.
+
+"I am entirely independent of help from my family," returned Connie
+grandiloquently. "I am a woman of independent means," she added. "If you
+say another word, I will rise and leave the room."
+
+And she made a movement as if she would actually do as she had said. Seized
+with an involuntary terror, I rushed towards her, and the impertinent girl
+burst out laughing in my face--threw herself back on her pillows, and
+laughed delightedly.
+
+"Take care, papa," she said. "I carry a terrible club for rebellious
+people." Then, her mood changing, she added, as if to suppress the tears
+gathering in her eyes, "I am the queen--of luxury and self-will--and I
+won't have anybody come near me till dinner-time. I mean to enjoy myself."
+
+So the matter was settled, and we went out for our walk. Ethelwyn was
+not such a good walker as she had been; but even if she had retained the
+strength of her youth, we should not have got on much the better for it--so
+often did she and Wynnie stop to grub ferns out of the chinks and roots of
+the stone-walls. Now, I admire ferns as much as anybody--that is, not,
+I fear, so much as my wife and daughter, but quite enough
+notwithstanding--but I do not quite enjoy being pulled up like a fern at
+every turn.
+
+"Now, my dear, what is the use of stopping to torture that harmless
+vegetable?" I say, but say in vain. "It is much more beautiful where it is
+than it will be anywhere where you can put it. Besides, you know they never
+come to anything with you. They _always_ die."
+
+Thereupon my wife reminds me of this fern and that fern, gathered in such
+and such places, and now in such and such corners of the garden or the
+greenhouse, or under glass-shades in this or that room, of the very
+existence of which I am ignorant, whether from original inattention, or
+merely from forgetfulness, I do not know. Certainly, out of their own place
+I do not care much for them.
+
+At length, partly by the inducement I held out to them of a much greater
+variety of ferns where we were bound, I succeeded in getting them over the
+two miles in little more than two hours. After passing from the lanes into
+the fields, our way led downwards till we reached a very steep large
+slope, with a delightful southern exposure, and covered with the sweetest
+down-grasses. It was just the place to lie in, as on the edge of the earth,
+and look abroad upon the universe of air and floating worlds.
+
+"Let us have a rest here, Ethel," I said. "I am sure this is much more
+delightful than uprooting ferns. What an awful thing to think that here we
+are on this great round tumbling ball of a world, held by the feet, and
+lifting up the head into infinite space--without choice or wish of our
+own--compelled to think and to be, whether we will or not! Just God must
+know it to be very good, or he would not have taken it in his hands to make
+individual lives without a possible will of theirs. He must be our Father,
+or we are wretched creatures--the slaves of a fatal necessity! Did it ever
+strike you, Turner, that each one of us stands on the apex of the world?
+With a sphere, you know, it must be so. And thus is typified, as it seems
+to me, that each one of us must look up for himself to find God, and then
+look abroad to find his fellows."
+
+"I think I know what you mean," was all Turner's reply.
+
+"No doubt," I resumed, "the apprehension of this truth has, in otherwise
+ill-ordered minds, given rise to all sorts of fierce and grotesque
+fanaticism. But the minds which have thus conceived the truth, would have
+been immeasurably worse without it; nay, this truth affords at last
+the only possible door out of the miseries of their own chaos, whether
+inherited or the result of their own misconduct."
+
+"What's that in the grass?" cried Wynnie, in a tone of alarm.
+
+I looked where she indicated, and saw a slow-worm, or blind-worm, lying
+basking in the sun. I rose and went towards it.
+
+"Here's your stick," said Turner.
+
+"What for?" I asked. "Why should I kill it? It is perfectly harmless, and,
+to my mind, beautiful."
+
+I took it in my hands, and brought it to my wife. She gave an involuntary
+shudder as it came near her.
+
+"I assure you it is harmless," I said, "though it has a forked tongue."
+And I opened its mouth as I spoke. "I do not think the serpent form is
+essentially ugly."
+
+"It makes me feel ugly," said Wynnie.
+
+"I allow I do not quite understand the mystery of it," I said. "But you
+never saw lovelier ornamentation than these silvery scales, with all the
+neatness of what you ladies call a set pattern, and none of the stiffness,
+for there are not two of them the same in form. And you never saw lovelier
+curves than this little patient creature, which does not even try to get
+away from me, makes with the queer long thin body of him."
+
+"I wonder how it can look after its tail, it is so far off," said Wynnie.
+
+"It does though--better than you ladies look after your long dresses. I
+wonder whether it is descended from creatures that once had feet, and did
+not make a good use of them. Perhaps they had wings even, and would not use
+them at all, and so lost them. Its ancestors may have had poison-fangs; it
+is innocent enough. But it is a terrible thing to be all feet, is it not?
+There is an awful significance in the condemnation of the serpent--'On thy
+belly shalt thou go, and eat dust.' But it is better to talk of beautiful
+things. _My_ soul at least has dropped from its world apex. Let us go on.
+Come, wife. Come, Turner."
+
+They did not seem willing to rise. But the glen drew me. I rose, and my
+wife followed my example with the help of my hand. She returned to the
+subject, however, as we descended the slope.
+
+"Is it possible that in the course of ever so many ages wings and feet
+should be both lost?" she said.
+
+"The most presumptuous thing in the world is to pronounce on the possible
+and the impossible. I do not know what is possible and what is impossible.
+I can only tell a little of what is true and what is untrue. But I do say
+this, that between the condition of many decent members of society and that
+for the sake of which God made them, there is a gulf quite as vast as that
+between a serpent and a bird. I get peeps now and then into the condition
+of my own heart, which, for the moment, make it seem impossible that I
+should ever rise into a true state of nature--that is, into the simplicity
+of God's will concerning me. The only hope for ourselves and for others
+lies in him--in the power the creating spirit has over the spirits he has
+made."
+
+By this time the descent on the grass was getting too steep and slippery to
+admit of our continuing to advance in that direction. We turned, therefore,
+down the valley in the direction of the sea. It was but a narrow cleft,
+and narrowed much towards a deeper cleft, in which we now saw the tops of
+trees, and from which we heard the rush of water. Nor had we gone far in
+this direction before we came upon a gate in a stone wall, which led into
+what seemed a neglected garden. We entered, and found a path turning and
+winding, among small trees, and luxuriant ferns, and great stones, and
+fragments of ruins down towards the bottom of the chasm. The noise of
+falling water increased as we went on, and at length, after some scrambling
+and several sharp turns, we found ourselves with a nearly precipitous wall
+on each side, clothed with shrubs and ivy, and creeping things of the
+vegetable world. Up this cleft there was no advance. The head of it was a
+precipice down which shot the stream from the vale above, pouring out of a
+deep slit it had itself cut in the rock as with a knife. Halfway down, it
+tumbled into a great basin of hollowed stone, and flowing from a chasm in
+its side, which left part of the lip of the basin standing like the arch of
+a vanished bridge, it fell into a black pool below, whence it crept as
+if half-stunned or weary down the gentle decline of the ravine. It was a
+perfect little picture. I, for my part, had never seen such a picturesque
+fall. It was a little gem of nature, complete in effect. The ladies were
+full of pleasure. Wynnie, forgetting her usual reserve, broke out in
+frantic exclamations of delight.
+
+We stood for a while regarding the ceaseless pour of the water down the
+precipice, here shot slanting in a little trough of the rock, full of
+force and purpose, here falling in great curls of green and gray, with an
+expression of absolute helplessness and conscious perdition, as if sheer to
+the centre, but rejoicing the next moment to find itself brought up boiling
+and bubbling in the basin, to issue in the gathered hope of experience.
+Then we turned down the stream a little way, crossed it by a plank, and
+stood again to regard it from the opposite side. Small as the whole affair
+was--not more than about a hundred and fifty feet in height--it was so full
+of variety that I saw it was all my memory could do, if it carried away
+anything like a correct picture of its aspect. I was contemplating it
+fixedly, when a little stifled cry from Wynnie made me start and look
+round. Her face was flushed, yet she was trying to look unconcerned.
+
+"I thought we were quite alone, papa," she said; "but I see a gentleman
+sketching."
+
+I looked whither she indicated. A little way down, the bed of the ravine
+widened considerably, and was no doubt filled with water in rainy weather.
+Now it was swampy--full of reeds and willow bushes. But on the opposite
+side of the stream, with a little canal from it going all around it, lay a
+great flat rectangular stone, not more than a foot above the level of the
+water, and upon a camp-stool in the centre of this stone sat a gentleman
+sketching. I had no doubt that Wynnie had recognised him at once. And I
+was annoyed, and indeed angry, to think that Mr. Percivale had followed us
+here. But while I regarded him, he looked up, rose very quietly, and,
+with his pencil in his hand, came towards us. With no nearer approach to
+familiarity than a bow, and no expression of either much pleasure or any
+surprise, he said--
+
+"I have seen your party for some time, Mr. Walton--since you crossed the
+stream; but I would not break in upon your enjoyment with the surprise
+which my presence here must cause you."
+
+I suppose I answered with a bow of some sort; for I could not say with
+truth that I was glad to see him. He resumed, doubtless penetrating my
+suspicion--
+
+"I have been here almost a week. I certainly had no expectation of the
+pleasure of seeing you."
+
+This he said lightly, though no doubt with the object of clearing himself.
+And I was, if not reassured, yet disarmed, by his statement; for I could
+not believe, from what I knew of him, that he would be guilty of such
+a white lie as many a gentleman would have thought justifiable on the
+occasion. Still, I suppose he found me a little stiff, for presently he
+said--
+
+"If you will excuse me, I will return to my work."
+
+Then I felt as if I must say something, for I had shown him no courtesy
+during the interview.
+
+"It must be a great pleasure to carry away such talismans with you--capable
+of bringing the place back to your mental vision at any moment."
+
+"To tell the truth," he answered, "I am a little ashamed of being found
+sketching here. Such bits of scenery are not of my favourite studies. But
+it is a change."
+
+"It is very beautiful here," I said, in a tone of contravention.
+
+"It is very pretty," he answered--"very lovely, if you will--not very
+beautiful, I think. I would keep that word for things of larger regard.
+Beauty requires width, and here is none. I had almost said this place was
+fanciful--the work of imagination in her play-hours, not in her large
+serious moods. It affects me like the face of a woman only pretty, about
+which boys and guardsmen will rave--to me not very interesting, save for
+its single lines."
+
+"Why, then, do you sketch the place?"
+
+"A very fair question," he returned, with a smile. "Just because it is
+soothing from the very absence of beauty. I would far rather, however, if I
+were only following my taste, take the barest bit of the moor above, with a
+streak of the cold sky over it. That gives room."
+
+"You would like to put a skylark in it, wouldn't you?"
+
+"That I would if I knew how. I see you know what I mean. But the mere
+romantic I never had much taste for; though if you saw the kind of pictures
+I try to paint, you would not wonder that I take sketches of places like
+this, while in my heart of hearts I do not care much for them. They are so
+different, and just _therefore_ they are good for me. I am not working now;
+I am only playing."
+
+"With a view to working better afterwards, I have no doubt," I answered.
+
+"You are right there, I hope," was his quiet reply, as he turned and walked
+back to the island.
+
+He had not made a step towards joining us. He had only taken his hat off to
+the ladies. He was gaining ground upon me rapidly.
+
+"Have you quarrelled with our new friend, Harry?" said my wife, as I came
+up to her.
+
+She was sitting on a stone. Turner and Wynnie were farther off towards the
+foot of the fall.
+
+"Not in the least," I answered, slightly outraged--I did not at first
+know why--by the question. "He is only gone to his work, which is a duty
+belonging both to the first and second tables of the law."
+
+"I hope you have asked him to come home to our early dinner, then," she
+rejoined.
+
+"I have not. That remains for you to do. Come, I will take you to him."
+
+Ethelwyn rose at once, put her hand in mine, and with a little help soon
+reached the table-rock. When Percivale saw that she was really on a visit
+to him on his island-perch, he rose, and when she came near enough, held
+out his hand. It was but a step, and she was beside him in a moment. After
+the usual greetings, which on her part, although very quiet, like every
+motion and word of hers, were yet indubitably cordial and kind, she said,
+"When you get back to London, Mr. Percivale, might I ask you to allow some
+friends of mine to call at your studio, and see your paintings?"
+
+"With all my heart," answered Percivale. "I must warn you, however, that I
+have not much they will care to see. They will perhaps go away less happy
+than they entered. Not many people care to see my pictures twice."
+
+"I would not send you anyone I thought unworthy of the honour," answered my
+wife.
+
+Percivale bowed--one of his stately, old-world bows, which I greatly liked.
+
+"Any friend of yours--that is guarantee sufficient," he answered.
+
+There was this peculiarity about any compliment that Percivale paid, that
+you had not a doubt of its being genuine.
+
+"Will you come and take an early dinner with us?" said my wife. "My invalid
+daughter will be very pleased to see you."
+
+"I will with pleasure," he answered, but in a tone of some hesitation, as
+he glanced from Ethelwyn to me.
+
+"My wife speaks for us all," I said. "It will give us all pleasure."
+
+"I am only afraid it will break in upon your morning's work," remarked
+Ethelwyn.
+
+"O, that is not of the least consequence," he rejoined. "In fact, as I have
+just been saying to Mr. Walton, I am not working at all at present. This is
+pure recreation."
+
+As he spoke he turned towards his easel, and began hastily to bundle up his
+things.
+
+"We're not quite ready to go yet," said my wife, loath to leave the lovely
+spot. "What a curious flat stone this is!" she added.
+
+"It is," said Percivale. "The man to whom the place belongs, a worthy
+yeoman of the old school, says that this wider part of the channel must
+have been the fish-pond, and that the portly monks stood on this stone and
+fished in the pond."
+
+"Then was there a monastery here?" I asked.
+
+"Certainly. The ruins of the chapel, one of the smallest, are on the top,
+just above the fall--rather a fearful place to look down from. I wonder
+you did not observe them as you came. They say it had a silver bell in the
+days of its glory, which now lies in a deep hole under the basin, half-way
+between the top and bottom of the fall. But the old man says that nothing
+will make him look, or let anyone else lift the huge stone; for he is much
+better pleased to believe that it may be there, than he would be to know it
+was not there; for certainly, if it were found, it would not be left there
+long."
+
+As he spoke Percivale had continued packing his gear. He now led our party
+up to the chapel, and thence down a few yards to the edge of the chasm,
+where the water fell headlong. I turned away with that fear of high places
+which is one of my many weaknesses; and when I turned again towards the
+spot, there was Wynnie on the very edge, looking over into the flash
+and tumult of the water below, but with a nervous grasp of the hand of
+Percivale, who stood a little farther back.
+
+In going home, the painter led us by an easier way out of the valley, left
+his little easel and other things at a cottage, and then walked on in front
+between my wife and daughter, while Turner and I followed. He seemed quite
+at his ease with them, and plenty of talk and laughter rose on the way.
+I, however, was chiefly occupied with finding out Turner's impression of
+Connie's condition.
+
+"She is certainly better," he said. "I wonder you do not see it as plainly
+as I do. The pain is nearly gone from her spine, and she can move herself
+a good deal more, I am certain, than she could when she left. She asked me
+yesterday if she might not turn upon one side. 'Do you think you could?'
+I asked.--'I think so,' she answered. 'At any rate, I have often a great
+inclination to try; only papa said I had better wait till you came.' I do
+think she might be allowed a little more change of posture now."
+
+"Then you have really some hope of her final recovery?"
+
+"I have _hope_ most certainly. But what is hope in me, you must not allow
+to become certainty in you. I am nearly sure, though, that she can never
+be other than an invalid; that is, if I am to judge by what I know of such
+cases."
+
+"I am thankful for the hope," I answered. "You need not be afraid of my
+turning upon you, should the hope never pass into sight. I should do so
+only if I found that you had been treating me irrationally--inspiring
+me with hope which you knew to be false. The element of uncertainty is
+essential to hope, and for all true hope, even as hope, man has to be
+unspeakably thankful."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE WALK TO CHURCH.
+
+
+
+
+
+I was glad to be able to arrange with a young clergyman who was on a visit
+to Kilkhaven, that he should take my duty for me the next Sunday, for that
+was the only one Turner could spend with us. He and I and Wynnie walked
+together two miles to church. It was a lovely morning, with just a tint of
+autumn in the air. But even that tint, though all else was of the summer,
+brought a shadow, I could see, on Wynnie's face.
+
+"You said you would show me a poem of--Vaughan, I think you said, was
+the name of the writer. I am too ignorant of our older literature," said
+Turner.
+
+"I have only just made acquaintance with him," I answered. "But I think I
+can repeat the poem. You shall judge whether it is not like Wordsworth's
+Ode.
+
+  'Happy those early days, when I
+  Shined in my angel infancy;
+  Before I understood the place
+  Appointed for my second race,
+  Or taught my soul to fancy ought
+  But a white, celestial thought;
+  When yet I had not walked above
+  A mile or two from my first love,
+  And looking back, at that short space,
+  Could see a glimpse of his bright face;
+  When on some gilded cloud or flower
+  My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
+  And in those weaker glories spy
+  Some shadows of eternity;
+  Before I taught my tongue to wound
+  My conscience with a sinful sound,
+  But felt through all this fleshly dress
+  Bright shoots of everlastingness.
+  O how I long to travel back----'"
+
+But here I broke down, for I could not remember the rest with even
+approximate accuracy.
+
+"When did this Vaughan live?" asked Turner.
+
+"He was born, I find, in 1621--five years, that is, after Shakspere's
+death, and when Milton was about thirteen years old. He lived to the age of
+seventy-three, but seems to have been little known. In politics he was on
+the Cavalier side. By the way, he was a medical man, like you, Turner--an
+M.D. We'll have a glance at the little book when we go back. Don't let me
+forget to show it you. A good many of your profession have distinguished
+themselves in literature, and as profound believers too."
+
+"I should have thought the profession had been chiefly remarkable for such
+as believe only in the evidence of the senses."
+
+"As if having searched into the innermost recesses of the body, and not
+having found a soul, they considered themselves justified in declaring
+there was none."
+
+"Just so."
+
+"Well, that is true of the commonplace amongst them, I do believe. You will
+find the exceptions have been men of fine minds and characters--not such as
+he of whom Chaucer says,
+
+  'His study was but little on the Bible;'
+
+for if you look at the rest of the description of the man, you will find
+that he was in alliance with his apothecary for their mutual advantage,
+that he was a money-loving man, and that some of Chaucer's keenest irony
+is spent on him in an off-hand, quiet manner. Compare the tone in which he
+writes of the doctor of physic, with the profound reverence wherewith he
+bows himself before the poor country-parson."
+
+Here Wynnie spoke, though with some tremor in her voice.
+
+"I never know, papa, what people mean by talking about childhood in that
+way. I never seem to have been a bit younger and more innocent than I am."
+
+"Don't you remember a time, Wynnie, when the things about you--the sky and
+the earth, say--seemed to you much grander than they seem now? You are old
+enough to have lost something."
+
+She thought for a little while before she answered.
+
+"My dreams were, I know. I cannot say so of anything else."
+
+I in my turn had to be silent, for I did not see the true answer, though
+I was sure there was one somewhere, if I could only find it. All I could
+reply, however, even after I had meditated a good while, was--and perhaps,
+after all, it was the best thing I could have said:
+
+"Then you must make a good use of your dreams, my child."
+
+"Why, papa?"
+
+"Because they are the only memorials of childhood you have left."
+
+"How am I to make a good use of them? I don't know what to do with my silly
+old dreams."
+
+But she gave a sigh as she spoke that testified her silly old dreams had a
+charm for her still.
+
+"If your dreams, my child, have ever testified to you of a condition of
+things beyond that which you see around you, if they have been to you the
+hints of a wonder and glory beyond what visits you now, you must not call
+them silly, for they are just what the scents of Paradise borne on the air
+were to Adam and Eve as they delved and spun, reminding them that they must
+aspire yet again through labour into that childhood of obedience which
+is the only paradise of humanity--into that oneness with the will of the
+Father, which our race, our individual selves, need just as much as if we
+had personally fallen with Adam, and from which we fall every time we are
+disobedient to the voice of the Father within our souls--to the conscience
+which is his making and his witness. If you have had no childhood, my
+Wynnie, yet permit your old father to say that everything I see in you
+indicates more strongly in you than in most people that it is this
+childhood after which you are blindly longing, without which you find that
+life is hardly to be endured. Thank God for your dreams, my child. In him
+you will find that the essence of those dreams is fulfilled. We are saved
+by hope, Turner. Never man hoped too much, or repented that he had hoped.
+The plague is that we don't hope in God half enough. The very fact that
+hope is strength, and strength the outcome, the body of life, shows that
+hope is at one with life, with the very essence of what says 'I am'--yea,
+of what doubts and says 'Am I?' and therefore is reasonable to creatures
+who cannot even doubt save in that they live."
+
+By this time, for I have, of course, only given the outlines, or rather
+salient points, of our conversation, we had reached the church, where, if I
+found the sermon neither healing nor inspiring, I found the prayers full of
+hope and consolation. They at least are safe beyond human caprice, conceit,
+or incapacity. Upon them, too, the man who is distressed at the thought of
+how little of the needful food he had been able to provide for his people,
+may fall back for comfort, in the thought that there at least was what
+ought to have done them good, what it was well worth their while to go to
+church for. But I did think they were too long for any individual Christian
+soul, to sympathise with from beginning to end, that is, to respond to,
+like organ-tube to the fingered key, in every touch of the utterance of the
+general Christian soul. For my reader must remember that it is one thing
+to read prayers and another to respond; and that I had had very few
+opportunities of being in the position of the latter duty. I had had
+suspicions before, and now they were confirmed--that the present crowding
+of services was most inexpedient. And as I pondered on the matter, instead
+of trying to go on praying after I had already uttered my soul, which is
+but a heathenish attempt after much speaking, I thought how our Lord had
+given us such a short prayer to pray, and I began to wonder when or how the
+services came to be so heaped the one on the back of the other as they now
+were. No doubt many people defended them; no doubt many people could sit
+them out; but how many people could pray from beginning to end of them I
+On this point we had some talk as we went home. Wynnie was opposed to any
+change of the present use on the ground that we should only have the longer
+sermons.
+
+"Still," I said, "I do not think even that so great an evil. A sensitive
+conscience will not reproach itself so much for not listening to the whole
+of a sermon, as for kneeling in prayer and not praying. I think myself,
+however, that after the prayers are over, everyone should be at liberty
+to go out and leave the sermon unheard, if he pleases. I think the result
+would be in the end a good one both for parson and people. It would break
+through the deadness of this custom, this use and wont. Many a young mind
+is turned for life against the influences of church-going--one of the
+most sacred influences when _pure_, that is, un-mingled with
+non-essentials--just by the feeling that he _must_ do so and so, that he
+must go through a certain round of duty. It is a willing service that the
+Lord wants; no forced devotions are either acceptable to him, or other than
+injurious to the worshipper, if such he can be called."
+
+After an early dinner, I said to Turner--"Come out with me, and we will
+read that poem of Vaughan's in which I broke down today."
+
+"O, papa!" said Connie, in a tone of injury, from the sofa.
+
+"What is it, my dear?" I asked.
+
+"Wouldn't it be as good for us as for Mr. Turner?"
+
+"Quite, my dear. Well, I will keep it for the evening, and meantime Mr.
+Turner and I will go and see if we can find out anything about the change
+in the church-service."
+
+For I had thrown into my bag as I left the rectory a copy of _The
+Clergyman's Vade Mecum_--a treatise occupied with the externals of the
+churchman's relations--in which I soon came upon the following passage:
+
+"So then it appears that the common practice of reading all three together,
+is an innovation, and if an ancient or infirm clergyman do read them at two
+or three several times, he is more strictly conformable; however, this is
+much better than to omit any part of the liturgy, or to read all
+three offices into one, as is now commonly done, without any pause or
+distinction."
+
+"On the part of the clergyman, you see, Turner," I said, when I had
+finished reading the whole passage to him. "There is no care taken of the
+delicate women of the congregation, but only of the ancient or infirm
+clergyman. And the logic, to say the least, is rather queer: is it only in
+virtue of his antiquity and infirmity that he is to be upheld in being more
+strictly conformable? The writer's honesty has its heels trodden upon by
+the fear of giving offence. Nevertheless there should perhaps be a certain
+slowness to admit change, even back to a more ancient form."
+
+"I don't know that I can quite agree with you there," said Turner. "If the
+form is better, no one should hesitate to advocate the change. If it is
+worse, then slowness is not sufficient--utter obstinacy is the right
+condition."
+
+"You are right, Turner. For the right must be the rule, and where _the
+right_ is beyond our understanding or our reach, then _the better_, as
+indeed not only right compared with the other, but the sole ascent towards
+the right."
+
+In the evening I took Henry Vaughan's poems into the common sitting-room,
+and to Connie's great delight read the whole of the lovely, though unequal
+little poem, called "The Retreat," in recalling which I had failed in the
+morning. She was especially delighted with the "white celestial thought,"
+and the "bright shoots of everlastingness." Then I gave a few lines from
+another yet more unequal poem, worthy in themselves of the best of the
+other. I quote the first strophe entire:
+
+  CHILDHOOD.
+
+  "I cannot reach it; and my striving eye
+  Dazzles at it, as at eternity.
+  Were now that chronicle alive,
+  Those white designs which children drive,
+  And the thoughts of each harmless hour,
+  With their content too in my power,
+  Quickly would I make my path even,
+  And by mere playing go to heaven.
+
+  *     *     *     *     *
+
+  And yet the practice worldlings call
+  Business and weighty action all,
+  Checking the poor child for his play,
+  But gravely cast themselves away.
+
+  *     *     *     *     *
+
+  An age of mysteries! which he
+  Must live twice that would God's face see;
+  Which angels guard, and with it play,
+  Angels! which foul men drive away.
+  How do I study now, and scan
+  Thee more than ere I studied man,
+  And only see through a long night
+  Thy edges and thy bordering light I
+  O for thy centre and midday!
+  For sure that is the _narrow way!_"
+
+"For of such is the kingdom of heaven." said my wife softly, as I closed
+the book.
+
+"May I have the book, papa?" said Connie, holding out her thin white cloud
+of a hand to take it.
+
+"Certainly, my child. And if Wynnie would read it with you, she will feel
+more of the truth of what Mr. Percivale was saying to her about finish.
+Here are the finest, grandest thoughts, set forth sometimes with such
+carelessness, at least such lack of neatness, that, instead of their
+falling on the mind with all their power of loveliness, they are like a
+beautiful face disfigured with patches, and, what is worse, they put the
+mind out of the right, quiet, unquestioning, open mood, which is the only
+fit one for the reception of such true things as are embodied in the poems.
+But they are too beautiful after all to be more than a little spoiled
+by such a lack of the finish with which Art ends off all her labours. A
+gentleman, however, thinks it of no little importance to have his nails
+nice as well as his face and his shirt."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE OLD CASTLE.
+
+
+
+
+
+The place Turner had chosen suited us all so well, that after attending
+to my duties on the two following Sundays at Kilkhaven, I returned on the
+Monday or Tuesday to the farmhouse. But Turner left us in the middle of the
+second week, for he could not be longer absent from his charge at home, and
+we missed him much. It was some days before Connie was quite as cheerful
+again as usual. I do not mean that she was in the least gloomy--that she
+never was; she was only a little less merry. But whether it was that Turner
+had opened our eyes, or that she had visibly improved since he allowed her
+to make a little change in her posture--certainly she appeared to us to
+have made considerable progress, and every now and then we were discovering
+some little proof of the fact. One evening, while we were still at the
+farm, she startled us by calling out suddenly,--
+
+"Papa, papa! I moved my big toe! I did indeed."
+
+We were all about her in a moment. But I saw that she was excited, and
+fearing a reaction I sought to calm her.
+
+"But, my dear," I said, as quietly as I could, "you are probably still
+aware that you are possessed of two big toes: which of them are we to
+congratulate on this first stride in the march of improvement?"
+
+She broke out in the merriest laugh. A pause followed in which her face
+wore a puzzled expression. Then she said all at once, "Papa, it is very
+odd, but I can't tell which of them," and burst into tears. I was afraid
+that I had done more harm than good.
+
+"It is not of the slightest consequence, my child," I said. "You have had
+so little communication with the twins of late, that it is no wonder you
+should not be able to tell the one from the other."
+
+She smiled again through her sobs, but was silent, with shining face, for
+the rest of the evening. Our hopes took a fresh start, but we heard no more
+from her of her power over her big toe. As often as I inquired she said she
+was afraid she had made a mistake, for she had not had another hint of its
+existence. Still I thought it could not have been a fancy, and I would
+cleave to my belief in the good sign.
+
+Percivale called to see us several times, but always appeared anxious not
+to intrude more of his society upon us than might be agreeable. He grew
+in my regard, however; and at length I asked him if he would assist me in
+another surprise which I meditated for my companions, and this time for
+Connie as well, and which I hoped would prevent the painful influences
+of the sight of the sea from returning upon them when they went back to
+Kilkhaven: they must see the sea from a quite different shore first. In a
+word I would take them to Tintagel, of the near position of which they
+were not aware, although in some of our walks we had seen the ocean in
+the distance. An early day was fixed for carrying out our project, and
+I proceeded to get everything ready. The only difficulty was to find a
+carriage in the neighbourhood suitable for receiving Connie's litter. In
+this, however, I at length succeeded, and on the morning of a glorious day
+of blue and gold, we set out for the little village of Trevenna, now far
+better known than at the time of which I write. Connie had been out every
+day since she came, now in one part of the fields, now in another, enjoying
+the expanse of earth and sky, but she had had no drive, and consequently
+had seen no variety of scenery. Therefore, believing she was now thoroughly
+able to bear it, I quite reckoned of the good she would get from the
+inevitable excitement. We resolved, however, after finding how much she
+enjoyed the few miles' drive, that we would not demand more, of her
+strength that day, and therefore put up at the little inn, where, after
+ordering dinner, Percivale and I left the ladies, and sallied forth to
+reconnoitre.
+
+We walked through the village and down the valley beyond, sloping steeply
+between hills towards the sea, the opening closed at the end by the blue of
+the ocean below and the more ethereal blue of the sky above. But when we
+reached the mouth of the valley we found that we were not yet on the shore,
+for a precipice lay between us and the little beach below. On the left a
+great peninsula of rock stood out into the sea, upon which rose the ruins
+of the keep of Tintagel, while behind on the mainland stood the ruins of
+the castle itself, connected with the other only by a narrow isthmus. We
+had read that this peninsula had once been an island, and that the two
+parts of the castle were formerly connected by a drawbridge. Looking up
+at the great gap which now divided the two portions, it seemed at first
+impossible to believe that they had ever been thus united; but a little
+reflection cleared up the mystery.
+
+The fact was that the isthmus, of half the height of the two parts
+connected by it, had been formed entirely by the fall of portions of the
+rock and soil on each side into the narrow dividing space, through which
+the waters of the Atlantic had been wont to sweep. And now the fragments
+of walls stood on the very verge of the precipice, and showed that large
+portions of the castle itself had fallen into the gulf between. We turned
+to the left along the edge of the rock, and so by a narrow path reached and
+crossed to the other side of the isthmus. We then found that the path led
+to the foot of the rock, formerly island, of the keep, and thence in a
+zigzag up the face of it to the top. We followed it, and after a great
+climb reached a door in a modern battlement. Entering, we found ourselves
+amidst grass, and ruins haggard with age. We turned and surveyed the path
+by which we had come. It was steep and somewhat difficult. But the outlook
+was glorious. It was indeed one of God's mounts of vision upon which we
+stood. The thought, "O that Connie could see this!" was swelling in my
+heart, when Percivale broke the silence--not with any remark on the glory
+around us, but with the commonplace question--
+
+"You haven't got your man with you, I think, Mr. Walton?"
+
+"No," I answered; "we thought it better to leave him to look after the
+boys."
+
+He was silent for a few minutes, while I gazed in delight.
+
+"Don't you think," he said, "it would be possible to bring Miss Constance
+up here?"
+
+I almost started at the idea, and had not replied before he resumed:
+
+"It would be something for her to recur to with delight all the rest of her
+life."
+
+"It would indeed. But it is impossible."
+
+"I do not think so--if you would allow me the honour to assist you. I think
+we could do it perfectly between us."
+
+I was again silent for a while. Looking down on the way we had come, it
+seemed an almost dreadful undertaking. Percivale spoke again.
+
+"As we shall come here to-morrow, we need not explore the place now.
+Shall we go down at once and observe the whole path, with a view to the
+practicability of carrying her up?"
+
+"There can be no objection to that," I answered, as a little hope, and
+courage with it, began to dawn in my heart. "But you must allow it does not
+look very practicable."
+
+"Perhaps it would seem more so to you, if you had come up with the idea in
+your head all the way, as I did. Any path seems more difficult in looking
+back than at the time when the difficulties themselves have to be met and
+overcome."
+
+"Yes, but then you must remember that we have to take the way back whether
+we will or no, if we once take the way forward."
+
+"True; and now I will go down with the descent in my head as well as under
+my feet."
+
+"Well, there can be no harm in reconnoitring it at least. Let us go."
+
+"You know we can rest almost as often as we please," said Percivale, and
+turned to lead the way.
+
+It certainly was steep, and required care even in our own descent; but for
+a man who had climbed mountains, as I had done in my youth, it could hardly
+be called difficult even in middle age. By the time we had got again into
+the valley road I was all but convinced of the practicability of the
+proposal. I was a little vexed, however, I must confess, that a stranger
+should have thought of giving such a pleasure to Connie, when the bare wish
+that she might have enjoyed it had alone arisen in my mind. I comforted
+myself with the reflection that this was one of the ways in which we were
+to be weaned from the world and knit the faster to our fellows. For even
+the middle-aged, in the decay of their daring, must look for the fresh
+thought and the fresh impulse to the youth which follows at their heels in
+the march of life. Their part is to _will_ the relation and the obligation,
+and so, by love to and faith in the young, keep themselves in the line
+along which the electric current flows, till at length they too shall once
+more be young and daring in the strength of the Lord. A man must always
+seek to rise above his moods and feelings, to let them move within him, but
+not allow them to storm or gloom around him. By the time we reached home we
+had agreed to make the attempt, and to judge by the path to the foot of the
+rock, which was difficult in parts, whether we should be likely to succeed,
+without danger, in attempting the rest of the way and the following
+descent. As soon as we had arrived at this conclusion, I felt so happy
+in the prospect that I grew quite merry, especially after we had further
+agreed that, both for the sake of her nerves and for the sake of the lordly
+surprise, we should bind Connie's eyes so that she should see nothing till
+we had placed her in a certain position, concerning the preferableness of
+which we were not of two minds.
+
+"What mischief have you two been about?" said my wife, as we entered our
+room in the inn, where the cloth was already laid for dinner. "You look
+just like two schoolboys that have been laying some plot, and can hardly
+hold their tongues about it."
+
+"We have been enjoying our little walk amazingly," I answered. "So much so,
+that we mean to set out for another the moment dinner is over."
+
+"I hope you will take Wynnie with you then."
+
+"Or you, my love," I returned.
+
+"No; I will stay with Connie."
+
+"Very well. You, and Connie too, shall go out to-morrow, for we have
+found a place we want to take you to. And, indeed, I believe it was our
+anticipation of the pleasure you and she would have in the view that made
+us so merry when you accused us of plotting mischief."
+
+My wife replied only with a loving look, and dinner appearing at this
+moment, we sat down a happy party.
+
+When that was over--and a very good dinner it was, just what I like, homely
+in material but admirable in cooking--Wynnie and Percivale and I set out
+again. For as Percivale and I came back in the morning we had seen the
+church standing far aloft and aloof on the other side of the little valley,
+and we wanted to go to it. It was rather a steep climb, and Wynnie accepted
+Percivale's offered arm. I led the way, therefore, and left them to
+follow--not so far in the rear, however, but that I could take a share in
+the conversation. It was some little time before any arose, and it was
+Wynnie who led the way into it.
+
+"What kind of things do you like best to paint, Mr. Percivale?" she asked.
+
+He hesitated for several seconds, which between a question and an answer
+look so long, that most people would call them minutes.
+
+"I would rather you should see some of my pictures--I should prefer that to
+answering your question," he said, at length.
+
+"But I have seen some of your pictures," she returned.
+
+"Pardon me. Indeed you have not, Miss Walton."
+
+"At least I have seen some of your sketches and studies."
+
+"Some of my sketches--none of my studies."
+
+"But you make use of your sketches for your pictures, do you not?"
+
+"Never of such as you have seen. They are only a slight antidote to my
+pictures."
+
+"I cannot understand you."
+
+"I do not wonder at that. But I would rather, I repeat, say nothing about
+my pictures till you see some of them."
+
+"But how am I to have that pleasure, then?"
+
+"You go to London sometimes, do you not?"
+
+"Very rarely. More rarely still when the Royal Academy is open."
+
+"That does not matter much. My pictures are seldom to be found there."
+
+"Do you not care to send them there?"
+
+"I send one, at least, every year. But they are rarely accepted."
+
+"Why?"
+
+This was a very improper question, I thought; but if Wynnie had thought so
+she would not have put it. He hesitated a little before he replied--
+
+"It is hardly for me to say why," he answered; "but I cannot wonder much
+at it, considering the subjects I choose.--But I daresay," he added, in
+a lighter tone, "after all, that has little to do with it, and there is
+something about the things themselves that precludes a favourable judgment.
+I avoid thinking about it. A man ought to try to look at his own work as if
+it were none of his, but not as with the eyes of other people. That is an
+impossibility, and the attempt a bewilderment. It is with his own eyes he
+must look, with his own judgment he must judge. The only effort is to get
+it set far away enough from him to be able to use his own eyes and his own
+judgment upon it."
+
+"I think I see what you mean. A man has but his own eyes and his own
+judgment. To look with those of other people is but a fancy."
+
+"Quite so. You understand me quite."
+
+He said no more in explanation of his rejection by the Academy. Till we
+reached the church, nothing more of significance passed between them.
+
+What a waste, bare churchyard that was! It had two or three lych-gates,
+but they had no roofs. They were just small enclosures, with the low
+stone tables, to rest the living from the weight of the dead, while the
+clergyman, as the keeper of heaven's wardrobe, came forth to receive the
+garment they restored--to be laid aside as having ended its work, as having
+been worn done in the winds, and rains, and labours of the world. Not a
+tree stood in that churchyard. Hank grass was the sole covering of the soil
+heaved up with the dead beneath. What blasts from the awful space of the
+sea must rush athwart the undefended garden! The ancient church stood in
+the midst, with its low, strong, square tower, and its long, narrow nave,
+the ridge bowed with age, like the back of a horse worn out in the service
+of man, and its little homely chancel, like a small cottage that had leaned
+up against its end for shelter from the western blasts. It was locked,
+and we could not enter. But of all world-worn, sad-looking churches, that
+one--sad, even in the sunset--was the dreariest I had ever beheld. Surely,
+it needed the gospel of the resurrection fervently preached therein, to
+keep it from sinking to the dust with dismay and weariness. Such a soul
+alone could keep it from vanishing utterly of dismal old age. Near it was
+one huge mound of grass-grown rubbish, looking like the grave where some
+former church of the dead had been buried, when it could stand erect no
+longer before the onsets of Atlantic winds. I walked round and round it,
+gathering its architecture, and peeping in at every window I could reach.
+Suddenly I was aware that I was alone. Returning to the other side, I found
+that Percivale was seated on the churchyard wall, next the sea--it would
+have been less dismal had it stood immediately on the cliffs, but they were
+at some little distance beyond bare downs and rough stone walls; he
+was sketching the place, and Wynnie stood beside him, looking over his
+shoulder. I did not interrupt him, but walked among the graves, reading
+the poor memorials of the dead, and wondering how many of the words of
+laudation that were inscribed on their tombs were spoken of them while they
+were yet alive. Yet, surely, in the lives of those to whom they applied
+the least, there had been moments when the true nature, the nature God had
+given them, broke forth in faith and tenderness, and would have justified
+the words inscribed on their gravestones! I was yet wandering and reading,
+and stumbling over the mounds, when my companions joined me, and, without a
+word, we walked out of the churchyard. We were nearly home before one of us
+spoke.
+
+"That church is oppressive," said Percivale. "It looks like a great
+sepulchre, a place built only for the dead--the church of the dead."
+
+"It is only that it partakes with the living," I returned; "suffers with
+them the buffetings of life, outlasts them, but shows, like the shield of
+the Red-Cross Knight, the 'old dints of deep wounds.'"
+
+"Still, is it not a dreary place to choose for a church to stand in?"
+
+"The church must stand everywhere. There is no region into which it must
+not, ought not to enter. If it refuses any earthly spot, it is shrinking
+from its calling. Here this one stands for the sea as for the land,
+high-uplifted, looking out over the waters as a sign of the haven from all
+storms, the rest in God. And down beneath in its storehouse lie the bodies
+of men--you saw the grave of some of them on the other side--flung ashore
+from the gulfing sea. It may be a weakness, but one would rather have the
+bones of his friend laid in the still Sabbath of the churchyard earth,
+than sweeping and swaying about as Milton imagines the bones of his
+friend Edward King, in that wonderful 'Lycidas.'" Then I told them the
+conversation I had had with the sexton at Kilkhaven. "But," I went on,
+"these fancies are only the ghostly mists that hang about the eastern hills
+before the sun rises. We shall look down on all that with a smile by and
+by; for the Lord tells us that if we believe in him we shall never die."
+
+By this time we were back once more at the inn. We gave Connie a
+description of what we had seen.
+
+"What a brave old church!" said Connie.
+
+The next day I awoke very early, full of the anticipated attempt. I got up
+at once, found the weather most promising, and proceeded first of all to
+have a look at Connie's litter, and see that it was quite sound. Satisfied
+of this, I rejoiced in the contemplation of its lightness and strength.
+
+After breakfast I went to Connie's room, and told her that Mr. Percivale
+and I had devised a treat for her. Her face shone at once.
+
+"But we want to do it our own way."
+
+"Of course, papa," she answered.
+
+"Will you let us tie your eyes up?"
+
+"Yes; and my ears and my hands too. It would be no good tying my feet, when
+I don't know one big toe from the other."
+
+And she laughed merrily.
+
+"We'll try to keep up the talk all the way, so that you sha'n't weary of
+the journey."
+
+"You're going to carry me somewhere with my eyes tied up. O! how jolly! And
+then I shall see something all at once! Jolly! jolly!--Getting tired!" she
+repeated. "Even the wind on my face would be pleasure enough for half a
+day. I sha'n't get tired so soon as you will--you dear, kind papa! I am
+afraid I shall be dreadfully heavy. But I sha'n't jerk your arms much. I
+will lie so still!"
+
+"And you won't mind letting Mr. Percivale help me to carry you?"
+
+"No. Why should I, if he doesn't mind it? He looks strong enough; and I am
+sure he is nice, and won't think me heavier than I am."
+
+"Very well, then. I will send mamma and Wynnie to dress you at once; and we
+shall set out as soon as you are ready."
+
+She clapped her hands with delight, then caught me round the neck and gave
+me one of my own kisses as she called the best she had, and began to call
+as loud as she could on her mamma and Wynnie to come and dress her.
+
+It was indeed a glorious morning. The wind came in little wafts, like veins
+of cool white silver amid the great, warm, yellow gold of the sunshine. The
+sea lay before us a mound of blue closing up the end of the valley, as if
+overpowered into quietness by the lordliness of the sun overhead; and the
+hills between which we went lay like great sheep, with green wool, basking
+in the blissful heat. The gleam from the waters came up the pass; the grand
+castle crowned the left-hand steep, seeming to warm its old bones, like the
+ruins of some awful megatherium in the lighted air; one white sail sped
+like a glad thought across the spandrel of the sea; the shadows of the
+rocks lay over our path, like transient, cool, benignant deaths, through
+which we had to pass again and again to yet higher glory beyond; and one
+lark was somewhere in whose little breast the whole world was reflected as
+in the convex mirror of a dewdrop, where it swelled so that he could not
+hold it, but let it out again through his throat, metamorphosed into music,
+which he poured forth over all as the libation on the outspread altar of
+worship.
+
+And of all this we talked to Connie as we went; and every now and then she
+would clap her hands gently in the fulness of her delight, although she
+beheld the splendour only as with her ears, or from the kisses of the wind
+on her cheeks. But she seemed, since her accident, to have approached that
+condition which Milton represents Samson as longing for in his blindness,
+wherein the sight should be
+
+  "through all parts diffused,
+  That she might look at will through every pore."
+
+I had, however, arranged with the rest of the company, that the moment
+we reached the cliff over the shore, and turned to the left to cross the
+isthmus, the conversation should no longer be about the things around us;
+and especially I warned my wife and Wynnie that no exclamation of surprise
+or delight should break from them before Connie's eyes were uncovered. I
+had said nothing to either of them about the difficulties of the way, that,
+seeing us take them as ordinary things, they might take them so too, and
+not be uneasy.
+
+We never stopped till we reached the foot of the peninsula, _née_ island,
+upon which the keep of Tintagel stands. There we set Connie down, to take
+breath and ease our arms before we began the arduous way.
+
+"Now, now!" said Connie eagerly, lifting her hands in the belief that we
+were on the point of undoing the bandage from her eyes.
+
+"No, no, my love, not yet," I said, and she lay still again, only she
+looked more eager than before.
+
+"I am afraid I have tired out you and Mr. Percivale, papa," she said.
+
+Percivale laughed so amusedly, that she rejoined roguishly--
+
+"O yes! I know every gentleman is a Hercules--at least, he chooses to be
+considered one! But, notwithstanding my firm faith in the fact, I have a
+little womanly conscience left that is hard to hoodwink."
+
+There was a speech for my wee Connie to make! The best answer and the best
+revenge was to lift her and go on. This we did, trying as well as we might
+to prevent the difference of level between us from tilting the litter too
+much for her comfort.
+
+"Where _are_ you going, papa?" she said once, but without a sign of fear in
+her voice, as a little slip I made lowered my end of the litter suddenly.
+"You must be going up a steep place. Don't hurt yourself, dear papa."
+
+We had changed our positions, and were now carrying her, head foremost, up
+the hill. Percivale led, and I followed. Now I could see every change on
+her lovely face, and it made me strong to endure; for I did find it hard
+work, I confess, to get to the top. It lay like a little sunny pool,
+on which all the cloudy thoughts that moved in some unseen heaven cast
+exquisitely delicate changes of light and shade as they floated over it.
+Percivale strode on as if he bore a feather behind him. I did wish we
+were at the top, for my arms began to feel like iron-cables, stiff and
+stark--only I was afraid of my fingers giving way. My heart was beating
+uncomfortably too. But Percivale, I felt almost inclined to quarrel with
+him before it was over, he strode on so unconcernedly, turning every corner
+of the zigzag where I expected him to propose a halt, and striding on
+again, as if there could be no pretence for any change of procedure. But I
+held out, strengthened by the play on my daughter's face, delicate as the
+play on an opal--one that inclines more to the milk than the fire.
+
+When at length we turned in through the gothic door in the battlemented
+wall, and set our lovely burden down upon the grass--
+
+"Percivale," I said, forgetting the proprieties in the affected humour of
+being angry with him, so glad was I that we had her at length on the mount
+of glory, "why did you go on walking like a castle, and pay no heed to me?"
+
+"You didn't speak, did you, Mr. Walton," he returned, with just a shadow of
+solicitude in the question.
+
+"No. Of course not," I rejoined.
+
+"O, then," he returned, in a tone of relief, "how could I? You were my
+captain: how could I give in so long as you were holding on?"
+
+I am afraid the _Percivale_, without the _Mister_, came again and again
+after this, though I pulled myself up for it as often as I caught myself.
+
+"Now, papa!" said Connie from the grass.
+
+"Not yet, my dear. Wait till your mamma and Wynnie come. Let us go and meet
+them, Mr. Percivale."
+
+"O yes, do, papa. Leave me alone here without knowing where I am or what
+kind of a place I am in. I should like to know how it feels. I have never
+been alone in all my life."
+
+"Very well, my dear," I said; and Percivale and I left her alone in the
+ruins.
+
+We found Ethelwyn toiling up with Wynnie helping her all she could.
+
+"Dear Harry," she said, "how could you think of bringing Connie up such an
+awful place? I wonder you dared to do it."
+
+"It's done you see, wife," I answered, "thanks to Mr. Percivale, who has
+nearly torn the breath out of me. But now we must get you up, and you will
+say that to see Connie's delight, not to mention your own, is quite wages
+for the labour."
+
+"Isn't she afraid to find herself so high up?"
+
+"She knows nothing about it yet."
+
+"You do not mean you have left the child there with her eyes tied up."
+
+"To be sure. We could not uncover them before you came. It would spoil half
+the pleasure."
+
+"Do let us make haste then. It is surely dangerous to leave her so."
+
+"Not in the least; but she must be getting tired of the darkness. Take my
+arm now."
+
+"Don't you think Mrs. Walton had better take my arm," said Percivale, "and
+then you can put your hand on her back, and help her a little that way."
+
+We tried the plan, found it a good one, and soon reached the top. The
+moment our eyes fell upon Connie, we could see that she had found the place
+neither fearful nor lonely. The sweetest ghost of a smile hovered on her
+pale face, which shone in the shadow of the old gateway of the keep, with
+light from within her own sunny soul. She lay in such still expectation,
+that you would have thought she had just fallen asleep after receiving an
+answer to a prayer, reminding me of a little-known sonnet of Wordsworth's,
+in which he describes as the type of Death--
+
+  "the face of one
+  Sleeping alone within a mossy cave
+  With her face up to heaven; that seemed to have
+  Pleasing remembrance of a thought foregone;
+  A lovely beauty in a summer grave."
+
+[Footnote: _Miscellaneous Sonnets_, part i.28.]
+
+But she heard our steps, and her face awoke.
+
+"Is mamma come?"
+
+"Yes, my darling. I am here," said her mother. "How do you feel?"
+
+"Perfectly well, mamma, thank you. Now, papa!"
+
+"One moment more, my love. Now, Percivale."
+
+We carried her to the spot we had agreed upon, and while we held her a
+little inclined that she might see the better, her mother undid the bandage
+from her head.
+
+"Hold your hands over her eyes, a little way from them," I said to her as
+she untied the handkerchief, "that the light may reach them by degrees, and
+not blind her."
+
+Ethelwyn did so for a few moments, then removed them. Still for a moment or
+two more, it was plain from her look of utter bewilderment, that all was a
+confused mass of light and colour. Then she gave a little cry, and to my
+astonishment, almost fear, half rose to a sitting posture. One moment more
+and she laid herself gently back, and wept and sobbed.
+
+And now I may admit my reader to a share, though at best but a dim reflex
+in my poor words, of the glory that made her weep.
+
+Through the gothic-arched door in the battlemented wall, which stood on the
+very edge of the precipitous descent, so that nothing of the descent was
+seen, and the door was as a framework to the picture, Connie saw a great
+gulf at her feet, full to the brim of a splendour of light and colour.
+Before her rose the great ruins of rock and castle, the ruin of rock with
+castle; rough stone below, clear green happy grass above, even to the verge
+of the abrupt and awful precipice; over it the summer sky so clear that it
+must have been clarified by sorrow and thought; at the foot of the rocks,
+hundreds of feet below, the blue waters breaking in white upon the dark
+gray sands; all full of the gladness of the sun overflowing in speechless
+delight, and reflected in fresh gladness from stone and water and flower,
+like new springs of light rippling forth from the earth itself to swell the
+universal tide of glory--all this seen through the narrow gothic archway of
+a door in a wall--up--down--on either hand. But the main marvel was the
+look sheer below into the abyss full of light and air and colour, its sides
+lined with rock and grass, and its bottom lined with blue ripples and sand.
+Was it any wonder that my Connie should cry aloud when the vision dawned
+upon her, and then weep to ease a heart ready to burst with delight? "O
+Lord God," I said, almost involuntarily, "thou art very rich. Thou art the
+one poet, the one maker. We worship thee. Make but our souls as full of
+glory in thy sight as this chasm is to our eyes glorious with the forms
+which thou hast cloven and carved out of nothingness, and we shall be
+worthy to worship thee, O Lord, our God." For I was carried beyond myself
+with delight, and with sympathy with Connie's delight and with the calm
+worship of gladness in my wife's countenance. But when my eye fell on
+Wynnie, I saw a trouble mingled with her admiration, a self-accusation, I
+think, that she did not and could not enjoy it more; and when I turned from
+her, there were the eyes of Percivale fixed on me in wonderment; and for
+the moment I felt as David must have felt when, in his dance of undignified
+delight that he had got the ark home again, he saw the contemptuous eyes of
+Michal fixed on him from the window. But I could not leave it so. I said to
+him--coldly I daresay:
+
+"Excuse me, Mr. Percivale; I forgot for the moment that I was not amongst
+my own family."
+
+Percivale took his hat off.
+
+"Forgive my seeming rudeness, Mr. Walton. I was half-envying and
+half-wondering. You would not be surprised at my unconscious behaviour
+if you had seen as much of the wrong side of the stuff as I have seen in
+London."
+
+I had some idea of what he meant; but this was no time to enter upon a
+discussion. I could only say--
+
+"My heart was full, Mr. Percivale, and I let it overflow."
+
+"Let me at least share in its overflow," he rejoined, and nothing more
+passed on the subject.
+
+For the next ten minutes we stood in absolute silence. We had set Connie
+down on the grass again, but propped up so that she could see through the
+doorway. And she lay in still ecstasy. But there was more to be seen ere
+we descended. There was the rest of the little islet with its crop of
+down-grass, on which the horses of all the knights of King Arthur's round
+table might have fed for a week--yes, for a fortnight, without, by any
+means, encountering the short commons of war. There were the ruins of the
+castle so built of plates of the laminated stone of the rocks on which they
+stood, and so woven in or more properly incorporated with the outstanding
+rocks themselves, that in some parts I found it impossible to tell which
+was building and which was rock--the walls themselves seeming like a growth
+out of the island itself, so perfectly were they in harmony with, and in
+kind the same as, the natural ground upon which and of which they had
+been constructed. And this would seem to me to be the perfection of
+architecture. The work of man's hands should be so in harmony with the
+place where it stands that it must look as if it had grown out of the soil.
+But the walls were in some parts so thin that one wondered how they could
+have stood so long. They must have been built before the time of any
+formidable artillery--enough only for defence from arrows. But then the
+island was nowhere commanded, and its own steep cliffs would be more easily
+defended than any erections upon it. Clearly the intention was that no
+enemy should thereon find rest for the sole of his foot; for if he was able
+to land, farewell to the notion of any further defence. Then there was
+outside the walls the little chapel--such a tiny chapel! of which little
+more than the foundation remained, with the ruins of the altar still
+standing, and outside the chancel, nestling by its wall, a coffin hollowed
+in the rock; then the churchyard a little way off full of graves, which, I
+presume, would have vanished long ago were it not that the very graves were
+founded on the rock. There still stood old worn-out headstones of thin
+slate, but no memorials were left. Then there was the fragment of arched
+passage underground laid open to the air in the centre of the islet; and
+last, and grandest of all, the awful edges of the rock, broken by time, and
+carved by the winds and the waters into grotesque shapes and threatening
+forms. Over all the surface of the islet we carried Connie, and from three
+sides of this sea-fortress she looked abroad over "the Atlantic's level
+powers." It blew a gentle ethereal breeze on the top; but had there been
+such a wind as I have since stood against on that fearful citadel of
+nature, I should have been in terror lest we should all be blown, into the
+deep. Over the edge she peeped at the strange fantastic needle-rock, and
+round the corner she peeped to see Wynnie and her mother seated in what
+they call Arthur's chair--a canopied hollow wrought in the plated rock by
+the mightiest of all solvents--air and water; till at length it was time
+that we should take our leave of the few sheep that fed over the place, and
+issuing by the gothic door, wind away down the dangerous path to the safe
+ground below.
+
+"I think we had better tie up your eyes again, Connie?" I said.
+
+"Why?" she asked, in wonderment. "There's nothing higher yet, is there?"
+
+"No, my love. If there were, you would hardly be able for it to-day, I
+should think. It is only to keep you from being frightened at the precipice
+as you go down."
+
+"But I sha'n't be frightened, papa."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"Because you are going to carry me."
+
+"But what if I should slip? I might, you know."
+
+"I don't mind. I sha'n't mind being tumbled over the precipice, if you do
+it. I sha'n't be to blame, and I'm sure you won't, papa." Then she drew my
+head down and whispered in my ear, "If I get as much more by being killed,
+as I have got by having my poor back hurt, I'm sure it will be well worth
+it."
+
+I tried to smile a reply, for I could not speak one. We took her just as
+she was, and with some tremor on my part, but not a single slip, we bore
+her down the winding path, her face showing all the time that, instead of
+being afraid, she was in a state of ecstatic delight. My wife, I could see,
+was nervous, however; and she breathed a sigh of relief when we were once
+more at the foot.
+
+"Well, I'm glad that's over," she said.
+
+"So am I," I returned, as we set down the litter.
+
+"Poor papa! I've pulled his arms to pieces! and Mr. Percivale's too!"
+
+Percivale answered first by taking up a huge piece of stone. Then turning
+towards her, he said, "Look here, Miss Connie;" and flung it far out from
+the isthmus on which we were resting. We heard it strike on a rock below,
+and then fall in a shower of fragments. "My arms are all right, you see,"
+he said.
+
+Meantime, Wynnie had scrambled down to the shore, where we had not yet
+been. In a few minutes, we still lingering, she came running back to us out
+of breath with the news:
+
+"Papa! Mr. Percivale! there's such a grand cave down there! It goes right
+through under the island."
+
+Connie looked so eager, that Percivale and I glanced at each other, and
+without a word, lifted her, and followed Wynnie. It was a little way
+that we had to carry her down, but it was very broken, and insomuch more
+difficult than the other. At length we stood in the cavern. What a contrast
+to the vision overhead!--nothing to be seen but the cool, dark vault of the
+cave, long and winding, with the fresh seaweed lying on its pebbly floor,
+and its walls wet with the last tide, for every tide rolled through in
+rising and falling--the waters on the opposite sides of the islet greeting
+through this cave; the blue shimmer of the rising sea, and the forms of
+huge outlying rocks, looking in at the further end, where the roof rose
+like a grand cathedral arch; and the green gleam of veins rich with copper,
+dashing and streaking the darkness in gloomy little chapels, where the
+floor of heaped-up pebbles rose and rose within till it met the descending
+roof. It was like a going-down from Paradise into the grave--but a cool,
+friendly, brown-lighted grave, which even in its darkest recesses bore some
+witness to the wind of God outside, in the occasional ripple of shadowed
+light, from the play of the sun on the waves, that, fleeted and reflected,
+wandered across its jagged roof. But we dared not keep Connie long in the
+damp coolness; and I have given my reader quite enough of description for
+one hour's reading. He can scarcely be equal to more.
+
+My invalids had now beheld the sea in such a different aspect, that I no
+longer feared to go back to Kilkhaven. Thither we went three days after,
+and at my invitation, Percivale took Turner's place in the carriage.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+JOE AND HIS TROUBLE.
+
+
+
+
+
+How bright the yellow shores of Kilkhaven looked after the dark sands of
+Tintagel! But how low and tame its highest cliffs after the mighty rampart
+of rocks which there face the sea like a cordon of fierce guardians! It was
+pleasant to settle down again in what had begun to look like home, and was
+indeed made such by the boisterous welcome of Dora and the boys. Connie's
+baby crowed aloud, and stretched forth her chubby arms at sight of her. The
+wind blew gently around us, full both of the freshness of the clean waters
+and the scents of the down-grasses, to welcome us back. And the dread
+vision of the shore had now receded so far into the past, that it was no
+longer able to hurt.
+
+We had called at the blacksmith's house on our way home, and found that he
+was so far better as to be working at his forge again. His mother said he
+was used to such attacks, and soon got over them. I, however, feared that
+they indicated an approaching break-down.
+
+"Indeed, sir," she said, "Joe might be well enough if he liked. It's all
+his own fault."
+
+"What do you mean?" I asked. "I cannot believe that your son is in any way
+guilty of his own illness."
+
+"He's a well-behaved lad, my Joe," she answered; "but he hasn't learned
+what I had to learn long ago."
+
+"What is that?" I asked.
+
+"To make up his mind, and stick to it. To do one thing or the other."
+
+She was a woman with a long upper lip and a judicial face, and as she
+spoke, her lip grew longer and longer; and when she closed her mouth in
+mark of her own resolution, that lip seemed to occupy two-thirds of all her
+face under the nose.
+
+"And what is it he won't do?"
+
+"I don't mind whether he does it or not, if he would only
+make--up--his--mind--and--stick--to--it."
+
+"What is it you want him to do, then?"
+
+"I don't want him to do it, I'm sure. It's no good to me--and wouldn't be
+much to him, that I'll be bound. Howsomever, he must please himself."
+
+I thought it not very wonderful that he looked gloomy, if there was no more
+sunshine for him at home than his mother's face indicated. Few things can
+make a man so strong and able for his work as a sun indoors, whose rays are
+smiles, ever ready to shine upon him when he opens the door,--the face of
+wife or mother or sister. Now his mother's face certainly was not sunny.
+No doubt it must have shone upon him when he was a baby. God has made that
+provision for babies, who need sunshine so much that a mother's face cannot
+help being sunny to them: why should the sunshine depart as the child grows
+older?
+
+"Well, I suppose I must not ask. But I fear your son is very far from well.
+Such attacks do not often occur without serious mischief somewhere. And if
+there is anything troubling him, he is less likely to get over it."
+
+"If he would let somebody make up his mind for him, and then stick to it--"
+
+"O, but that is impossible, you know. A man must make up his own mind."
+
+"That's just what he won't do."
+
+All the time she looked naughty, only after a self-righteous fashion. It
+was evident that whatever was the cause of it, she was not in sympathy with
+her son, and therefore could not help him out of any difficulty he might
+be in. I made no further attempt to learn from her the cause of her son's
+discomfort, clearly a deeper cause than his illness. In passing his
+workshop, we stopped for a moment, and I made an arrangement to meet him at
+the church the next day.
+
+I was there before him, and found that he had done a good deal since we
+left. Little remained except to get the keys put to rights, and the rods
+attached to the cranks in the box. To-day he was to bring a carpenter, a
+cousin of his own, with him.
+
+They soon arrived, and a small consultation followed. The cousin was a
+bright-eyed, cheruby-cheeked little man, with a ready smile and white
+teeth: I thought he might help me to understand what was amiss in Joseph's
+affairs. But I would not make the attempt except openly. I therefore said
+half in a jocular fashion, as with gloomy, self-withdrawn countenance the
+smith was fitting one loop into another in two of his iron rods,--
+
+"I wish we could get this cousin of yours to look a little more cheerful.
+You would think he had quarrelled with the sunshine."
+
+The carpenter showed his white teeth between his rosy lips.
+
+"Well, sir, if you'll excuse me, you see my cousin Joe is not like the rest
+of us. He's a religious man, is Joe."
+
+"But I don't see how that should make him miserable. It hasn't made me
+miserable. I hope I'm a religious man myself. It makes me happy every day
+of my life."
+
+"Ah, well," returned the carpenter, in a thoughtful tone, as he worked away
+gently to get the inside out of the oak-chest without hurting it, "I don't
+say it's the religion, for I don't know; but perhaps it's the way he takes
+it up. He don't look after hisself enough; he's always thinking about other
+people, you see, sir; and it seems to me, sir, that if you don't look after
+yourself, why, who is to look after you? That's common sense, _I_ think."
+
+It was a curious contrast--the merry friendly face, which shone
+good-fellowship to all mankind, accusing the sombre, pale, sad, severe,
+even somewhat bitter countenance beside him, of thinking too much about
+other people, and too little about himself. Of course it might be correct
+in a way. There is all the difference between a comfortable, healthy
+inclination, and a pained, conscientious principle. It was a smile very
+unlike his cousin's with which Joe heard his remarks on himself.
+
+"But," I said, "you will allow, at least, that if everybody would take
+Joe's way of it, there would then be no occasion for taking care of
+yourself."
+
+"I don't see why, sir."
+
+"Why, because everybody would take care of everybody else."
+
+"Not so well, I doubt, sir."
+
+"Yes, and a great deal better."
+
+"At any rate, that's a long way off; and mean time, _who's_ to take care of
+the odd man like Joe there, that don't look after hisself?"
+
+"Why, God, of course."
+
+"Well, there's just where I'm out. I don't know nothing about that branch,
+sir."
+
+I saw a grateful light mount up in Joe's gloomy eyes as I spoke thus
+upon his side of the question. He said nothing, however; and his cousin
+volunteering no further information, I did not push any advantage I might
+have gained.
+
+At noon I made them leave their work, and come home with me to have their
+dinner; they hoped to finish the job before dusk. Harry Cobb and I dropped
+behind, and Joe Harper walked on in front, apparently sunk in meditation.
+
+Scarcely were we out of the churchyard, and on the road leading to the
+rectory, when I saw the sexton's daughter meeting us. She had almost come
+up to Joe before he saw her, for his gaze was bent on the ground, and he
+started. They shook hands in what seemed to me an odd, constrained, yet
+familiar fashion, and then stood as if they wanted to talk, but without
+speaking. Harry and I passed, both with a nod of recognition to the young
+woman, but neither of us had the ill-manners to look behind. I glanced at
+Harry, and he answered me with a queer look. When we reached the turning
+that would hide them from our view, I looked back almost involuntarily,
+and there they were still standing. But before we reached the door of the
+rectory, Joe got up with us.
+
+There was something remarkable in the appearance of Agnes Coombes, the
+sexton's daughter. She was about six-and-twenty, I should imagine, the
+youngest of the family, with a sallow, rather sickly complexion, somewhat
+sorrowful eyes, a smile rare and sweet, a fine figure, tall and slender,
+and a graceful gait. I now saw, I thought, a good hair's-breadth further
+into the smith's affairs. Beyond the hair's-breadth, however, all was dark.
+But I saw likewise that the well of truth, whence I might draw the whole
+business, must be the girl's mother.
+
+After the men had had their dinner and rested a while, they went back to
+the church, and I went to the sexton's cottage. I found the old man seated
+at the window, with his pot of beer on the sill, and an empty plate beside
+it.
+
+"Come in, sir," he said, rising, as I put my head in at the door. "The
+mis'ess ben't in, but she'll be here in a few minutes."
+
+"O, it's of no consequence," I said. "Are they all well?"
+
+"All comfortable, sir. It be fine dry weather for them, this, sir. It be in
+winter it be worst for them."
+
+"But it's a snug enough shelter you've got here. It seems such, anyhow;
+though, to be sure, it is the blasts of winter that find out the weak
+places both in house and body."
+
+"It ben't the wind touch _them_" he said; "they be safe enough from the
+wind. It be the wet, sir. There ben't much snow in these parts; but when it
+du come, that be very bad for them, poor things!"
+
+Could it be that he was harping on the old theme again?
+
+"But at least this cottage keeps out the wet," I said. "If not, we must
+have it seen to."
+
+"This cottage du well enough, sir. It'll last my time, anyhow."
+
+"Then why are you pitying your family for having to live in it?"
+
+"Bless your heart, sir! It's not them. They du well enough. It's my people
+out yonder. You've got the souls to look after, and I've got the bodies.
+That's what it be, sir. To be sure!"
+
+The last exclamation was uttered in a tone of impatient surprise at my
+stupidity in giving all my thoughts and sympathies to the living, and none
+to the dead. I pursued the subject no further, but as I lay in bed that
+night, it began to dawn upon me as a lovable kind of hallucination in which
+the man indulged. He too had an office in the Church of God, and he would
+magnify that office. He could not bear that there should be no further
+outcome of his labour; that the burying of the dead out of sight should be
+"the be-all and the end-all." He was God's vicar, the gardener in God's
+Acre, as the Germans call the churchyard. When all others had forsaken the
+dead, he remained their friend, caring for what little comfort yet remained
+possible to them. Hence in all changes of air and sky above, he attributed
+to them some knowledge of the same, and some share in their consequences
+even down in the darkness of the tomb. It was his way of keeping up the
+relation between the living and the dead. Finding I made him no reply, he
+took up the word again.
+
+"You've got your part, sir, and I've got mine. You up into the pulpit, and
+I down into the grave. But it'll be all the same by and by."
+
+"I hope it will," I answered. "But when you do go down into your own grave,
+you'll know a good deal less about it than you do now. You'll find you've
+got other things to think about. But here comes your wife. She'll talk
+about the living rather than the dead."
+
+"That's natural, sir. She brought 'em to life, and I buried 'em--at least,
+best part of 'em. If only I had the other two safe down with the rest!"
+
+I remembered what the old woman had told me--that she had two boys _in_ the
+sea; and I knew therefore what he meant. He regarded his drowned boys as
+still tossed about in the weary wet cold ocean, and would have gladly laid
+them to rest in the warm dry churchyard.
+
+He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye with the back of his hand, and
+saying, "Well, I must be off to my gardening," left me with his wife. I saw
+then that, humorist as the old man might be, his humour, like that of all
+true humorists, lay close about the wells of weeping.
+
+"The old man seems a little out of sorts," I said to his wife.
+
+"Well, sir," she answered, with her usual gentleness, a gentleness which
+obedient suffering had perfected, "this be the day he buried our Nancy,
+this day two years; and to-day Agnes be come home from her work poorly; and
+the two things together they've upset him a bit."
+
+"I met Agnes coming this way. Where is she?"
+
+"I believe she be in the churchyard, sir. I've been to the doctor about
+her."
+
+"I hope it's nothing serious."
+
+"I hope not, sir; but you see--four on 'em, sir!"
+
+"Well, she's in God's hands, you know."
+
+"That she be, sir."
+
+"I want to ask you about something, Mrs. Coombes."
+
+"What be that, sir? If I can tell, I will, you may be sure, sir."
+
+"I want to know what's the matter with Joe Harper, the blacksmith."
+
+"They du say it be a consumption, sir."
+
+"But what has he got on his mind?"
+
+"He's got nothing on his mind, sir. He be as good a by as ever stepped, I
+assure you, sir."
+
+"But I am sure there is something or other on his mind. He's not so happy
+as he should be. He's not the man, it seems to me, to be unhappy because
+he's ill. A man like him would not be miserable because he was going to
+die. It might make him look sad sometimes, but not gloomy as he looks."
+
+"Well, sir, I believe you be right, and perhaps I know summat. But it's
+part guessing.--I believe my Agnes and Joe Harper are as fond upon one
+another as any two in the county."
+
+"Are they not going to be married then?"
+
+"There be the pint, sir. I don't believe Joe ever said a word o' the sort
+to Aggy. She never could ha' kep it from me, sir."
+
+"Why doesn't he then?"
+
+"That's the pint again, sir. All as knows him says it's because he be in
+such bad health, and he thinks he oughtn't to go marrying with one foot in
+the grave. He never said so to me; but I think very likely that be it."
+
+"For that matter, Mrs. Coombes, we've all got one foot in the grave, I
+think."
+
+"That be very true, sir."
+
+"And what does your daughter think?"
+
+"I believe she thinks the same. And so they go on talking to each other,
+quiet-like, like old married folks, not like lovers at all, sir. But I
+can't help fancying it have something to do with my Aggy's pale face."
+
+"And something to do with Joe's pale face too, Mrs. Coombes," I said.
+"Thank you. You've told me more than I expected. It explains everything. I
+must have it out with Joe now."
+
+"O deary me! sir, don't go and tell him I said anything, as if I wanted him
+to marry my daughter."
+
+"Don't you be afraid. I'll take good care of that. And don't fancy I'm fond
+of meddling with other people's affairs. But this is a case in which I
+ought to do something. Joe's a fine fellow."
+
+"That he be, sir. I couldn't wish a better for a son-in-law."
+
+I put on my hat.
+
+"You won't get me into no trouble with Joe, will ye, sir!"
+
+"Indeed I will not, Mrs. Coombes. I should be doing a great deal more harm
+than good if I said a word to make him doubt you."
+
+I went straight to the church. There were the two men working away in the
+shadowy tower, and there was Agnes standing beside, knitting like her
+mother, so quiet, so solemn even, that it did indeed look as if she were a
+long-married wife, hovering about her husband at his work. Harry was saying
+something to her as I went in, but when they saw me they were silent, and
+Agnes gently withdrew.
+
+"Do you think you will get through to-night?" I asked.
+
+"Sure of it, sir," answered Harry.
+
+"You shouldn't be sure of anything, Harry. We are told in the New Testament
+that we ought to say _If the Lord will_," said Joe.
+
+"Now, Joe, you're too hard upon Harry," I said. "You don't think that the
+Bible means to pull a man up every step like that, till he's afraid to
+speak a word. It was about a long journey and a year's residence that the
+Apostle James was speaking."
+
+"No doubt, sir. But the principle's the same. Harry can no more be sure of
+finishing his work before it be dark, than those people could be of going
+their long journey."
+
+"That is perfectly true. But you are taking the letter for the spirit, and
+that, I suspect, in more ways than one. The religion does not lie in not
+being sure about anything, but in a loving desire that the will of God in
+the matter, whatever it be, may be done. And if Harry has not learned yet
+to care about the will of God, what is the good of coming down upon him
+that way, as if that would teach him in the least. When he loves God, then,
+and not till then, will he care about his will. Nor does the religion lie
+in saying, _if the Lord will_, every time anything is to be done. It is a
+most dangerous thing to use sacred words often. It makes them so common to
+our ear that at length, when used most solemnly, they have not half the
+effect they ought to have, and that is a serious loss. What the Apostle
+means is, that we should always be in the mood of looking up to God and
+having regard to his will, not always writing D.V. for instance, as so many
+do--most irreverently, I think--using a Latin contraction for the beautiful
+words, just as if they were a charm, or as if God would take offence
+if they did not make the salvo of acknowledgment. It seems to me quite
+heathenish. Our hearts ought ever to be in the spirit of those words; our
+lips ought to utter them rarely. Besides, there are some things a man might
+be pretty sure the Lord wills."
+
+"It sounds fine, sir; but I'm not sure that I understand what you mean to
+say. It sounds to me like a darkening of wisdom."
+
+I saw that I had irritated him, and so had in some measure lost ground. But
+Harry struck in--
+
+"How _can_ you say that now, Joe? _I_ know what the parson means well
+enough, and everybody knows I ain't got half the brains you've got."
+
+"The reason is, Harry, that he's got something in his head that stands in
+the way."
+
+"And there's nothing in my head _to_ stand in the way!" returned Harry,
+laughing.
+
+This made me laugh too, and even Joe could not help a sympathetic grin. By
+this time it was getting dark.
+
+"I'm afraid, Harry, after all, you won't get through to-night."
+
+"I begin to think so too, sir. And there's Joe saying, 'I told you so,'
+over and over to himself, though he won't say it out like a man."
+
+Joe answered only with another grin.
+
+"I tell you what it is, Harry," I said--"you must come again on Monday. And
+on your way home, just look in and tell Joe's mother that I have kept him
+over to-morrow. The change will do him good."
+
+"No, sir, that can't he. I haven't got a clean shirt."
+
+"You can have a shirt of mine," I said. "But I'm afraid you'll want your
+Sunday clothes."
+
+"I'll bring them for you, Joe--before you're up," interposed Harry. "And
+then you can go to church with Aggy Coombes, you know."
+
+Here was just what I wanted.
+
+"Hold your tongue, Harry," said Joe angrily. "You're talking of what you
+don't know anything about."
+
+"Well, Joe, I ben't a fool, if I ben't so religious as you be. You ben't
+a bad fellow, though you be a Methodist, and I ben't a fool, though I be
+Harry Cobb."
+
+"What do you mean, Harry? Do hold your tongue."
+
+"Well, I'll tell you what I mean first, and then I'll hold my tongue. I
+mean this--that nobody with two eyes, or one eye, for that matter, in his
+head, could help seeing the eyes you and Aggy make at each other, and why
+you don't port your helm and board her--I won't say it's more than I know,
+but I du say it to be more than I think be fair to the young woman."
+
+"Hold your tongue, Harry."
+
+"I said I would when I'd answered you as to what I meaned. So no more
+at present; but I'll be over with your clothes afore you're up in the
+morning."
+
+As Harry spoke he was busy gathering his tools.
+
+"They won't be in the way, will they, sir?" he said, as he heaped them
+together in the furthest corner of the tower.
+
+"Not in the least," I returned. "If I had my way, all the tools used in
+building the church should be carved on the posts and pillars of it, to
+indicate the sacredness of labour, and the worship of God that lies, not in
+building the church merely, but in every honest trade honestly pursued for
+the good of mankind and the need of the workman. For a necessity of God is
+laid upon every workman as well as on St. Paul. Only St. Paul saw it, and
+every workman doesn't, Harry."
+
+"Thank you, sir. I like that way of it. I almost think I could be a little
+bit religious after your way of it, sir."
+
+"Almost, Harry!" growled Joe--not unkindly.
+
+"Now, you hold your tongue, Joe," I said. "Leave Harry to me. You may take
+him, if you like, after I've done with him."
+
+Laughing merrily, but making no other reply than a hearty good-night, Harry
+strode away out of the church, and Joe and I went home together.
+
+When he had had his tea, I asked him to go out with me for a walk.
+
+The sun was shining aslant upon the downs from over the sea. We rose out of
+the shadowy hollow to the sunlit brow. I was a little in advance of Joe.
+Happening to turn, I saw the light full on his head and face, while the
+rest of his body had not yet emerged from the shadow.
+
+"Stop, Joe," I said. "I want to see you so for a moment."
+
+He stood--a little surprised.
+
+"You look just like a man rising from the dead, Joe," I said.
+
+"I don't know what you mean, sir," he returned.
+
+"I will describe yourself to you. Your head and face are full of sunlight,
+the rest of your body is still buried in the shadow. Look; I will stand
+where you are now; and you come here. You will soon see what I mean."
+
+We changed places. Joe stared for a moment. Then his face brightened.
+
+"I see what you mean, sir," he said. "I fancy you don't mean the
+resurrection of the body, but the resurrection of righteousness."
+
+"I do, Joe. Did it ever strike you that the whole history of the Christian
+life is a series of such resurrections? Every time a man bethinks himself
+that he is not walking in the light, that he has been forgetting himself,
+and must repent, that he has been asleep and must awake, that he has been
+letting his garments trail, and must gird up the loins of his mind--every
+time this takes place, there is a resurrection in the world. Yes, Joe; and
+every time that a man finds that his heart is troubled, that he is not
+rejoicing in God, a resurrection must follow--a resurrection out of the
+night of troubled thoughts into the gladness of the truth. For the truth
+is, and ever was, and ever must be, gladness, however much the souls on
+which it shines may be obscured by the clouds of sorrow, troubled by the
+thunders of fear, or shot through with the lightnings of pain. Now, Joe,
+will you let me tell you what you are like--I do not know your thoughts; I
+am only judging from your words and looks?"
+
+"You may if you like, sir," answered Joe, a little sulkily. But I was not
+to be repelled.
+
+I stood up in the sunlight, so that my eyes caught only about half the
+sun's disc. Then I bent my face towards the earth.
+
+"What part of me is the light shining on now, Joe?"
+
+"Just the top of your head," answered he.
+
+"There, then," I returned, "that is just what you are like--a man with the
+light on his head, but not on his face. And why not on your face? Because
+you hold your head down."
+
+"Isn't it possible, sir, that a man might lose the light on his face, as
+you put it, by doing his duty?"
+
+"That is a difficult question," I replied. "I must think before I answer
+it."
+
+"I mean," added Joe--"mightn't his duty be a painful one?"
+
+"Yes. But I think that would rather etherealise than destroy the light.
+Behind the sorrow would spring a yet greater light from the very duty
+itself. I have expressed myself badly, but you will see what I mean.--To
+be frank with you, Joe, I do not see that light in your face. Therefore
+I think something must be wrong with you. Remember a good man is not
+necessarily in the right. St. Peter was a good man, yet our Lord called him
+Satan--and meant it of course, for he never said what he did not mean."
+
+"How can I be wrong when all my trouble comes from doing my duty--nothing
+else, as far as I know?"
+
+"Then," I replied, a sudden light breaking in on my mind, "I doubt whether
+what you suppose to be your duty can be your duty. If it were, I do not
+think it would make you so miserable. At least--I may be wrong, but I
+venture to think so."
+
+"What is a man to go by, then? If he thinks a thing is his duty, is he not
+to do it?"
+
+"Most assuredly--until he knows better. But it is of the greatest
+consequence whether the supposed duty be the will of God or the invention
+of one's own fancy or mistaken judgment. A real duty is always something
+right in itself. The duty a man makes his for the time, by supposing it to
+be a duty, may be something quite wrong in itself. The duty of a Hindoo
+widow is to burn herself on the body of her husband. But that duty lasts no
+longer than till she sees that, not being the will of God, it is not her
+duty. A real duty, on the other hand, is a necessity of the human nature,
+without seeing and doing which a man can never attain to the truth and
+blessedness of his own being. It was the duty of the early hermits to
+encourage the growth of vermin upon their bodies, for they supposed that
+was pleasing to God; but they could not fare so well as if they had seen
+the truth that the will of God was cleanliness. And there may be far more
+serious things done by Christian people against the will of God, in the
+fancy of doing their duty, than such a trifle as swarming with worms. In a
+word, thinking a thing is your duty makes it your duty only till you know
+better. And the prime duty of every man is to seek and find, that he may
+do, the will of God."
+
+"But do you think, sir, that a man is likely to be doing what he ought not,
+if he is doing what he don't like?"
+
+"Not so likely, I allow. But there may be ambition in it. A man must not
+want to be better than the right. That is the delusion of the anchorite--a
+delusion in which the man forgets the rights of others for the sake of his
+own sanctity."
+
+"It might be for the sake of another person, and not for the person's own
+sake at all."
+
+"It might be; but except it were the will of God for that other person, it
+would be doing him or her a real injury."
+
+We were coming gradually towards what I wanted to make the point in
+question. I wished him to tell me all about it himself, however, for I
+knew that while advice given on request is generally disregarded, to offer
+advice unasked is worthy only of a fool."
+
+"But how are you to know the will of God in every case?" asked Joe.
+
+"By looking at the general laws of life, and obeying them--except there be
+anything special in a particular case to bring it under a higher law."
+
+"Ah! but that be just what there is here."
+
+"Well, my dear fellow, that may be; but the special conduct may not be
+right for the special case for all that. The speciality of the case may not
+be even sufficient to take it from under the ordinary rule. But it is of no
+use talking generals. Let us come to particulars. If you can trust me, tell
+me all about it, and we may be able to let some light in. I am sure there
+is darkness somewhere."
+
+"I will turn it over in my mind, sir; and if I can bring myself to talk
+about it, I will. I would rather tell you than anyone else."
+
+I said no more. We watched a glorious sunset--there never was a grander
+place for sunsets--and went home.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+A SMALL ADVENTURE.
+
+
+
+
+
+The next morning Harry came with the clothes. But Joe did not go to church.
+Neither did Agnes make her appearance that morning. They were both present
+at the evening service, however.
+
+When we came out of church, it was cloudy and dark, and the wind was
+blowing cold from the sea. The sky was covered with one cloud, but the
+waves tossing themselves against the rocks, flashed whiteness out of the
+general gloom. As the tide rose the wind increased. It was a night of surly
+temper--hard and gloomy. Not a star cracked the blue above--there was no
+blue; and the wind was _gurly_; I once heard that word in Scotland, and
+never forgot it.
+
+After one of our usual gatherings in Connie's room, which were much shorter
+here because of the evening service in summer, I withdrew till supper
+should be ready.
+
+Now I have always had, as I think I have incidentally stated before, a
+certain peculiar pleasure in the surly aspects of nature. When I was a
+young man this took form in opposition and defiance; since I had begun
+to grow old the form had changed into a sense of safety. I welcomed such
+aspects, partly at least, because they roused my faith to look through and
+beyond the small region of human conditions in which alone the storm can be
+and blow, and thus induced a feeling like that of the child who lies in his
+warm crib and listens to the howling of one of these same storms outside
+the strong-built house which yet trembles at its fiercer onsets: the house
+is not in danger; or, if it be, that is his father's business, not
+his. Hence it came that, after supper, I put on my great-coat and
+travelling-cap, and went out into the ill-tempered night--speaking of it in
+its human symbolism.
+
+I meant to have a stroll down to the breakwater, of which I have yet said
+little, but which was a favourite resort, both of myself and my children.
+At the further end of it, always covered at high water, was an outlying
+cluster of low rocks, in the heart of which the lord of the manor, a
+noble-hearted Christian gentleman of the old school, had constructed a bath
+of graduated depth--an open-air swimming-pool--the only really safe place
+for men who were swimmers to bathe in. Thither I was in the habit of taking
+my two little men every morning, and bathing with them, that I might
+develop the fish that was in them; for, as George Herbert says:
+
+  "Man is everything,
+  And more: he is a tree, yet bears no fruit;
+  A beast, yet is, or should be, more;"
+
+and he might have gone on to say that he is, or should be, a fish as well.
+
+It will seem strange to any reader who can recall the position of my
+Connie's room, that the nearest way to the breakwater should be through
+that room; but so it was. I mention the fact because I want my readers to
+understand a certain peculiarity of the room. By the side of the window
+which looked out upon the breakwater was a narrow door, apparently of a
+closet or cupboard, which communicated, however, with a narrow, curving,
+wood-built passage, leading into a little wooden hut, the walls of
+which were by no means impervious to the wind, for they were formed of
+outside-planks, with the bark still upon them. From this hut one or two
+little windows looked seaward, and a door led out on the bit of sward in
+which lay the flower-bed under Connie's window. From this spot again a door
+in the low wall and thick hedge led out on the downs, where a path wound
+along the cliffs that formed the side of the bay, till, descending under
+the storm-tower, it brought you to the root of the breakwater.
+
+This mole stretched its long strong low back to a rock a good way out,
+breaking the force of the waves, and rendering the channel of a small
+river, that here flowed into the sea across the sands from the mouth of
+the canal, a refuge from the Atlantic. But it was a roadway often hard to
+reach. In fair weather even, the wind falling as the vessel rounded the
+point of the breakwater into the calm of the projecting headlands, the
+under-current would sometimes dash her helpless on the rocks. During
+all this heavenly summer there had been no thought or fear of any such
+disaster. The present night was a hint of what weather would yet come.
+
+When I went into Connie's room, I found her lying in bed a very picture of
+peace. But my entrance destroyed the picture.
+
+"Papa," she said, "why have you got your coat on? Surely you are not going
+out to-night. The wind is blowing dreadfully."
+
+"Not very dreadfully, Connie. It blew much worse the night we found your
+baby."
+
+"But it is very dark."
+
+"I allow that; but there is a glimmer from the sea. I am only going on the
+breakwater for a few minutes. You know I like a stormy night quite as much
+as a fine one."
+
+"I shall be miserable till you come home, papa."
+
+"Nonsense, Connie. You don't think your father hasn't sense to take care of
+himself! Or rather, Connie, for I grant that is poor ground of comfort, you
+don't think I can go anywhere without my Father to take care of me?"
+
+"But there is no occasion--is there, papa?"
+
+"Do you think I should be better pleased with my boys if they shrunk from
+everything involving the least possibility of danger because there was no
+occasion for it? That is just the way to make cowards. And I am certain God
+would not like his children to indulge in such moods of self-preservation
+as that. He might well be ashamed of them. The fearful are far more likely
+to meet with accidents than the courageous. But really, Connie, I am almost
+ashamed of talking so. It is all your fault. There is positively no ground
+for apprehension, and I hope you won't spoil my walk by the thought that my
+foolish little girl is frightened."
+
+"I will be good--indeed I will, papa," she said, holding up her mouth to
+kiss me.
+
+I left her room, and went through the wooden passage into the bark hut. The
+wind roared about it, shook it, and pawed it, and sung and whistled in the
+chinks of the planks. I went out and shut the door. That moment the wind
+seized upon me, and I had to fight with it. When I got on the path leading
+along the edge of the downs, I felt something lighter than any feather fly
+in my face. When I put up my hand, I found my cheek wet. Again and again I
+was thus assailed, but when I got to the breakwater I found what it was.
+They were flakes of foam, bubbles worked up into little masses of adhering
+thousands, which the wind blew off the waters and across the downs,
+carrying some of them miles inland. When I reached the breakwater, and
+looked along its ridge through the darkness of the night, I was bewildered
+to see a whiteness lying here and there in a great patch upon its top. They
+were but accumulations of these foam-flakes, like soap-suds, lying so thick
+that I expected to have to wade through them, only they vanished at the
+touch of my feet. Till then I had almost believed it was snow I saw. On
+the edge of the waves, in quieter spots, they lay like yeast, foaming and
+working. Now and then a little rush of water from a higher wave swept over
+the top of the broad breakwater, as with head bowed sideways against the
+wind, I struggled along towards the rock at its end; but I said to myself,
+"The tide is falling fast, and salt water hurts nobody," and struggled on
+over the huge rough stones of the mighty heap, outside which the waves were
+white with wrath, inside which they had fallen asleep, only heaving with
+the memory of their late unrest. I reached the tall rock at length, climbed
+the rude stair leading up to the flagstaff, and looked abroad, if looking
+it could be called, into the thick dark. But the wind blew so strong on the
+top that I was glad to descend. Between me and the basin where yesterday
+morning I had bathed in still water and sunshine with my boys, rolled
+the deathly waves. I wandered on the rough narrow space yet uncovered,
+stumbling over the stones and the rocky points between which they lay,
+stood here and there half-meditating, and at length, finding a sheltered
+nook in a mass of rock, sat with the wind howling and the waves bursting
+around me. There I fell into a sort of brown study--almost a half-sleep.
+
+But I had not sat long before I came broad awake, for I heard voices, low
+and earnest. One I recognised as Joe's voice. The other was a woman's.
+I could not tell what they said for some time, and therefore felt no
+immediate necessity for disclosing my proximity, but sat debating with
+myself whether I should speak to them or not. At length, in a lull of the
+wind, I heard the woman say--I could fancy with a sigh--
+
+"I'm sure you'll du what is right, Joe. Don't 'e think o' me, Joe."
+
+"It's just of you that I du think, Aggy. You know it ben't for my sake.
+Surely you know that?"
+
+There was no answer for a moment. I was still doubting what I had best
+do--go away quietly or let them know I was there--when she spoke again.
+There was a momentary lull now in the noises of both wind and water, and I
+heard what she said well enough.
+
+"It ben't for me to contradict you, Joe. But I don't think you be going to
+die. You be no worse than last year. Be you now, Joe?"
+
+It flashed across me how once before, a stormy night and darkness had
+brought me close to a soul in agony. Then I was in agony myself; now the
+world was all fair and hopeful around me--the portals of the world beyond
+ever opening wider as I approached them, and letting out more of their
+glory to gladden the path to their threshold. But here were two souls
+straying in a mist which faith might roll away, and leave them walking in
+the light. The moment was come. I must speak.
+
+"Joe!" I called out.
+
+"Who's there?" he cried; and I heard him start to his feet.
+
+"Only Mr. Walton. Where are you?"
+
+"We can't be very far off," he answered, not in a tone of any pleasure at
+finding me so nigh.
+
+I rose, and peering about through the darkness, found that they were a
+little higher up on the same rock by which I was sheltered.
+
+"You mustn't think," I said, "that I have been eavesdropping. I had no idea
+anyone was near me till I heard your voices, and I did not hear a word till
+just the last sentence or two."
+
+"I saw someone go up the Castle-rock," said Joe; "but I thought he was gone
+away again. It will be a lesson to me."
+
+"I'm no tell-tale, Joe," I returned, as I scrambled up the rock. "You will
+have no cause to regret that I happened to overhear a little. I am sure,
+Joe, you will never say anything you need be ashamed of. But what I heard
+was sufficient to let me into the secret of your trouble. Will you let me
+talk to Joe, Agnes? I've been young myself, and, to tell the truth, I don't
+think I'm old yet."
+
+"I am sure, sir," she answered, "you won't be hard on Joe and me. I don't
+suppose there be anything wrong in liking each other, though we can't
+be--married."
+
+She spoke in a low tone, and her voice trembled very much; yet there was a
+certain womanly composure in her utterance. "I'm sure it's very bold of me
+to talk so," she added, "but Joe will tell you all about it."
+
+I was close beside them now, and fancied I saw through the dusk the motion
+of her hand stealing into his.
+
+"Well, Joe, this is just what I wanted," I said. "A woman can be braver
+than a big smith sometimes. Agnes has done her part. Now you do yours, and
+tell me all about it."
+
+No response followed my adjuration. I must help him.
+
+"I think I know how the matter lies, Joe. You think you are not going to
+live long, and that therefore you ought not to marry. Am I right?"
+
+"Not far off it, sir," he answered.
+
+"Now, Joe," I said, "can't we talk as friends about this matter? I have
+no right to intrude into your affairs--none in the least--except what
+friendship gives me. If you say I am not to talk about it, I shall be
+silent. To force advice upon you would be as impertinent as useless."
+
+"It's all the same, I'm afraid, sir. My mind has been made up for a long
+time. What right have I to bring other people into trouble? But I take it
+kind of you, sir, though I mayn't look over-pleased. Agnes wants to hear
+your way of it. I'm agreeable."
+
+This was not very encouraging. Still I thought it sufficient ground for
+proceeding.
+
+"I suppose you will allow that the root of all Christian behaviour is the
+will of God?"
+
+"Surely, sir."
+
+"Is it not the will of God, then, that when a man and woman love each
+other, they should marry?"
+
+"Certainly, sir--where there be no reasons against it."
+
+"Of course. And you judge you see reason for not doing so, else you would?"
+
+"I do see that a man should not bring a woman into trouble for the sake of
+being comfortable himself for the rest of a few weary days."
+
+Agnes was sobbing gently behind her handkerchief. I knew how gladly she
+would be Joe's wife, if only to nurse him through his last illness.
+
+"Not except it would make her comfortable too, I grant you, Joe. But listen
+to me. In the first place, you don't know, and you are not required to
+know, when you are going to die. In fact, you have nothing to do with it.
+Many a life has been injured by the constant expectation of death. It is
+life we have to do with, not death. The best preparation for the night is
+to work while the day lasts, diligently. The best preparation for death is
+life. Besides, I have known delicate people who have outlived all their
+strong relations, and been left alone in the earth--because they had
+possibly taken too much care of themselves. But marriage is God's will, and
+death is God's will, and you have no business to set the one over against,
+as antagonistic to, the other. For anything you know, the gladness and the
+peace of marriage may be the very means intended for your restoration to
+health and strength. I suspect your desire to marry, fighting against the
+fancy that you ought not to marry, has a good deal to do with the state of
+health in which you now find yourself. A man would get over many things if
+he were happy, that he cannot get over when he is miserable."
+
+"But it's for Aggy. You forget that."
+
+"I do not forget it. What right have you to seek for her another kind of
+welfare than you would have yourself? Are you to treat her as if she were
+worldly when you are not--to provide for her a comfort which yourself you
+would despise? Why should you not marry because you have to die soon?--if
+you _are_ thus doomed, which to me is by no means clear. Why not have what
+happiness you may for the rest of your sojourn? If you find at the end of
+twenty years that here you are after all, you will be rather sorry you did
+not do as I say."
+
+"And if I find myself dying at the end of six months'?"
+
+"You will thank God for those six months. The whole thing, my dear fellow,
+is a want of faith in God. I do not doubt you think you are doing right,
+but, I repeat, the whole thing comes from want of faith in God. You will
+take things into your own hands, and order them after a preventive and
+self-protective fashion, lest God should have ordained the worst for you,
+which worst, after all, would be best met by doing his will without inquiry
+into the future; and which worst is no evil. Death is no more an evil than
+marriage is."
+
+"But you don't see it as I do," persisted the blacksmith.
+
+"Of course I don't. I think you see it as it is not."
+
+He remained silent for a little. A shower of spray fell upon us. He
+started.
+
+"What a wave!" he cried. "That spray came over the top of the rock. We
+shall have to run for it."
+
+I fancied that he only wanted to avoid further conversation.
+
+"There's no hurry," I said. "It was high water an hour and a half ago."
+
+"You don't know this coast, sir," returned he, "or you wouldn't talk like
+that."
+
+As he spoke he rose, and going from under the shelter of the rock, looked
+along.
+
+"For God's sake, Aggy!" he cried in terror, "come at once. Every other wave
+be rushing across the breakwater as if it was on the level."
+
+So saying, he hurried back, caught her by the hand, and began to draw her
+along.
+
+"Hadn't we better stay where we are?" I suggested.
+
+"If you can stand the night in the cold. But Aggy here is delicate; and I
+don't care about being out all night. It's not the tide, sir; it's a ground
+swell--from a storm somewhere out at sea. That never asks no questions
+about tide or no tide."
+
+"Come along, then," I said. "But just wait one minute more. It is better to
+be ready for the worst."
+
+For I remembered that the day before I had seen a crowbar lying among the
+stones, and I thought it might be useful. In a moment or two I had found
+it, and returning, gave it to Joe. Then I took the girl's disengaged hand.
+She thanked me in a voice perfectly calm and firm. Joe took the bar in
+haste, and drew Agnes towards the breakwater.
+
+Any real thought of danger had not yet crossed my mind. But when I looked
+along the outstretched back of the mole, and saw a dim sheet of white sweep
+across it, I felt that there was ground for his anxiety, and prepared
+myself for a struggle.
+
+"Do you know what to do with the crowbar, Joe?" I said, grasping my own
+stout oak-stick more firmly.
+
+"Perfectly," answered Joe. "To stick between the stones and hold on. We
+must watch our time between the waves."
+
+"You take the command, then, Joe," I returned. "You see better than I do,
+and you know the ways of that raging wild beast there better than I do. I
+will obey orders--one of which, no doubt, will be, not for wind or sea to
+lose hold of Agnes--eh, Joe?"
+
+Joe gave a grim enough laugh in reply, and we started, he carrying his
+crowbar in his right hand towards the advancing sea, and I my oak-stick in
+my left towards the still water within.
+
+"Quick march!" said Joe, and away we went out on the breakwater.
+
+Now the back of the breakwater was very rugged, for it was formed of huge
+stones, with wide gaps between, where the waters had washed out the cement,
+and worn their edges. But what impeded our progress secured our safety.
+
+"Halt!" cried Joe, when we were yet but a few yards beyond the shelter of
+the rocks. "There's a topper coming."
+
+We halted at the word of command, as a huge wave, with combing crest,
+rushed against the far out-sloping base of the mole, and flung its heavy
+top right over the middle of the mass, a score or two of yards in front of
+us.
+
+"Now for it!" cried Joe. "Run!"
+
+We did run. In my mind there was just sense enough of danger to add to the
+pleasure of the excitement. I did not know how much danger there was. Over
+the rough worn stones we sped stumbling.
+
+"Halt!" cried the smith once more, and we did halt; but this time, as it
+turned out, in the middle front of the coming danger.
+
+"God be with us!" I exclaimed, when the huge billow showed itself through
+the night, rushing towards the mole. The smith stuck his crowbar between
+two great stones. To this he held on with one hand, and threw the other arm
+round Agnes's waist. I, too, had got my oak firmly fixed, held on with one
+hand, and threw the other arm round Agnes. It took but a moment.
+
+"Now then!" cried Joe. "Here she comes! Hold on, sir. Hold on, Aggy!"
+
+But when I saw the height of the water, as it rushed on us up the sloping
+side of the mound, I cried out in my turn, "Down, Joe! Down on your face,
+and let it over us easy! Down Agnes!"
+
+They obeyed. We threw ourselves across the breakwater, with our heads to
+the coming foe, and I grasped my stick close to the stones with all the
+power of a hand that was then strong. Over us burst the mighty wave,
+floating us up from the stones where we lay. But we held on, the wave
+passed, and we sprung gasping to our feet.
+
+"Now, now!" cried Joe and I together, and, heavy as we were, with the water
+pouring from us, we flew across the remainder of the heap, and arrived,
+panting and safe, at the other end, ere one wave more had swept the
+surface. The moment we were in safety we turned and looked back over the
+danger we had traversed. It was to see a huge billow sweep the breakwater
+from end to end. We looked at each other for a moment without speaking.
+
+"I believe, sir," said Joe at length, with slow and solemn speech, "if you
+hadn't taken the command at that moment we should all have been lost."
+
+"It seems likely enough, when I look back on it. For one thing, I was not
+sure that my stick would stand, so I thought I had better grasp it low
+down."
+
+"We were awfully near death," said Joe.
+
+"Nearer than you thought, Joe; and yet we escaped it. Things don't go
+all as we fancy, you see. Faith is as essential to manhood as
+foresight--believe me, Joe. It is very absurd to trust God for the future,
+and not trust him for the present. The man who is not anxious is the man
+most likely to do the right thing. He is cool and collected and ready. Our
+Lord therefore told his disciples that when they should be brought before
+kings and rulers, they were to take no thought what answer they should
+make, for it would be given them when the time came."
+
+We were climbing the steep path up to the downs. Neither of my companions
+spoke.
+
+"You have escaped one death together," I said at length: "dare another."
+
+Still neither of them returned an answer. When we came near the parsonage,
+I said, "Now, Joe, you must go in and get to bed at once. I will take Agnes
+home. You can trust me not to say anything against you?"
+
+Joe laughed rather hoarsely, and replied: "As you please, sir. Good night,
+Aggie. Mind you get to bed as fast as you can."
+
+When I returned from giving Agnes over to her parents, I made haste to
+change my clothes, and put on my warm dressing-gown. I may as well mention
+at once, that not one of us was the worse for our ducking. I then went up
+to Connie's room.
+
+"Here I am, you see, Connie, quite safe."
+
+"I've been lying listening to every blast of wind since you went out, papa.
+But all I could do was to trust in God."
+
+"Do you call that _all_, Connie? Believe me, there is more power in that
+than any human being knows the tenth part of yet. It is indeed _all_."
+
+I said no more then. I told my wife about it that night, but we were well
+into another month before I told Connie.
+
+When I left her, I went to Joe's room to see how he was, and found him
+having some gruel. I sat down on the edge of his bed, and said,
+
+"Well, Joe, this is better than under water. I hope you won't be the worse
+for it."
+
+"I don't much care what comes of me, sir. It will be all over soon."
+
+"But you ought to care what comes of you, Joe. I will tell you why. You are
+an instrument out of which ought to come praise to God, and, therefore, you
+ought to care for the instrument."
+
+"That way, yes, sir, I ought."
+
+"And you have no business to be like some children who say, 'Mamma won't
+give me so and so,' instead of asking her to give it them."
+
+"I see what you mean, sir. But really you put me out before the young
+woman. I couldn't say before her what I meant. Suppose, you know, sir,
+there was to come a family. It might be, you know."
+
+"Of course. What else would you have?"
+
+"But if I was to die, where would she be then?"
+
+"In God's hands; just as she is now."
+
+"But I ought to take care that she is not left with a burden like that to
+provide for."
+
+"O, Joe! how little you know a woman's heart! It would just be the greatest
+comfort she could have for losing you--that's all. Many a woman has married
+a man she did not care enough for, just that she might have a child of her
+own to let out her heart upon. I don't say that is right, you know. Such
+love cannot be perfect. A woman ought to love her child because it is her
+husband's more than because it is her own, and because it is God's more
+than either's. I saw in the papers the other day, that a woman was brought
+before the Recorder of London for stealing a baby, when the judge himself
+said that there was no imaginable motive for her action but a motherly
+passion to possess the child. It is the need of a child that makes so
+many women take to poor miserable, broken-nosed lap-dogs; for they are
+self-indulgent, and cannot face the troubles and dangers of adopting
+a child. They would if they might get one of a good family, or from a
+respectable home; but they dare not take an orphan out of the dirt, lest
+it should spoil their silken chairs. But that has nothing to do with our
+argument. What I mean is this, that if Agnes really loves you, as no one
+can look in her face and doubt, she will be far happier if you leave her
+a child--yes, she will be happier if you only leave her your name for
+hers--than if you died without calling her your wife."
+
+I took Joe's basin from him, and he lay down. He turned his face to the
+wall. I waited a moment, but finding him silent, bade him good-night, and
+left the room.
+
+A month after, I married them.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE HARVEST.
+
+
+
+
+
+It was some time before we got the bells to work to our mind, but at
+last we succeeded. The worst of it was to get the cranks, which at first
+required strong pressure on the keys, to work easily enough. But neither
+Joe nor his cousin spared any pains to perfect the attempt, and, as I say,
+at length we succeeded. I took Wynnie down to the instrument and made her
+try whether she could not do something, and she succeeded in making the old
+tower discourse loudly and eloquently.
+
+By this time the thanksgiving for the harvest was at hand: on the morning
+of that first of all would I summon the folk to their prayers with the
+sound of the full peal. And I wrote a little hymn of praise to the God of
+the harvest, modelling it to one of the oldest tunes in that part of the
+country, and I had it printed on slips of paper and laid plentifully on the
+benches. What with the calling of the bells, like voices in the highway,
+and the solemn meditation of the organ within to bear aloft the thoughts of
+those who heard, and came to the prayer and thanksgiving in common, and the
+message which God had given me to utter to them, I hoped that we should
+indeed keep holiday.
+
+Wynnie summoned the parish with the hundredth psalm pealed from aloft,
+dropping from the airy regions of the tower on village and hamlet and
+cottage, calling aloud--for who could dissociate the words from the music,
+though the words are in the Scotch psalms?--written none the less by an
+Englishman, however English wits may amuse themselves with laughing at
+their quaintness--calling aloud,
+
+  "All people that on earth do dwell
+  Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice;
+  Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell--
+  Come ye before him and rejoice."
+
+Then we sang the psalm before the communion service, making bold in the
+name of the Lord to serve him with _mirth_ as in the old version, and not
+with the _fear_ with which some editor, weak in faith, has presumed to
+alter the line. Then before the sermon we sang the hymn I had prepared--a
+proceeding justifiable by many an example in the history of the church
+while she was not only able to number singers amongst her clergy, but those
+singers were capable of influencing the whole heart and judgment of the
+nation with their songs. Ethelwyn played the organ. The song I had prepared
+was this:
+
+  "We praise the Life of All;
+  From buried seeds so small
+  Who makes the ordered ranks of autumn stand;
+  Who stores the corn
+  In rick and barn
+  To feed the winter of the land.
+
+  We praise the Life of Light!
+  Who from the brooding night
+  Draws out the morning holy, calm, and grand;
+  Veils up the moon,
+  Sends out the sun,
+  To glad the face of all the land.
+
+  We praise the Life of Work,
+  Who from sleep's lonely dark
+  Leads forth his children to arise and stand,
+  Then go their way,
+  The live-long day,
+  To trust and labour in the land.
+
+  We praise the Life of Good,
+  Who breaks sin's lazy mood,
+  Toilsomely ploughing up the fruitless sand.
+  The furrowed waste
+  They leave, and haste
+  Home, home, to till their Father's land.
+
+  We praise the Life of Life,
+  Who in this soil of strife
+  Casts us at birth, like seed from sower's hand;
+  To die and so
+  Like corn to grow
+  A golden harvest in his land."
+
+After we had sung this hymn, the meaning of which is far better than the
+versification, I preached from the words of St. Paul, "If by any means I
+might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had already
+attained, either were already perfect." And this is something like what I
+said to them:
+
+"The world, my friends, is full of resurrections, and it is not always of
+the same resurrection that St. Paul speaks. Every night that folds us up
+in darkness is a death; and those of you that have been out early and have
+seen the first of the dawn, will know it--the day rises out of the night
+like a being that has burst its tomb and escaped into life. That you may
+feel that the sunrise is a resurrection--the word resurrection just means a
+rising again--I will read you a little description of it from a sermon by a
+great writer and great preacher called Jeremy Taylor. Listen. 'But as when
+the sun approaching towards the gates of the morning, he first opens a
+little eye of heaven and sends away the spirits of darkness, and gives
+light to a cock, and calls up the lark to matins, and by and by gilds the
+fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his
+golden horns like those which decked the brows of Moses, when he was forced
+to wear a veil, because himself had seen the face of God; and still, while
+a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he shows a fair face
+and a full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often,
+and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly; so is a
+man's reason and his life.' Is not this a resurrection of the day out of
+the night? Or hear how Milton makes his Adam and Eve praise God in the
+morning,--
+
+  'Ye mists and exhalations that now rise
+  From hill or streaming lake, dusky or gray,
+  Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold,
+  In honour to the world's great Author rise,
+  Whether to deck with clouds the uncoloured sky,
+  Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers,
+  Rising or falling still advance his praise.'
+
+But it is yet more of a resurrection to you. Think of your own condition
+through the night and in the morning. You die, as it were, every night. The
+death of darkness comes down over the earth; but a deeper death, the death
+of sleep, descends on you. A power overshadows you; your eyelids close, you
+cannot keep them open if you would; your limbs lie moveless; the day is
+gone; your whole life is gone; you have forgotten everything; an evil man
+might come and do with your goods as he pleased; you are helpless. But the
+God of the Resurrection is awake all the time, watching his sleeping men
+and women, even as a mother who watches her sleeping baby, only with larger
+eyes and more full of love than hers; and so, you know not how, all at once
+you know that you are what you are; that there is a world that wants you
+outside of you, and a God that wants you inside of you; you rise from the
+death of sleep, not by your own power, for you knew nothing about it; God
+put his hand over your eyes, and you were dead; he lifted his hand and
+breathed light on you and you rose from the dead, thanked the God who
+raised you up, and went forth to do your work. From darkness to light; from
+blindness to seeing; from knowing nothing to looking abroad on the mighty
+world; from helpless submission to willing obedience,--is not this a
+resurrection indeed? That St. Paul saw it to be such may be shown from his
+using the two things with the same meaning when he says, 'Awake, thou that
+sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.'
+No doubt he meant a great deal more. No man who understands what he is
+speaking about can well mean only one thing at a time.
+
+"But to return to the resurrections we see around us in nature. Look at the
+death that falls upon the world in winter. And look how it revives when the
+sun draws near enough in the spring to wile the life in it once more out of
+its grave. See how the pale, meek snowdrops come up with their bowed heads,
+as if full of the memory of the fierce winds they encountered last spring,
+and yet ready in the strength of their weakness to encounter them again. Up
+comes the crocus, bringing its gold safe from the dark of its colourless
+grave into the light of its parent gold. Primroses, and anemones, and
+blue-bells, and a thousand other children of the spring, hear the
+resurrection-trumpet of the wind from the west and south, obey, and leave
+their graves behind to breathe the air of the sweet heavens. Up and up they
+come till the year is glorious with the rose and the lily, till the trees
+are not only clothed upon with new garments of loveliest green, but the
+fruit-tree bringeth forth its fruit, and the little children of men are
+made glad with apples, and cherries, and hazel-nuts. The earth laughs out
+in green and gold. The sky shares in the grand resurrection. The garments
+of its mourning, wherewith it made men sad, its clouds of snow and hail and
+stormy vapours, are swept away, have sunk indeed to the earth, and are now
+humbly feeding the roots of the flowers whose dead stalks they beat upon
+all the winter long. Instead, the sky has put on the garments of praise.
+Her blue, coloured after the sapphire-floor on which stands the throne of
+him who is the Resurrection and the Life, is dashed and glorified with the
+pure white of sailing clouds, and at morning and evening prayer, puts on
+colours in which the human heart drowns itself with delight--green and gold
+and purple and rose. Even the icebergs floating about in the lonely summer
+seas of the north are flashing all the glories of the rainbow. But, indeed,
+is not this whole world itself a monument of the Resurrection? The earth
+was without form and void. The wind of God moved on the face of the waters,
+and up arose this fair world. Darkness was on the face of the deep: God
+said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light.
+
+"In the animal world as well, you behold the goings of the Resurrection.
+Plainest of all, look at the story of the butterfly--so plain that the
+pagan Greeks called it and the soul by one name--Psyche. Psyche meant with
+them a butterfly or the soul, either. Look how the creeping thing, ugly to
+our eyes, so that we can hardly handle it without a shudder, finding itself
+growing sick with age, straightway falls a spinning and weaving at its
+own shroud, coffin, and grave, all in one--to prepare, in fact, for its
+resurrection; for it is for the sake of the resurrection that death exists.
+Patiently it spins its strength, but not its life, away, folds itself up
+decently, that its body may rest in quiet till the new body is formed
+within it; and at length when the appointed hour has arrived, out of the
+body of this crawling thing breaks forth the winged splendour of the
+butterfly--not the same body--a new one built out of the ruins of the
+old--even as St. Paul tells us that it is not the same body _we_ have in
+the resurrection, but a nobler body like ourselves, with all the imperfect
+and evil thing taken away. No more creeping for the butterfly; wings of
+splendour now. Neither yet has it lost the feet wherewith to alight on all
+that is lovely and sweet. Think of it--up from the toilsome journey over
+the low ground, exposed to the foot of every passer-by, destroying the
+lovely leaves upon which it fed, and the fruit which they should shelter,
+up to the path at will through the air, and a gathering of food which hurts
+not the source of it, a food which is but as a tribute from the loveliness
+of the flowers to the yet higher loveliness of the flower-angel: is not
+this a resurrection? Its children too shall pass through the same process,
+to wing the air of a summer noon, and rejoice in the ethereal and the pure.
+
+"To return yet again from the human thoughts suggested by the symbol of the
+butterfly"--
+
+Here let me pause for a moment--and there was a corresponding pause, though
+but momentary, in the sermon as I spoke it--to mention a curious, and to me
+at the moment an interesting fact. At this point of my address, I caught
+sight of a white butterfly, a belated one, flitting about the church.
+Absorbed for a moment, my eye wandered after it. It was near the bench
+where my own people sat, and, for one flash of thought, I longed that the
+butterfly would alight on my Wynnie, for I was more anxious about her
+resurrection at the time than about anything else. But the butterfly would
+not. And then I told myself that God would, and that the butterfly was only
+the symbol of a grand truth, and of no private interpretation, to make
+which of it was both selfishness and superstition. But all this passed in a
+flash, and I resumed my discourse.
+
+--"I come now naturally to speak of what we commonly call the Resurrection.
+Some say: 'How can the same dust be raised again, when it may be scattered
+to the winds of heaven?' It is a question I hardly care to answer. The
+mere difficulty can in reason stand for nothing with God; but the apparent
+worthlessness of the supposition renders the question uninteresting to me.
+What is of import is, that I should stand clothed upon, with a body which
+is _my_ body because it serves my ends, justifies my consciousness of
+identity by being, in all that was good in it, like that which I had
+before, while now it is tenfold capable of expressing the thoughts and
+feelings that move within me. How can I care whether the atoms that form
+a certain inch of bone should be the same as those which formed that bone
+when I died? All my life-time I never felt or thought of the existence of
+such a bone! On the other hand, I object to having the same worn muscles,
+the same shrivelled skin with which I may happen to die. Why give me the
+same body as that? Why not rather my youthful body, which was strong, and
+facile, and capable? The matter in the muscle of my arm at death would not
+serve to make half the muscle I had when young. But I thank God that St.
+Paul says it will _not_ be the same body. That body dies--up springs
+another body. I suspect myself that those are right who say that this body
+being the seed, the moment it dies in the soil of this world, that moment
+is the resurrection of the new body. The life in it rises out of it in a
+new body. This is not after it is put in the mere earth; for it is dead
+then, and the germ of life gone out of it. If a seed rots, no new body
+comes of it. The seed dies into a new life, and so does man. Dying and
+rotting are two very different things.--But I am not sure by any means. As
+I say, the whole question is rather uninteresting to me. What do I care
+about my old clothes after I have done with them? What is it to me to know
+what becomes of an old coat or an old pulpit gown? I have no such clinging
+to the flesh. It seems to me that people believe their bodies to be
+themselves, and are therefore very anxious about them--and no wonder then.
+Enough for me that I shall have eyes to see my friends, a face that they
+shall know me by, and a mouth to praise God withal. I leave the matter with
+one remark, that I am well content to rise as Jesus rose, however that was.
+For me the will of God is so good that I would rather have his will done
+than my own choice given me.
+
+"But I now come to the last, because infinitely the most important part
+of my subject--the resurrection for the sake of which all the other
+resurrections exist--the resurrection unto Life. This is the one of which
+St. Paul speaks in my text. This is the one I am most anxious--indeed, the
+only one I am anxious to set forth, and impress upon you.
+
+"Think, then, of all the deaths you know; the death of the night, when the
+sun is gone, when friend says not a word to friend, but both lie drowned
+and parted in the sea of sleep; the death of the year, when winter lies
+heavy on the graves of the children of summer, when the leafless trees moan
+in the blasts from the ocean, when the beasts even look dull and oppressed,
+when the children go about shivering with cold, when the poor and
+improvident are miserable with suffering or think of such a death of
+disease as befalls us at times, when the man who says, 'Would God it were
+morning!' changes but his word, and not his tune, when the morning comes,
+crying, 'Would God it were evening!' when what life is left is known to us
+only by suffering, and hope is amongst the things that were once and are no
+more--think of all these, think of them all together, and you will have but
+the dimmest, faintest picture of the death from which the resurrection
+of which I have now to speak, is the rising. I shrink from the attempt,
+knowing how weak words are to set forth _the_ death, set forth _the_
+resurrection. Were I to sit down to yonder organ, and crash out the most
+horrible dissonances that ever took shape in sound, I should give you but
+a weak figure of this death; were I capable of drawing from many a row of
+pipes an exhalation of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet, such as Milton
+himself could have invaded our ears withal, I could give you but a faint
+figure of this resurrection. Nevertheless, I must try what I can do in my
+own way.
+
+"If into the face of the dead body, lying on the bed, waiting for its
+burial, the soul of the man should begin to dawn again, drawing near from
+afar to look out once more at those eyes, to smile once again through those
+lips, the change on that face would be indeed great and wondrous, but
+nothing for marvel or greatness to that which passes on the countenance,
+the very outward bodily face of the man who wakes from his sleep, arises
+from the dead and receives light from Christ. Too often indeed, the
+reposeful look on the face of the dead body would be troubled, would vanish
+away at the revisiting of the restless ghost; but when a man's own right
+true mind, which God made in him, is restored to him again, and he wakes
+from the death of sin, then comes the repose without the death. It may take
+long for the new spirit to complete the visible change, but it begins at
+once, and will be perfected. The bloated look of self-indulgence passes
+away like the leprosy of Naaman, the cheek grows pure, the lips return to
+the smile of hope instead of the grin of greed, and the eyes that made
+innocence shrink and shudder with their yellow leer grow childlike and
+sweet and faithful. The mammon-eyes, hitherto fixed on the earth, are
+lifted to meet their kind; the lips that mumbled over figures and sums of
+gold learn to say words of grace and tenderness. The truculent, repellent,
+self-satisfied face begins to look thoughtful and doubtful, as if searching
+for some treasure of whose whereabouts it had no certain sign. The face
+anxious, wrinkled, peering, troubled, on whose lines you read the dread of
+hunger, poverty, and nakedness, thaws into a smile; the eyes reflect in
+courage the light of the Father's care, the back grows erect under its
+burden with the assurance that the hairs of its head are all numbered. But
+the face can with all its changes set but dimly forth the rising from the
+dead which passes within. The heart, which cared but for itself, becomes
+aware of surrounding thousands like itself, in the love and care of which
+it feels a dawning blessedness undreamt of before. From selfishness to
+love--is not this a rising from the dead? The man whose ambition declares
+that his way in the world would be to subject everything to his desires, to
+bring every human care, affection, power, and aspiration to his feet--such
+a world it would be, and such a king it would have, if individual ambition
+might work its will! if a man's opinion of himself could be made out in
+the world, degrading, compelling, oppressing, doing everything for his own
+glory!--and such a glory!--but a pang of light strikes this man to the
+heart; an arrow of truth, feathered with suffering and loss and dismay,
+finds out--the open joint in his armour, I was going to say--no, finds out
+the joint in the coffin where his heart lies festering in a death so dead
+that itself calls it life. He trembles, he awakes, he rises from the dead.
+No more he seeks the slavery of all: where can he find whom to serve? how
+can he become if but a threshold in the temple of Christ, where all serve
+all, and no man thinks first of himself? He to whom the mass of his
+fellows, as he massed them, was common and unclean, bows before every human
+sign of the presence of the making God. The sun, which was to him but a
+candle with which to search after his own ends, wealth, power, place,
+praise--the world, which was but the cavern where he thus searched--are now
+full of the mystery of loveliness, full of the truth of which sun and
+wind and land and sea are symbols and signs. From a withered old age of
+unbelief, the dim eyes of which refuse the glory of things a passage to the
+heart, he is raised up a child full of admiration, wonder, and gladness.
+Everything is glorious to him; he can believe, and therefore he sees. It
+is from the grave into the sunshine, from the night into the morning, from
+death into life. To come out of the ugly into the beautiful; out of the
+mean and selfish into the noble and loving; out of the paltry into the
+great; out of the false into the true; out of the filthy into the clean;
+out of the commonplace into the glorious; out of the corruption of disease
+into the fine vigour and gracious movements of health; in a word, out of
+evil into good--is not this a resurrection indeed--_the_ resurrection of
+all, the resurrection of Life? God grant that with St. Paul we may attain
+to this resurrection of the dead.
+
+"This rising from the dead is often a long and a painful process. Even
+after he had preached the gospel to the Gentiles, and suffered much for the
+sake of his Master, Paul sees the resurrection of the dead towering grandly
+before him, not yet climbed, not yet attained unto--a mountainous splendour
+and marvel, still shining aloft in the air of existence, still, thank God,
+to be attained, but ever growing in height and beauty as, forgetting those
+things that are behind, he presses towards the mark, if by any means he may
+attain to the resurrection of the dead. Every blessed moment in which a man
+bethinks himself that he has been forgetting his high calling, and sends up
+to the Father a prayer for aid; every time a man resolves that what he has
+been doing he will do no more; every time that the love of God, or the
+feeling of the truth, rouses a man to look first up at the light, then down
+at the skirts of his own garments--that moment a divine resurrection is
+wrought in the earth. Yea, every time that a man passes from resentment to
+forgiveness, from cruelty to compassion, from hardness to tenderness, from
+indifference to carefulness, from selfishness to honesty, from honesty to
+generosity, from generosity to love,--a resurrection, the bursting of a
+fresh bud of life out of the grave of evil, gladdens the eye of the Father
+watching his children. Awake, then, thou that sleepest, and arise from the
+dead, and Christ will give thee light. As the harvest rises from the wintry
+earth, so rise thou up from the trials of this world a full ear in the
+harvest of Him who sowed thee in the soil that thou mightest rise above it.
+As the summer rises from the winter, so rise thou from the cares of eating
+and drinking and clothing into the fearless sunshine of confidence in
+the Father. As the morning rises out of the night, so rise thou from the
+darkness of ignorance to do the will of God in the daylight; and as a man
+feels that he is himself when he wakes from the troubled and grotesque
+visions of the night into the glory of the sunrise, even so wilt thou feel
+that then first thou knowest what thy life, the gladness of thy being, is.
+As from painful tossing in disease, rise into the health of well-being. As
+from the awful embrace of thy own dead body, burst forth in thy spiritual
+body. Arise thou, responsive to the indwelling will of the Father, even as
+thy body will respond to thy indwelling soul.
+
+  'White wings are crossing;
+  Glad waves are tossing;
+  The earth flames out in crimson and green:
+
+  Spring is appearing,
+  Summer is nearing--
+  Where hast thou been?
+
+  Down in some cavern,
+  Death's sleepy tavern,
+  Housing, carousing with spectres of night?
+  The trumpet is pealing
+  Sunshine and healing--
+  Spring to the light.'"
+
+With this quotation from a friend's poem, I closed my sermon, oppressed
+with a sense of failure; for ever the marvel of simple awaking, the mere
+type of the resurrection eluded all my efforts to fix it in words. I had to
+comfort myself with the thought that God is so strong that he can work even
+with our failures.
+
+END OF VOL. II.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2, by George MacDonald
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEABOARD PARISH VOL. 2 ***
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